NEW YORK — This year’s BookExpo America will be a story of networking, the old way and the new.Starting today, thousands of authors, publishers, booksellers and librarians will gather at the Jacob Javits Convention Center to discuss what’s coming out and what’s going on. They will catch up as they always have, face to face, at exhibitors’ booths and in conference rooms, in restaurants, bars and hotels.

“It is a sort of tribal ritual for the industry that can only happen in person,” says Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher of HarperCollins.

“It’s a bit like what happens when you’re buying a book. There are people who think you can do all your shopping online, but if you go to a bookstore, there’s a physical experience of things you might not see. With the convention, it’s also serendipitous, a meeting of ‘X’ with `Y’ and ‘Z’ that can’t happen with the Internet.”

But BookExpo will also be a demonstration of how “X” and “Y” can meet online, and then link to “Z.” For the first time, MySpace.com will attend the convention, hosting a panel on networking and serving as a supporting BEA sponsor. The industry has increasingly turned to the Internet social site, which features reading groups, author postings and its own list of the most popular titles, ranked by the number of “blog links.”

“I think MySpace and YouTube and all the blogs are really the coming thing now,” says David Shanks, CEO of Penguin Group (USA), which has been using MySpace to promote “Requiem for an Assassin,” a thriller by Barry Eisler.

“He’s got 12,000 friends on his author profile. We’re spending a little money on advertising as well on the site, figuring young males are going to enjoy this type of book. If you have a profile on MySpace, you have to put in your demographics, and they’ll target your ads directly to those people.”

Also debuting at BookExpo will be Shelfari.com, which allows book lovers to share opinions and recommendations. Even convention organisers are using the Internet as a meeting ground. The BookExpo Web site, http://www.bookexpoamerica.com, is offering podcasts, blogs and a MySpace like feature called “The Story Project,” for which attendees are invited to “share your experiences from past expos and hear about other people’s experiences.”

In the physical world, the hottest ticket will be for a man born well before the digital age, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, whose memoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” comes out in the fall. The 81-year-old Greenspan will address an industry that could drive any economist into retirement, with its erratic profit margins, costly distribution system and aversion to market research.

“With Greenspan, you can just imagine this frown falling on his face at our business model,” Burnham says with a laugh.

Sales have been flat in 2007 and the number of independent bookstores continues to shrink, from 1,660 last spring to 1,580 this year, according to the American Booksellers Association. Three BEA panels will focus on another troubling subject, newspaper reviews, in the wake of cutbacks at the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution among others. Scheduled participants include authors Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose and Christopher Hitchens, author of the best seller “God Is Not Great.”

“I like it when a city is covered in book stalls and little tents, advertising different publishers and so forth,” Hitchens says. “And you get a sense for a time that culture is in the saddle, and you can stop paying attention to that stuff about the death of the book.”

Name a publishing topic and someone at BEA will be talking about it: Google, book clubs, books and the environment, books in China, inventory management. All-day sessions will be held on black publishing, debut fiction and the library market.

Publishers will talk up such fall titles as Philip Roth’s “Exit Ghost” and Joseph Ellis’ “American Creations” and likely have early copies on hand. But the most anticipated release of the year, “Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows,” will be known only by its buzz; those stopping by the Scholastic, Inc., booth will have to settle for Potter bags.

“Deathly Hallows,” the final book in J.K. Rowling’s series, comes out July 21. Regina Barnes, buyer for the Toadstool Bookshop in Milford, New Hampshire, doesn’t expect an early look at the new Potter, but she has seen a few pages of another upcoming children’s title, “The Alphabet From A to Y With Bonus Letter Z,” by Steve Martin and illustrator Roz Chast.

“I absolutely loved it,” she says. “It is extremely clever, and very different, and I think it’s appropriate for young children, older children and up until adults.”

In a non-election year, the biggest political news will likely be the imminent release of two Hillary Clinton books, one of them by former Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, and a Saturday luncheon address by former undercover CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. The disclosure of her identity by the Bush Administration led to a highly publicised investigation and the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the top aide to Vice President Cheney.

Stephen Colbert, the herald of “truthiness,” should be BookExpo’s most memorable breakfast speaker since his Comedy Central colleague, Jon Stewart, knocked ‘em flat in 2004. Other convention guests include novelists Ian McEwan and Khaled Hosseini, actor Alan Alda, musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Amy Grant, and semi-musicians the Rock Bottom Remainders, the fantasy band of such would-be rockers as Amy Tan, Stephen King, Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry.

In the tradition of Warren Zevon and Bruce Springsteen, former Byrd Roger McGuinn has stepped in as the resident “real” musician, even planning to join in on such Byrds hits as “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Eight Miles High.”

McGuinn, 64, says it was a novel by Remainder Carl Hiassen that got him in touch with the Remainders. Hiassen’s “Sick Puppy,” published in 2000, includes a puppy named “McGuinn,” in honor of a “great guitar player.” McGuinn, who learned about the reference from two friends who each sent him copies of the book, sought out Hiassen at a reading in Florida.

“It’s always great to play with the Remainders. Stephen is hilarious, and so is Ridley. It’s just a fun bunch of people,” he says, adding that The Byrds may have been better musicians, but were less funny.

Old rock stars will be in the news at BookExpo, with Eric Clapton, former Eagle Don Felder and Rolling Stone Ron Wood among those telling their stories this fall, while fellow Stone Keith Richards is reportedly shopping his. McGuinn said he was “very interested” in the Clapton book, but acknowledged he didn’t expect to browse at the Javits center.

“I’ll probably just hang out with the Remainders,” he says.