Meeting Darth Vader in San Francisco, having to watch nearly naked young ladies at a swimming pool over lunch in Las Vegas, and being chased by a rights person along an aisle in New York's Javits Convention Center, are some of the memories of twenty-five years of the ABA.
1975 was a traumatic time for the British economy, which impacted fiercely on the book trade which had been simultaneously struck by an Anti-Trust suit brought by America's Federal Justice Department against U.S. publishers who were buying and selling rights with British publishers. But something new and positive coincided with this struggle: the now famous, focal point of the international book trade - the ABA (American Booksellers Association Convention and Exhibition, retitled recently BookExpo America) moved to New York that year, and became both visible and accessible. I attended the event, and also wrote about it for The Bookseller.
From time immemorial the ABA had been held at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC, for American booksellers only, but for 1975 – its 75th anniversary – it moved to New York. The event was presented in two hotels in close proximity, the Hilton and the Americana on New York's Avenue of the Americas (known locally as 6th Avenue). The facilities of the hotels were really quite inadequate for book exhibits, and many of the stands were in remote and dark places within the buildings. This was in fact the last time the event was ever held in hotels; for good reason the ABA was held thereafter in exhibition halls, vast and ever vaster. A small number of British publishers, including me, took advantage of the event being in New York to visit it. We had found a window on the American book trade.
The trauma the British economy was facing at this time was inflation, and the special impact this had on the book trade - the effect of the different rates of inflation between Britain and America - was to place the cost of British books on the edge of impracticality over there, so eroding the major British export market. I reported in The Bookseller comments such as:
'British prices are becoming impossible', said Milton Gladstone of Arco. 'Last year we imported about 70 books, but this year it will be down to maybe 10 to 15 and some of these were negotiated some time ago. In some cases prices have doubled in a year. We are now offering to produce from film supplied.'
and added:
'British books are being priced out of the market here. Your inflation of 30 per cent is way beyond our's of about 4 per cent in book prices.'
Also, just to remind you of that difficult time, additional factors were to influence the swing of production, as I wrote in The Bookseller on 21st June 1975, including:
'the increased cost of shipping, dock troubles (such as those in London earlier this year), and improved local control of production resulting in fewer bottlenecks than have occurred in Britain in the last 18 months.'
The other and very significant problem was the 'double whammy' effect of the hideously high inflation not being discounted by a declining sterling. When sterling weakened against the dollar, at one extreme point to just over $2.50/£1, this created all sorts of additional problems (obtaining books by indirect, unofficial channels) and infringement of copyright.
In using the ABA as a window on the American book trade, it could be seen that the size and wealth of the American market, then as now, was staggering. One of the adages that I have used over the years is to say that if a wall were built around Great Britain and we were no longer able to export, especially to the United States, the next day the great majority of British publishers would be out of business.
Again, quoting from the article in The Bookseller: 'All may not be perfect in the United States but their positive approach to publishing and selling comes, as one British publisher visiting the convention said, "as a refreshing breeze after the current stagnation and gloom in Britain. At the 75th ABA convention the contrast between the book trade (and more) in Britain and in the United States – the changing in costs and markets – could well mark the point when an era of British publishing ended and from when a new one might be measured. If the world still revolves around Frankfurt for international rights, the largest and most vibrant book market is certainly the ABA convention." '
Following my report the Publishers Association was able to apply to the Board of Trade under a scheme whereby British companies exhibiting at an overseas fair received a subsidy. This led to a number of British publishers being able to exhibit for the first time ever at the ABA in the following year in Chicago, an arrangement which continues to this day. It was the next year, 1977, when the event was in San Francisco, that there was a major leap forward in terms of the number of visitors from outside the United States. San Francisco was the event, and place, that the international book trade had been waiting for (literally an opportunity to visit that charming and special city, on business expenses!). About thirty British publishers had visited when the ABA was in New York; two years later it grew to over one hundred plus visitors from elsewhere around the world. The number of exhibits also grew, from 350 to 450. It was at San Francisco that, as I wrote in The Bookseller, 'On the Ballantine stand there stood the seven-foot black-coated figure of Darth Vader, villain of the new S.F. novel Star Wars, just released and now a sensationally successful film.' The film was not to be released in Britain for some while, and I believe that this was the first ever reference to it in the British press.
