Celebration of books in the age of technology

This year’s BookExpo America will be a story of networking, the old way and the new.

Starting Thursday, thousands of authors, publishers, booksellers and librarians will gather at the Jacob Javits Convention Center to discuss what’s coming out and what’s going on. They will catch up as they always have, face to face, at exhibitors’ booths and in conference rooms, in restaurants, bars and hotels.

“It is a sort of tribal ritual for the industry that can only happen in person,” says Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher of HarperCollins.

“It’s a bit like what happens when you’re buying a book. There are people who think you can do all your shopping online, but if you go to a bookstore, there’s a physical experience of things you might not see. With the convention, it’s also serendipitous, a meeting of ‘X’ with ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ that can’t happen with the Internet.”

But BookExpo will also be a demonstration of how “X” and “Y” can meet online, and then link to “Z.” For the first time, MySpace.com will attend the convention, hosting a panel on networking and serving as a supporting BookExpo sponsor. The industry has increasingly turned to the Internet social site, which features reading groups, author postings and its own list of the most popular titles, ranked by the number of “blog links.”

“I think MySpace and You Tube and all the blogs are really the coming thing now,” says David Shanks, chief executive of Penguin Group (USA), which has been using MySpace to promote “Requiem for an Assassin,” a thriller by Barry Eisler.

“He’s got 12,000 friends on his author profile. We’re spending a little money on advertising as well on the site, figuring young males are going to enjoy this type of book. If you have a profile on MySpace, you have to put in your demographics, and they’ll target your ads directly to those people.”

Also debuting at BookExpo will be Shelfari.com, which enables book lovers to share opinions and recommendations. Even convention organizers are using the Internet as a meeting ground. The BookExpo Web site, www.bookexpoamerica.com, is offering podcasts, blogs and a MySpace like feature called “The Story Project,” for which attendees are invited to “share your experiences from past expos and hear about other people’s experiences.”

In the physical world, the hottest ticket will be for a man born well before the digital age, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose memoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” comes out in the fall. The 81-year-old Greenspan will address an industry that could drive any economist into retirement, with its erratic profit margins, costly distribution system and aversion to market research.

“With Greenspan, you can just imagine this frown falling on his face at our business model,” Burnham says with a laugh.

Sales have been flat in 2007 and the number of independent bookstores continues to shrink, from 1,660 last spring to 1,580 this year, according to the American Booksellers Assn.

Three BookExpo panels will focus on another troubling subject, newspaper reviews, in the wake of cutbacks at the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among others.