A newly released report from Book Industry Study Group claims that book sales increased 3.2% in 2006, to $35.69 billion. The Association of American Publishers reported last month that book sales fell 0.3% in 2006.

2,000 exhibits. 1,200 publishers. 500 authors. An endless sea of books. For those involved in the publishing industry, or for those who simply love to read, BookExpo America resembles a modern-day Utopia. Or so one would think.

This year’s BEA took place over the weekend in New York at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, and various literary blogs and publications posted their thoughts on the event this morning. Otto Penzler dons the many hats of writer, editor, publisher, and book store owner. And in an article he penned for The New York Sun about his BEA trip this year, Penzler indulges in a little nostalgia, recounting his first journey to the biggest book event in the United States, and the disappointing realizations that accompanied his visit 30 years ago.

Even in the 1970s, the enormity of BEA was palpable. Penzler describes his initial entrance into the event, a hall littered with thousands of publications, and the thrilling feeling that he had “died and gone to heaven.” But even as a self-proclaimed book aficionado, the bliss of stumbling upon his personal utopia was short-lived.

In his harried fall from grace, Penzler explains, “Then it struck me. I was there as a publisher with maybe a dozen titles on my list. How in the world would anybody notice my books and authors? The Mysterious Press, the company I founded in 1975, was a drop of water in the Pacific. No, it was a grain of sand in the Sahara. It was less than nothing because it wanted to be something.”

Although the author/publisher/book seller’s first encounter with BEA was a humbling one, he continued to make his love of books a way of life, and now runs an imprint at Harcourt Publishing that produces crime fiction. When speaking of the authors he represents, Penzler admits, “I desperately want them to have success, but I recognize the folly of that sad little wish…James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, and Nora Roberts will sell 100 million books this year, leaving a few table scraps for everyone else to chase after like starving hyenas after the lions have had their fill.”

Wondering if Penzler’s gloomy outlook is an unfortunate side effect of being a small fish in an increasingly gigantic pond? I’m sorry to say that similar to the actual BEA event, the press following the annual conference has reserved a lot of their copy for big (or at least recognizable) names. See New York Magazine’s “Book Expo Sightings,” an article on First Daughter Jenna Bush’s upcoming release, and USA Today’s recap of the weekend’s events.

Despite his pessimistic (and somewhat accurate) depiction of this year’s event, and of BEA in past years, Penzler confesses that worst part of the 2007 convention was that “when it ended, I kind of missed it. And looked forward to next year’s event.”

Seems that even the small fish can’t resist an endless sea of books.

Last week I linked to a New York Times article on the difficulty of knowing which books become best sellers and which books become dust-covered duds, and compared the book industry’s challenge to that of the movie industry’s. Kim has a great post today on last week’s verdict in the case that pitted movie production company Crusader against Clive Cussler, author of best-selling book “Sahara.” Sahara the movie turned out to be a disastrous failure at the box office, where it made only $68 million domestically. While $68 million is a big pile of money, the movie reportedly cost about a quarter-billion dollars to produce and promote.

Dickens, Tolstoy, Austen, Descartes. We aren’t accustomed to seeing these names in our inboxes. But one innovative website that officially launched this month wants to change all that.

Hoping to cash in on an area of publishing that hasn’t yet been explored, www.dailylit.com offers to send its users installments of over 400 classic titles ranging from adventure novels to the The Communist Manifesto. The site breaks the books down into convenient segments that are designed to be read in just a few minutes, and sends these segments directly to your email account or any handheld device of your choice (i.e. your Blackberry, Sidekick, Treo, etc.).

The theory behind www.dailylit.com is that users can read something more substantial than spam on their way into work and during breaks throughout the day. The site explains that: “if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don’t find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read.”

The site has enjoyed some early success, with 50,000 people already registering to receive over 75,000 titles. My guess is that people are intrigued with the idea of reading books again, especially in the midst of a busy schedule. But how will someone fare after realizing that the book they signed up for has over 500 parts, translating into over a year of reading one installment per day? (Watch out for Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo; it has 581.)