The trend also began at that time for British publishers to set up distribution in the United States, and in my Bookseller article I interviewed these first pioneers.
Because the ABA is, as its name suggests, run by (until recently) and certainly for, the members of the American Booksellers Association, with all sorts of events and seminars linked to it, it has moved around the United States to facilitate ease of visiting by member booksellers in the main areas of the continent. I have kept a record of the event (every so often one wants to check back as to where one met somebody, or such comes up in conversation), and in my twenty five years it has moved around as follows:
- 1975 New York
1976 Chicago
1977 San Francicso
1978 Atlanta
1979 Los Angeles
1980 Atlanta
1981 Chicago
1982 Anaheim
1983 Dallas
1984 Washington
1985 San Franciso
1986 New Orleans
1987 Washington
1988 Anaheim
1989 Washington
1990 Las Vegas
1991 New York
1992 Anaheim
1993 Miami
1994 Los Angeles
1995 Chicago
1996 Chicago
1997 Chicago
1998 Chicago
1999 Los Angeles
2000 Chicago
Every year is memorable, usually for a different reason. The 1980 ABA in Atlanta was memorable because it brought me for the second time to Atlanta, and enabled me to visit the world famous Emery Medical Center. Twenty years ago videos were starting as a form of mass entertainment, and I believed that they would have a good part to play in the world of reference, information and education. I undertook a survey as to what sort of videos were available in the United States, because it would be much easier to launch a video line for Britain and Europe if one was working from available material, rather than having to undertake the filming and produce it. One area which seemed to me to offer significant potential was the medical field, and Emery had produced a very important series of tapes showing leading surgeons undertaking operations. My idea was to bring these over to Britain, and make them available on the British video tape system for British doctors. I trusted Emery's capabilities, but visited them to further the negotiations where a licence was concerned. I did so after lunch one day, and such was their pride as to how they had furthered the filming of operations that they took me into their private viewing cinema to show me the excellence of their filming, how every detail was shown, how they had managed intimate close-ups of the surgeon at work. This was just what I did not need after an excellent lunch. Somehow I managed to stick it out, but was not rewarded because when 'Leventhal Medical Video' undertook test marketing and a viewing of sample video tapes at the British Medical Association, there was minimal response.
The 1984 ABA in Washington was noteworthy because I used the opportunity of being in America's capital city, and the centre of its defence establishment, to set up the Military Book Show which continues to be held on the set-up day for the ABA to this time. 1986 in New Orleans was memorable only for being one of the quietest ABAs, with fewer visitors than ever before. This is because New Orleans itself is not a significantly populated city, and there was no centre of such within a considerable distance. Hence ABA only appealed to those who would fly from either coast. It was hot and steamy, and a great pleasure to stroll around the French Quarter in the cool of the evening, in short sleeves, and listening to jazz. It seemed as though the exhibition hall emptied itself into the French Quarter, and one could stroll around in the evening meeting socially those folk whom one had been in conversation with during the daytime.
At the Las Vegas ABA in 1990 many publishers took afront at the book trade, representing culture, being on show in the world centre of gambling. It seemed that all who went swore off gambling, but surprisingly those who spoke about gambling were the ones who had won.
The 1991 ABA was valuable to me because, as I was walking along a gangway, somebody ran after me and called my name. It was the rights assistant from Henry Holt, whom I had met some years ago at another publisher. I confess that I had forgotten her, but she remembered me and had dashed along the gangway to show me that their company Henry Holt was publishing The Illustrated Napoleon by David Chandler. That chance encounter with a sprinting rights person led to Greenhill undertaking the publication of the book.
The moving of the event around the United States enabled my wife and I to tour quite a lot of the Continent. A pattern developed whereby I would work for four or five days in New York, and then would head off the weekend before the ABA in the direction of the event but tour on the way and finish up in the city where the ABA was to be held. For example in 1977 we flew from New York to Las Vegas, and saw the Grand Canyon, had a wonderful drive through Death Valley and up to the Yosemite, to arrive in San Francisco in time for the ABA. Afterwards we were able to drive down Route 1 to fly out of Los Angeles. These tours continued for a period of seven or eight years, another memorable one being when, in order to get to the ABA in Anaheim, we flew to Denver, toured Colorado, drove down through New Mexico to Santa Fe, and then flew the rest of the way. These tours enabled us to see more of the United States than some Americans have.
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