BookExpo America announced this morning that the headline acts for this year’s annual benefit concert will be Jon Bon Jovi and Amy Grant, both of whom happen to have autobiographical books coming out this fall from Flying Dolphin Press, a division of Doubleday Broadway. Tickets for the Town Hall conncert are $25, with the proceeds going to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the reading campaign of the Association of American Publishers.
But it’s the other half of the announcement on BEA director Lance Fensterman‘s blog that will have industry observers in a tizzy: Starbucks Entertainment prez Ken Lombard is coming and will speak during a Friday panel. “This is an exciting addition to the program as Starbucks is clearly becoming not just a coffee company but a culture vendor as well,” Fensterman notes. “It will be interesting to hear from Lombard where he plans to steer Starbucks literary ambitons.”