Today’s the first day of Book Expo America here in NYC, which, as you probably know, is the big trade show for the publishing industry. Along with publishers showing off their books, BEA is usually a time for a lot of state-of-the-industry talk, and indeed, there are a number of posts today about where we’re at and where we’re going.

From Publishing Trends, it seems like the hot topics this year are eBooks (natch) and self-publishing, with the various pros and cons debated as they’ve been ad nauseum for the past year.  From Publishing Perspectives,  we get the news that foreign publishers are going to sell eBooks here in the States, complicating further the territorial disputes that arose with the first wave of e-publishing. And then, we have this surprising piece of news from the American Booksellers Association: their membership of independent booksellers rose by 3.5%, or 55 stores, in the past year.

So on the one hand, we have eBooks and self-publishers taking over the world—and on the other, independent bookstores not just holding their own but increasing in number.

In other words–huh?

I’m heading over to the Javits Center tomorrow to check it out for myself, but if any readers have been over today, I’d love to hear impressions—especially if there are any galleys worth seeking out. Which, really, is the best feature of BEA anyway: in the end, it all does come back to the books.