Well, the thing we knew would come at last, has come at last: After a flood of major publishers such as Random House Canada and Penguin Canada pulled out, and an equal flood of smaller publishers (as per this earlier MobyLives report), Reed Exhibitions has cancelled BookExpo Canada and its recently concocted Toronto Book Fair. “The consensus among the major publishers was that BookExpo Canada had lost its relevance,” reports Peter Scowen in a story for the Globe & Mail. “It was originally designed to allow publishers to meet booksellers from across the country and sell their upcoming releases. But with the advent of Indigo/Chapters, which sells more than half the books in the country, paying Reed to attend an event to meet independent bookstore owners stopped being worth it.” Reed senior vp Greg Topalian explains to Jim Milliot in a Publishers Weekly report that “when you get to the point where your customers say you aren’t valuable any more it’s time to move on.” In the Globe & Mail report, Topalian says “moving on” means that Reed’s “focus on the publishing industry now centers on our event in New York and we look forward to serving the needs of our customers in North America most effectively with a singular event.”

Of course, large American publishers such as Macmillan imprints FSG, St. Martin’s, and Picador, have said they won’t be on the floor at that “event in New York” — the BookExpo America in May — and still more are rumored to be thinking of following suit. Is Reed about to go through in the States what it just went through in Canada?