“Of the making of books, there is no end,” Ecclesiastes said. This weekend BookExpo America, sponsored by the American Booksellers Association and the Association of American Publishers, filled the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. More than 5,000 publishers’ display booths offered a bibliophilic bonanza of the near future in books. Three days of panels and seminars took place on the lower level of the Javits Center, while agents negotiated publishing rights on the main floor at the International Rights Center. In the evenings, parties took place around the city.

THURSDAY, JUNE 2

OH, CANADA! The no. 1 export market for American books is Canada, said Les Petriw, managing director of the National Book Network, at a panel called “The Canadian Book Market: What Every Publisher Should Know.”

Mr. Petriw opened with a joke. A Canadian, an American, and a third get into a terrible car accident, end up in the same emergency room, and die. But the American corpse wakes up, to the astonishment of the doctor. He describes dying, a shining light, and St. Peter telling him and the Canadian that they were too young to die. St. Peter told them they could return for $100. “I quickly pulled out my wallet,” the American said. What about the Canadian, the doctor asked? “The last I saw,” the American said, “he wanted the government to pay.”

Mr. Petriw described the current hot sellers in Canada. He then discussed “cold books” that don’t sell well in Canada. He gave the example of a food book called “Born to Grill: An American Celebration.” One Canadian company said they would have bought 400 or 500 if the subtitle had been different. Also, he said, American publishers should avoid titles like “Glorious Color,” because “we’re sensitive to things like that” (the Canadian spelling is “colour”).

BOOK BUZZ At an editor’s forum, Hyperion’s editor in chief, Will Schwalbe, asked how many people had received advance reading copies of J.R. Moehringer’s “The Tender Bar: A Memoir” about a boy abandoned by his father and raised at a Long Island bar. He then engaged in a bit of unorthodox marketing. Mr. Schwalbe asked for a show of hands of how many of those had read the advanced copies. “Turn to the people around you,” he said, “and tell them how much you loved it. You would be doing God’s work,” he said, to audience laughter.

Scribner editor in chief Nan Graham described a forthcoming book by Carole Radziwill, who was married to John F. Kennedy Jr.’s first cousin. The audience was amused to hear Ms. Graham describe advice Ms. Radziwill once offered to JFK Jr.’s wife, Carolyn Bessette, to stop the paparazzi from hounding her outside her house. Just “wear the same thing,” and they will get sick of the same photos and go away. This advice, Ms. Graham reported to audience laughter, didn’t work.

Various industry events held in conjunction with BEA dotted the city. The 17th annual Lambda Literary Awards were held Thursday night at the CUNY Graduate Center. Science-fiction author Samuel Delany and Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook were among those receiving special awards. At the event, David Sedaris won in the humor category for “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” (Little, Brown). Mr. Sedaris was unable to attend, but a representative approached the podium to offer thanks. “Who are you?” one audience member shouted. He didn’t say.

SMALL PRESS How many librarians have a plastic action figure made of them? Seattle-based librarian and author Nancy Pearl does. She was feted at the Small Press Center in Midtown. The action figure, complete with “shushing action,” comes with a small stack of books marked “Rilke,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and “Law of Torts.” Ms. Pearl said the deluxe version of the action figure would have hair that was less gray.

PARTY PARADE Bookforum’s party in Chelsea competed with the German Book Office’s celebration across town. The latter had a raffle for a free trip to Frankfurt, but the winner had to be present at the drawing. Some hopped from Bookforum to the German party.

FRIDAY, JUNE 3

FIRST THINGS At a panel called “Mind Body Spirit Publishing: What the Editors Are Buying Today,” the West Coast was represented by moderator Simon Warwick-Smith, who was born in Australia and works in Sonoma, Calif., and panelist Gideon Weil of HarperSan-Francisco. Spotted in the audience was Princeton University Press religion and anthropology editor Fred Appel.

The audience was amused when one panelist said: “We are the original publishing category – the first books were spiritual ones. So we’ve got an edge” on the rest of the publishing world.

