BookExpo America Kicks Off Today

BookExpo America officially kicks off today, with a number of concurrent shows. On the south end of the mammoth Jacob Javits Convention Center is the BEA Education Program, featuring panels on topics such as raising your revenue with direct-to-consumer sales and managing the digital rights marketplace, as well as a special focus on publishing in Russia.

Walk north to the opposite end of the hall and you find the BEA Blogger Conference where keynote speaker author Jennifer Weiner celebrated the way the internet enables authors, readers, and critics to join talk to each other, and the AAP’s Tina Jordan announced the winners of the Independent Book Blogger Award.

Somewhere in the middle of this is the International Digital Publishing Forum, with marketing guru Seth Godin kicking off two days of panels in three tracks: Business & Marketing, Technology & Production, and the Education & Professional track.

Another BEA happening today is Publishers Launch. Spearhead by Mike Shatzkin and Michael Cader, it looks at global eBook issues, the changing retail marketplace, and how all this is “remaking the publishing house.”

The Exhibit Halls open Tuesday, June 5th, as does BlogWorld, and the show runs through June 7th. We’ll be posting notes from the show as we go along (follow Book Business’ Twitter: @bookbusinessmag) so watch for news!