PublishersLunch
Book Expo America kicked off Tuesday
morning's author breakfast with attendees lined up early to enter and offered
the classic mix of humor, appreciation and creative inspiration. In a new
twist, BEA is live streaming the marquee convention events, and the stream
actually worked.
Emcee Stephen Colbert was in classic form,
setting the stage for "three of the world's best authors of books other
than mine." Of his own forthcoming book AMERICA AGAIN: Re-Becoming the
Greatness We Never Weren't, Colbert noted that "following the success of
The Avengers, I wanted my new book to be 3D.... The pages turn right at
you." He added, "I'm not kidding," and blads given out at the
breakfast did include 3D classses and boasted pages in 3-D High Def, to
"experience depthiness."
Introducing the first author, Junot Diaz (left),
Colbert noted how it "must have been exciting to the see the Pulitzer's
Prize van pull up to your house, with the balloons and the check."
Diaz expressed his genuine admiration for
the role booksellers play in our lives: "You're the capillary strength of
our democratic society. It's that passing of books...the simple, humble mundane
labor of giving books to people that in some ways nourishes what we call our
American democracy, and it's not a small debt we owe."
He was followed by Barbara Kingsolver, who
acknowledged that "everything about books is changing very fast. It used
to be when I wrote a book I knew exactly where it would end up--on a shelf...in
between Stephen King and Maxine Huston." Now, "it might end up on a
shelf, or on a phone, or in some teeny tiny form on a device in between Angry
Birds and Whack-a-Mole. I don't know what I'm doing in there."
While "we are all jockeying for the
attention of the reader, who we know call the consumer, trying to wrestle a
little attention away from Angry Birds," Kingsolver acknowledged that it
has always been the case. "The literary reader is a small but probably
stable demographic. We have our place. We absorb and pass on information in a
way that endures.... The only thing that will resonate with the reader is those
things that will stay true forever."
Closing author Jo Nesbo (right) presented an
entertaining tour of all the things he did before becoming an international
bestselling novelist, from soccer player to mediocre rock guitarist to stock
broker and beyond. He told the capacity crowd "you guys are so good at speaking
English" and remarked about "the best part of reading my own books in
English; there are long words in there that I don't understand and it even
makes me proud: I wrote that word."
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