NEW YORK (AP) — There were books advocating the public role of Christianity and the soundness of the free market, an attack on the liberal “elite” by Laura Ingraham and a memoir by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president. The conservative works on display at BookExpo America, which ended on Sunday, could be seen as a tribute to the diversity of right-wing publishing and the movement in general. But, publishers say, they’re really a sign of an industry, and of a political movement, wondering what to do next. “The conservative market is not unified, there are many fractures,” says Marji Ross, president and publisher of Regnery Publishing, which for 60 years has been releasing conservative works, including Ingraham’s upcoming “Power to the People”.“It’s a reflection of the culture, and a reflection of the Republican party, which is being torn in different directions,” added Steve Ross (no relation to Marji Ross), head of the Crown Publishing Group, which includes the conservative imprint, Crown Forum, where authors include Ann Coulter. Brand name writers like Coulter, who has a book out this fall, continue to top best seller lists. But publishers say they are struggling to find books with broad themes to engage and energise right-wing readers like the anti-Clinton books of the 1990s or the 2005 best seller, Newt Gingrich’s “Winning the Future”.

“The submissions are more narrowly focused, on a single issue,” said Marji Ross, who added that sales in 2006 were the softest since the start of the Bush administration.

“Aside from extremely established pundits, like Ann Coulter, I don’t see a lot of conservative books catching on. The real issue-oriented books are a lot less prevalent,” said Adrian Zackheim, who heads the conservative Sentinel imprint at Penguin Group (USA).

Authors of the right are unsure who to attack, and who to defend. There are no clear front-runners, Democratic or Republican, for the 2008 election. Democrats took over Congress after the 2006 election, but publishers agree they have been in power too briefly, and have accomplished too little, to anger the right.

Meanwhile, publishers say they rarely see proposals for books that praise Bush. His presidency is perceived as essentially over, and increasingly unpopular, even among those who have supported him.

“The ongoing war in Iraq and his positions on immigration and education has made it harder to get anyone to write books that rally behind him,” Marji Ross said.

For liberals, as noted by BookExpo speaker Paul Krugman, the current trend is re-energising the left, moving beyond the rants of Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men” and Krugman’s 2003 best seller, “The Great Unraveling”. Krugman, promoting the fall release “The Conscience of a Liberal”, called for a “New” New Deal and expressed relief over President Bush’s declining approval ratings.

Of course, a little anger doesn’t hurt, especially among the dependably Democratic publishing crowd. Another BookExpo guest, former CIA official Valerie Plame, inspired a Saturday luncheon audience with her vow to publish a planned memoir, “Fair Game”, the story of her CIA career and the 2003 outing that led to the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide, I. Lewis Libby.

Last Thursday, Plame and publisher Simon & Schuster announced that they were suing the CIA, accusing the government of illegally refusing to let her write about the specific dates she worked for the agency. On Saturday, Plame spoke up for the publishers’ favourite cause: free speech. “I am entitled to write my story,” declared Plame, who before the lunch revealed a gift for self-censorship on the convention floor, a firm, but charming source of “no comment” when asked about her book or even her thoughts on BookExpo America.

No releases attained sudden fame at BookExpo, although booksellers and publishers praised such fall titles as Richard Russo’s novel, “Bridge of Sighs”, and anticipated Alan Greenspan’s memoir, “The Age of Turbulence”. There was little discussion about “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, coming out on July 21, but such books seem beyond mere conversation, like trying to “buzz” the moon and the stars. The aisles were packed at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, and the books ever plentiful. New releases topped 290,000 in 2006, according to statisticians R.R. Bowker, which, thanks to revised methodology, added a bountiful 100,000 titles to its previous estimates.