A surprisingly large amount of attendees roamed the BEA halls and conference rooms today. One of the big hits of today's events was the Tina Brown moderated, "CEO Roundtable" which featured some of book publishing's top CEOs.

They discussed the future of book publishing, the fear's of DRM, how ebooks and ebook readers are effecting the publishing landscape despite its less than 5% market share. They also shared how their focus is split 50/50 between not only on maintaining the existing business operations but on what is happening in the near future digitally.

Also, popular amongst BEA patrons was the panel discussion entitled, "Giving it Away: When Free Ebooks Makes Sense" which featured panelists from Harlequin and Wiley. It was an insightful presentation on strategies the two companies have found to effectively promote their fiction and non-fiction titles and which techniques lead directly to book sales.

The "Profitable Distribution Channels" discussion featuring Overdrive, Ingram, and other e-book distributors lead a packed house of publishers, booksellers and independent publishers eager to hear about the future in e-publishing.

"Red Hot Readers" panel discussion featuring the new Cool-ER ebook reading device as well as the Sony E-Book Reader wowed the audience.

GalleyCat will be on the prowl covering the BEA conference from dawn to dusk.

Jeff Rivera is the author of "Forever My Lady" and the founder of GumboWriters.com.