I have to say, this BEA felt very different, and not in a bad way. Yes, there was the vibe that the industry is in trouble — but I still maintain that it’s an exciting time of opportunity in book publishing and I think that Book Expo 2009 reflected that.

Here are my top 5 observations:

1) There was more talk about the state of the industry and less talk about the individual books.

2) There were more educational talks and panels going on throughout the day than I ever remember before. To me, that’s a good thing.

3) Way way way less galleys. In fact, HarperCollins gave out egalleys. I caught whispers that this was not a good thing. I disagree. I think that in this day and age of information overload, the spaghetti to the wall marketing is over. Better to make a real connection about a book and follow up later with a galley to someone who is generally interested in reading the book.

4) Less parties. Again, that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. And it’s not that I don’t love a good party as much as the next person — but as someone who organized those parties for many years, I can tell you that the time, energy and money that went into those parties hardly seems worth it.

5) While there are still plenty of lines being drawn in the sand (indie versus chain, bricks-and-mortar versus online, physical versus e-book), I heard a lot of dialogue framed as “we have a shared problem–how can we share in fixing it?”–a very good sign indeed.