SPEAKING OF SAN FRANCISCO

Gotham Book Mart, located in Midtown, has been hosting authors for many years. They welcomed Dame Edith and Sir Osbert Sitwell in 1948. Friday night guests “beat” a path to the store to greet New Directions author Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The line was out the door.

WEST COMES EAST Rita Cleary of Locust Valley, N.Y., is president of the Western Writers of America, an organization of approximately 600 published authors who write about frontier and Western life. At the booth along with Ms. Cleary, who wrote “Charbonneau’s Gold” (Leisure Books), was William Hill of Centereach, N.Y., who wrote “The Lewis & Clark Trail: Yesterday and Today” (Caxton Press). Said Mr. Hill’s wife, Jan, “Our address is in the East, but our hearts are in the West.”

SATURDAY, JUNE 4

BLUE-STATE BOOKS Most publishers list a president or director. Vox Pop/DKMC, a Brooklyn-based publisher and store, lists Sander Hicks as “Chief Instigator.” Upper East Sider and publisher Irv Naiburg was headed Saturday evening to a reception at their booth … Seven Stories Press founder Daniel Simon was spotted talking with his author Ward Sutton, the Village Voice cartoonist who has a collection of satirical political cartoons coming out in July called “Sutton Impact.”

RED-STATE READING Fly-fishing mystery author John Galligan (“The Blood Knot”) was seen discussing politics with Garrett Brown, acquiring editor of the Cato Institute. Mr. Brown told the Sun that “Cowboy Capitalism” has been one of the big sellers on their list. Mr. Brown brought 600 copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to give out. He said nine out of 10 people take it when offered one … an aisle away was Regnery publisher Marji Ross, who said that Rep. Curt Weldon’s book “Countdown to Terror,” to be published June 13, was a title expected to draw a lot of attention.

AWARD ANSWERS Approximately 195,000 books are published in America each year. What is a reader to do? National Book Critics Circle President Rebecca Miller said awards give people guidance in making choices. She said awards can also help books sustain a longer shelf life: All the books that have won the NBCC’s fiction prize since the organization began in 1974 are still in print.

National Book Foundation executive director Harold Augenbraum said he did not think that the amount of awards was problematic, as long as awards went to many different books and not the same ones.

The audience laughed when Alfred A. Knopf’s vice president of publicity, Nicholas Latimer, described his dilemma when Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann’s book on Willem de Kooning won the NBCC award, the Pulitzer, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He said he put stickers for the first two on de Kooning’s shoulders and may simply “line list” them on the Knopf paperback.

WAISTLINE WATCHING Author Anya von Bremzen served pistachio and saffron shortbread at the Workman Publishing booth. Not far away, Daisy Martinez handed out Chilean sandwich cookies over in the Hyperion area. Steve Hindy and Tom Potter signed their book “Beer School: Battling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery” at the Wiley booth as Brooklyn lager flowed generously. Drinks, snacks, and food were in abundance in the late afternoon at numerous booths.

SUNDAY, JUNE 5

Attendance was lighter on the convention floor, offering a chance to reflect on a few memorable outfits at BookExpo. One author was dressed as an angel (touting a spiritual book), another as a fingerprint (promoting a “Thumbs Up Johnnie” adventure). But the most unusually attired may have been Stan Posner and Sandra Phillips-Posner, dressed as a pair of red, white, and blue I-95 signs. They were promoting their book “Drive I-95” (Travelsmart), a guidebook to each exit along I-95 from Massachusetts to Georgia. Asked what response they got to their outfits, Ms. Phillips-Posner, who studied art at Queens College, said two people at the Expo said, “You took a wrong turn somewhere.”

MOST PROMINENT PROMO ITEM A Mini Cooper convertible may be small, but it was arguably the largest object of attention among those at the Perseus Group booth area. There was a contest to win a one-year lease on one.

MOST NARROWLY FOCUSED BOOTH Booth 1851 was for the book “The Truth About Caffeine”(SCR Books), in which the author Marina Kushner “spills the beans” on caffeine.

MOST UNUSUAL BOOK “The Pop-Up Book of Phobias” (Melcher Media) by Gary Greenberg and illustrated by Balvis Rubess. Spiders, heights, and even a dentist’s chair pop up as the reader turns the pages.