Book Expo America 2011 (BEA)

For the past three years I have been fortunate enough to be a part of Book Expo America, the premier publishing industry event in North America. But this year was especially busy. In addition to launching my novel Snitch there I joined a panel experts to weigh in on the topic "African American Books in an eBook World."

Other panelists were Kelli Martin, Senior Editor, Kimani/Harlequin; Eric Hamilton, Executive Director of The Web Academy; Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Director of Content & Digital Product Development, Library Journals, LLC; Troy Johnson, Founder/Webmaster, African American Literature Book Club and C. Jeffrey Wright, CEO, Urban Ministries, Inc. The panel was moderated by publicist and founder of The African American Children's Book Project, Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati.

In addition to discussing the digital reading revolution and how African Americans fit into that universe, we discussed cutting edge ways to market eBooks in an ever evolving marketplace.

BookExpo America delivers the largest gathering of booksellers, librarians, retailers, and industry professionals anywhere in the country. BEA is the leading rights fair in North and South America for agents, scouts, sub-rights as well as movie/television production and development personnel. It is the media event for publishing with more than 2,000 credentialed media personnel.