Lost In Translation: The Spanish-language Puzzle

"I started at Random House 10 years ago and I said then that this would be a long-term project," Azula said. "It's not going to be 5 years or 10 years. It's going to take 20 to 25 years."

The BookExpo America, held at Manhattan's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, was a low-budget, low-celebrity convention, with fewer parties and fewer advanced copies of books than in the past, and a sense that the best way to meet expectations was to lower them.

Publishers speculated about BookExpo's future. So much business is now completed online and the number of independent booksellers, who have traditionally been the heart of the convention, has dropped by more than 100 to 1,401 core members in less than five years.

"A lot has changed, and this show will have to morph into what the industry needs," said David Shanks, the CEO of Penguin Group (USA).

With a fingers-crossed outlook that the worst was over for publishing sales, the industry offered a long lineup of potential hits for the fall, from Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," to U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy's memoir "True Compass" to Pat Conroy's "South of Broad." One of the Spanish-language market's most popular authors, Isabel Allende, has written "La Isla Bajo el Mar" ("The Island Below the Sea"), which will be available only in Spanish at first.