Show fever becomes Web fever
As BookExpo America kicks off in New York City, the L.A. Times has a brief writeup on the U.S.’s annual convention and trade show. And it seems that publishers are going in with Web 2.0 on their minds. “I think MySpace and You Tube and all the blogs are really the coming thing now,” Penguin CEO David Shanks tells the Times, which also notes that MySpace is hosting a panel on networking and is also a BEA sponsor. No mention of the allegedly ubiquitous Facebook, though as we’re constantly being told, that one is for some reason a particularly Canadian fave.
MySpace is apparently upping the Canadian ante by launching MySpace.ca,
but they may have missed the boat in books, as Facebook continues to be the fave promotional tool for book launches, fan clubs, and readers’ groups. Word on the Street has over 300 members in their very recently launched group. Book Ninja, BOOKED!, and Young Publishers of Canada all have over 200 members, and each publisher now seems to have a Group site, with Event sites branching from them.