Khaled Hosseini

NEW YORK—Lawyers do it in their briefs. Book people do it on their T-shirts.

Best one spotted at this year’s BEA, the annual book industry rite of spring?

“Metaphors be with you!”—courtesy of the National Writers Union.

Well, BEA’s full of star wars, and the industry can always use extra propulsion.

Formally known as BookExpo America, this mass meeting last weekend of more than 30,000 booksellers, authors, publishers and lit journalists glistened with ironies.

On the first day, R.R. Bowker, one of many “information” businesses that imperfectly track publishing sales (and thus provide clashing figures to the media every year), revealed its new number for total books published in the United States in 2006, a result of shifting its methodology.

291,920.

That’s a good 100,000 more than some other outfits report by counting differently.

And you wonder why book publishing is a seat-of-the pants industry?

As that number rose, a much-discussed trend among many attendees this year—fanned by multiple panels—was the shrinkage in coverage of books by publications that say they desperately need young readers, a trend different speakers decried as “illogical” and “beyond stupid.”

“It’s terrible,” said Peter Mayer, publisher of the Overlook Press, former CEO of the Penguin Group and a 50-year veteran of the field. “Some things can’t be replaced. ... We need “more reviewing.”

Popular authors, as always, drew crowds—every BEA demonstrates that one year’s obscure newcomer morphs into next year’s VIP.

This time, Khaled Hosseini, the Afghan-born author whose debut novel, “The Kite Runner,” became a surprise hit in 2003, more than made the rounds for “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” his just-out second novel about Afghan women. He also snared a coveted star spot at the Saturday breakfast hosted by truthiness-meister Stephen Colbert.

Elsewhere on the big-book agenda, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was widely thought to have bombed as Friday night’s keynote speaker. Greenspan banned camera crews and recording devices from an onstage interview with his wife, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. Lots of media simply stayed away.

Several panels and presentations evidenced the boom in atheism books, led by Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great” (Twelve Books), the new No. 1 New York Times best seller. Hitchens, a British-American cultural critic, shared a panel with Victor Stenger, author of “God: The Failed Hypothesis” (Prometheus). An earlier book in the genre, Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion,” will get a 250,000 paperback printing from Mariner Books, the largest in its history.

As in recent years, BEA also operated as a display window for many of the new technologies threatening—or purporting to save—the antiquated book business.

Google draped big ads around the Javits Center, inviting publishers to see “what happens when readers get a taste of what’s inside your books.”

Google argues that more people buy them. Some folks think the opposite. The jury’s still out, but copyright lawyers are having a field day.

BEA also usually serves as prime time for industry outfits to release the results of studies and surveys. The American Booksellers Association (ABA), which cosponsors BEA with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), reported that its closely watched membership—bookstores—had continued to slide, from 2,313 to 2,209.

The Book Industry Study Group, another producer of figures everyone watches, reported that sales were up in every category: trade sales up 3.3 percent in 2006 to $14.47 billion, trade paperbacks up 6.1 percent, and adult hardcovers up 2.4 percent. Sales for the entire industry (no small potatoes) rose 3.1 percent to $38.08 billion (yes, billion).

One intriguing survey, conducted by Content Connections and eWomenPublishingNetwork, asked 2,000 women about their book-buying habits. (Everyone knows women support literary fiction, but they also buy 70 percent of nonfiction books.)

Think women buyers tumble easily for charming clerks who want them to buy their in-house picks? As it happens, 86 percent “never” or “seldom” ask a clerk to recommend something.

The main business of BEA, of course, remains the simple one of book publishers presenting their wares to booksellers. Big-money books get the lion’s share of promotion at BEA.

So Doubleday crowed about John Grisham’s return to fiction after his recent detour with “The Innocent Man.” Grisham will offer “Playing for Pizza,” an atypical short tale about an American football star who goes to play for Italy’s Parma Panthers. Doubleday said Grisham will return with a thriller in Spring 2008.

Meanwhile, Alice Sebold, author of 2002’s enormously successful “The Lovely Bones,” will offer a new novel, “The Almost Moon” (Little, Brown), which begins, “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.”

In nonfiction, the thousands of books presented at BEA covered the usual range from sublime to slime. Outside those extremes, there was a book for every taste.

Remembering Peter Jennings as you adjust to Charles Gibson? Public Affairs will publish “Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life” (November), a portrait of the former ABC anchor’s life. Been waiting breathlessly for Jenna Bush’s authorial debut? HarperCollins promises “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope,” based on the first daughter’s work with UNICEF.

In fiction, to mention two of thousands, autumn will bring Philip Roth’s final Zuckerman novel, “Exit Ghost” (Houghton Mifflin), and a new novel by Philadelphia’s Jennifer Weiner, “Certain Girls” (Simon & Schuster) is on the way.

Finally, even without new technology, booksellers are always trying something new. This BEA, a group of children’s publishers arranged a “Speed Dating with Children’s Authors” session, where 20 authors could scoot between booksellers every three minutes.

We’ll report marriages in next year’s BEA story.

J.K. Rowling did not attend. Her seventh, and supposedly final, Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” arrives July 21 with a “12-million-copy printing.

She may be waiting for the speed-selling event.

___

Carlin Romano is a book critic and columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.