MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
February 5 – February 12, 2009 Edition
Reed Shuts Down
BookExpo Canada
For Lack of Interest
NEW YORK, NY (Authorlink News, February 5, 2009)-Publishers Weekly reported this week that Reed Exhibitions Canada, owned by the same parent company as PW, has closed BookExpo Canada, the annual publishing trade event, after many large publishers and independents pulled out.
Greg Topalian, senior v-p for Reed Exhibitions, owned by Reed Elsevier, said, that it has become clear that there is not enough interest in the Canadian publishing industry to make the event a successful standalone operation. Reed was willing to run a smaller traditional business-to-business fair and complement that with a consumer show, but, “at the end of the day, there wasn’t enough sign-ups for either,” Topalian told PW. “We’ve worked for a number of years to find ways to change the show or to have it evolve, but when you get to the point where your customers say you aren’t valuable any more it’s time to move on,” Topalian said. He said that while he would never rule out trying to do some book-related events in Canada in future years, “as of today, there will be no events in 2009.”
With the closure of BEC, Reed, said it will now concentrate its energies on having BookExpo America serve the needs of the North America publishing and bookselling community.
