Book Expo America: Where Books Go to Party

The fallen book soldiers. (Photo by Joe O'Connell)

My feet are still recovering from tromping around one of the world's largest book industry gatherings, Book Expo America. Everyone says this year's Los Angeles event wasn't near as crowded as last year's in New York City (naturally, since NYC is ground zero of the publishing industry), but, as I arrived to hawk my novel Evacuation Plan at my publisher's booth, I was thrown into a sea of booksellers, Dr. Ruth, publishers, Kevin Nealon, librarians, Cheech Marin, publicists, Arianna Huffington, authors and vacuum cleaner salesmen?

Yes, the vacuum guys were behind the curtain from our booth Hoovering away. My guess is book people like to keep it clean. But back to Dr. Ruth, whom book marketing guru John Kremer says has the ultimate pitch: "buy my book and you'll have incredible sex for the rest of your life." I spotted her roaming the halls, and did a major doubletake. The sex doctor is all of 4'5"! On the other end of the height scale was a very tall Kevin Nealon.

But I digress. At BEA no one is supposed to be selling books, instead giving them away. This leads to the big decision for we who must return in the metal bird in the sky. Like the soldiers in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, we must choose carefully what is worth carrying across the Los Angeles Convention Center and what makes it into the 50-pound weight limit for the flight home. We are carrying the hopes and dreams of writers and marketing gurus like Dr. Ruth. What I will not be carrying: the latest book by Arianna Huffington, which is filled with a lot of Bush administration bashing that I can heartily agree with, but seems to offer little new to say. It joins some self-published children's books, a too-weighty (in a physical sense) literary novel that carries a giant endorsement from Richard Ford, and a book version of the Juno script as late rejects abandoned in my motel room.

Books I'm most excited to read? The new Roman Polanski bio (look for a review in the Chronicle soon) and a book you'll hear very little about elsewhere: When We Were Colored: A Mother's Story. They say the most interesting people you'll meet at Book Expo are the ones you bump into randomly. While waiting in line at a taco stand on the terrace and watching the majority of food service workers stage a strike (I was told the taco stand didn't count as scabbery), I was between a major music producer and the president of Merriam-Webster. I sat down to eat next to the family of Eva Rutland, whose memoir about an integrated suburb of California was originally published in 1964 during the early civil rights movement. They told me that Eva is 91 now with a trach tube and little ability to travel for promotion herself.

What I've read so far is fascinating and well-written. But it's doubtful you'll hear much about it because it's not from the corporate publishers that set the tone at events like Book Expo, where the majors are in one exhibit hall and independent publishers are far away in another hall where many book reviewers don't bother to visit. Though Cheech Marin made the trip. And, yes, Tommy Chong was there too, but each was flying solo with separate books to flog.