This year's BookExpo America, America's annual book fair, has caused much confusion by making two changes. The first is to switch the event from its traditional end of May place in the calendar to the end of April, and the second is to change the days of the week on which it has always been held. The move in the calendar is due to the change of city for the event. For many years BEA (formerly known as ABA), moved around the United States from say San Francisco to Washington DC, Anaheim to New York. With the growth of the event fewer cities could provide the size of exhibition space needed, or sufficient hotels and restaurants to accomodate all 20,000 plus who now attend. Furthermore, there were additional costs for the larger exhibitors to move their stands around the country. Hence the decision was taken to hold the event centrally in the United States on a permanent basis in Chicago, and long term arrangements were entered into. The first year, 1995, that the event was held there was unfortuante; the catering sytem was wholly insufficient (this comment we believe was a compliment) and the taxi and bus services gridlocked for hours. There were other problems the next year, and such was the outcry, coinciding with a recession, from those on either coast who thought that the event should travel to them on a cyclical basis, that notwithstanding Chicago being a fine, full service, major city, and the event having worked especially well last year, the decision was taken to switch elsewhere. This led on the one hand, we understand, to a cancellation charge, but on the other the preferred week of the year had already been taken up; lead-in times for such events run into years. Los Angeles then became the location for 1999; but it could only host the event at the end of April and beginning of May. This created new and different howls of anguish, this time from the publishers who had to prepare seasonal catalogues etc. earlier in the year than ever before (Greenhill had to send information for the second half of the year to Stackpole even before the catalogue for the first half was printed; sales meetings were locked in and could not be brought forwards to precede ABA as in the past. We guess the switch for the event from Saturday, Sunday and Monday, as always in the past, to Friday, Saturday and Sunday, is also a consequence of moving city. Quite a few people are understood to have made plane reservations, as they have for many years, to fly into Los Angeles on the Friday only to find themselves now locked into their flight reservations, and with all other seats for the previous day having been booked Changing the dates has also affected the Military Book Show, held for the last fifteen years on the day before the major event, on a Friday but now to be held on Thursday 29th April. As it is the fifteenth year Lionel Leventhal, who created the Military Book Show, will write a Tail Piece about it for the May Greenhill Military Book News.. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 90 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com