Notes of interest from BookExpo America

Notes of interest from BookExpo America

Notes from BookExpo America, which ended Sunday in New York:

— PROLIFIC PATTERSON: If you aren’t sure whether James Patterson has a new release coming, just assume he does. Patterson (helped by a few co-writers) has six books scheduled to come out between June and the end of the year, including two new novels in the Alex Cross series and a young adult work, “Witch & Wizard.”

— FROM PRINCE TO PETER YARROW: At the 2008 convention, the parties ran late and loud, none later or louder than Prince’s poolside concert at his mansion in the hills of Los Angeles. On Friday night, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary hosted guests in his Upper West Side loft in New York. Guests were served chicken piccata and garlic bread as Yarrow led joyous sing-alongs of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “This Land is Your Land,” followed by pal Neil Sedaka, who crooned “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” By 8:30, the show was over and most of the guests had left.

— FIRST-TIMERS: For every local editor or publisher who didn’t show up at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center where BookExpo was held, there was a grateful out-of-towner like Muqdad Nouri, a supplier of educational books, and the rare Iraqi to attend BookExpo in recent memory. The 39-year-old Baghdad resident tried to get to BookExpo last year, but his visa wasn’t approved in time.

“We are making progress in our country, but slowly,” he told a sales official at the Guilford Press. “It was very hard for me to be here.”

— FAST READERS: There are instant books and then there’s “Book: The Sequel,” commissioned by the Perseus Books Group. The books are organized and published within 48 hours, with finished copies produced and distributed at BookExpo America. Readers contributed such opening lines to the imagined sequels of classics: “Call me, Ishmael!” for “Moby Dick’s Guide to Dating at Sea.”