Well, I have run out of beer. So, since I can no longer drown my sorrows (for not being able to make this year’s BEA), I decided to see what all I missed.

Reed Next did make it to the show, worked his booth and took it all in. He said that wi-fi on the floor was horrible…

so live-blogging would have been no fun.

Mr. Next was kind enough to shoot me an email…

“Show-wise, though there was a lot of excitement about several titles (Richard Russo, Alice Sebold, Stephen Colbert), but there didn’t seem to be a big break out book that everyone was talking about or walking away with (a la The Tender Bar a few years ago). The place was crowded and woefully hot (they couldn’t get the air conditioning right and it was a moist, sweaty affair, esp. Friday). PW is saying attendance was approx. 30K. I can’t say for sure because I didn’t count.

The big talk of the show was going digital despite the lack of a decent ebook reader as yet. I think the industry is finally realizing that digital isn’t going away and the only one who’s really worried about it are publishers. Authors don’t care if they make more money because of digital (duh!). People who want to download books will buy the ones that are available and the publishers that aren’t represented in that field will be left behind. So yeah, that seemed to be everywhere and it’s making publishers uneasy but getting the fact that they HAVE to deal with it soon. Every other industry seems to be getting a handle on it.

Not a lot of wackos at the show–no toilet seat heads, no goat boys as in years past. All in all a pretty civil affair.”

And (thanks to a tip from the theorist) we were able to keep up with another publisher’s foray into BEA over at Unbridled.

I also went trawling through Flickr and saw that both God and Borat were seen walking the floor handing out promo material.

I haven’t checked out any of the podcasts from this year’s show yet. I hope they are as good (content and production wise) as last year’s.