Although the idea sounds promising, it may be a stretch to assume that masses of people will voluntarily choose to read classic novels like Crime and Punishment and A Tale of Two Cities in their downtime. Currently the site offers its services for free because all of the titles it holds are out of copyright. However, in hopes of expanding its membership and ensuring long-term success, DailyLit plans to begin offering newer titles within the next month or so.

So the real question is, are you willing to pay $5.00 for installments of the books you really want to read? And although the site can send several segments simultaneously, will you feel like contacting DailyLit every time you can fit more than 5 minutes of reading into your day?

I applaud the site’s creative efforts, seeing as reading books seems to be a lost art nowadays. But I also can’t say that their top 10 list of popular authors (including Herman Melville and James Joyce) really tickles my fancy. I’ll be waiting to see what new titles they unveil in the upcoming months, and will choose some books with fewer installments before diving into the classics.

Book sales in the United States fell by 0.3% in 2006 compared to 2005. Final net sales for 2006 was $24.2 billion according to The Association of American Publishers.

IT’S the way this business has run since 1640,” he says. That is when 1,700 copies of the Bay Psalm Book were published in the colonies. “It was a gamble, and they guessed right because it sold out of the print run. And ever since then, it has been a crap shoot,” Professor [Al] Greco [at Fordham University] said.

“This business” is of course the book industry, a huge but not particularly profitable industry whose producers - the publishers - go on little more than intution and rough sales figures to understand what books readers are clamoring for, as an article in the New York Times describes it.

It is of course somewhat similar to blockbuster movies. A studio can invest heavily in expensive sets and ground breaking special effects, and hire big name producers, directors, and actors, as well as spend lavishly on elaborate marketing campaigns, predicting exactly which movies are going to become hugely profitable or devastating busts remains elusive. Similarly, a publisher can the rights to a book believed tobe coveted and roll-out a grade-A marketing campaign, but at the end of the day it’s pretty much just guess work trying to figure out which book will become a bestseller and which one will collect dust in the clearance bin.

From a reader perspective, however, there’s no partuclar reason to wish for a more scientific approach to book publishing. The way to higher profits by increasing knowledge about customers is a road down predictability. There’s not much upside, to use a business term, for readers in that scenario. In fct, one could argue that the book industry’s poor profitability is a result of so much value being retained by readers rather than publishers. Since so many people dream of becoming writers, editors, or publishers, the low profitablity doesn’t pose much of threat to the availability of a wide range of books.

Business Week reports that German book publisher Bertelsmann is doing big business with its book clubs in Ukraine. Competitive pricing, a functioning postal system and a book-hugry market served by relatively few book stores have made Bertelsmann’s book clubs successful in the country that once was part of the Soviet Union.

Writes Business Week:

Optimism about the printed word is pretty rare these days. In fast-modernizing Ukraine, though, Bertelsmann is enjoying dot-com-like expansion for its book club, a category that’s a slow- or no-growth proposition in the U.S. and Western Europe. Family Leisure moved 12 million books last year—everything from cookbooks to local potboilers to Stephen King thrillers—while sales grew 55%, to $50 million. Today, Bertelsmann is Ukraine’s biggest bookseller, with 12% of the market. And the operation enjoys profit margins that are triple the 4% global average for similar Bertelsmann units, which include the Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild in the U.S.

Last week Switzerland’s government decided to let stand the Alpine country’s Competition Commission’s decision to scrap the so-called net book agreement that allowed book publishers and book stores to jointly set prices for books in the German-speaking parts of the multilingual country.

The Swiss book industry had challenged the commission’s ruling, arguing that the NBA allowed independent bookstores to remain competitive and also helped prop up the market for German-language books in the country. The Italian and French speaking parts of Switzerland have already ditched price fixing.