BEA's Lofty Green Goals Not Met

Posted on May 27, 2008

The organizers of Book Expo America 2008 (BEA) are getting a lot of grief over their failed plans to make the convention green.

Virtually every major publisher, from Random House Inc. to Scholastic Inc., has announced environmental goals, mostly through the increased use of recycled paper and fibre from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international environmental organization. But the revolution has not quite arrived at BookExpo.
Around 30,000 event guides, just over 40 pages long, will be distributed at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with 19,000 copies of the 700-page program guide. More than 10 million pages in all will be printed, none on recycled paper.
"I'm very proud of the green programming that we created this year at the show," BookExpo vice president and show manager Lance Fensterman told The Associated Press. "Earlier in the year we had thought about doing even more green programming at BEA. But we felt that until we started being more green ourselves, it was not entirely right to proclaim the virtues of being green. "We are fully aware that improvement can be made in our green related efforts," he acknowledged.

Going green won't be tops on most publishers' and authors' minds this weekend. Instead, most are worrying about the state of book publishing in general and what the future might hold. One of the most anticipated speakers this weekend is Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. Bezos will discuss the current and future state of digital publishing and retailing. He'll also talk about the Kindle, no doubt.

And as for those who gripe about the printing of 30,000 event guides, here's the deal. Until an e-reader shows up that is cheap, easy to read and allows the user to change pages as fast as the user can in real life, we'll have to keep printing program guides on paper. And by cheap, we mean $29.99 with a battery that lasts a month between charges and a free internet connection. Until then, epublishing will not replace books or paper.