Days Five and Six (Wednesday & Thursday)

Wednesday was the official opening of Book Expo America’s exhibitor hall.  Now, I have been to these types of shows before so I knew what to expect but have to admit that I was surprised at the long line waiting to get in the door.  Even more surprised that when the flood gates were opened people were running to certain publishers in some kind of marathon galley grab.

CRAAAAYYYY-ZY town I tell ya.  Hell, I don’t even run like that chasing celebrity crushes or rock stars (though ask me again if I ever run into Bono — I’d likely sprint for his sex-ay ass).

Let me back this bus up to say that even though I dutifully went through my BEA floor map and circled everywhere I wanted to visit I was a bit disconcerted when I walked into the hall.  So ultimately instead of trying to get my bearings I just went with the flow and visited booths as I walked up and down the aisle.  I hit up Candlewick and PeachTree Publishers first then made my way towards the center where the largest houses were.

This brought me face to face with my second foray into recognition of the genuine madness that the BEA show floor can become.  As I attempted to walk through the Disney/Hyperion booth I was faced with a giant sea of humanity.  HOLY salmon Batman!  We were packed in that booth, everyone trying to move this way and that, like a bunch of wriggling fish.  Oh how I wish I had the power to spring up and fly over the rest of the pack.  Sadly, I did not so had to push my way through with everyone else.  I couldn’t tell you what the hoards were grabbing for I just wanted to get out of there with my life.

I did make it to the Harper Collins, Hachette, Penguin, Random House and Simon and Schuster booths with only minor scuffs and scrapes.  Though, they too, were equally packed with rabid readers hoping to get a hold of the ARC du jour.  Thankfully no publisher disappointed in this regard.  There were books-a-plenty to be had.  Seriously, I’d heard about it but really, the generosity of publishers in how much they give to participants was quite astonishing.

After floating around the floor for awhile I made my way over to one of the strategically placed stages for my first panel opportunity.  I was fortunate enough to hang out with Amanda, Trisha, and Lenore to hear some great speakers wax poetic about one of my favorite genres — Dystopian literature.  I’m not even gonna try and recap the awesomeness because Lenore rocked the house with pages of notes and will do it all much better justice than any attempt I could make. Once she drops a post on her blog you best believe I’ll be pointing you all to it!

I could list off all the awesome publisher’s booths I visited after that panel (Sourcebooks, Egmont, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Bloomsbury, Harlequin) over the course of the rest of the day but  that would be name dropping.  Suffice it to say that all BEA participants cruised all of the booths several times and we all walked away loaded down with excellent contacts and piles and piles of books.

After a long day on the show floor Wednesday it was great to take some social time and head over to The Algonquin Hotel where Harper Collins threw a fabulous bash for book bloggers.  Seriously y’all they were so super generous the whole week long.  Really fantastic people that I so enjoyed spending time with.

They weren’t the only awesome people I met either, imagine a room filled with fabulous book bloggers.  Dude, it was chock full of awesomeness.  I could go down the path of name dropping (I finally met Alea! Hung out with Gail again, met the absolutely fabulous Book Smugglers) but really it would be an embarrassment of riches to even gloat about all the really fabulous people I got to spend time with.

Thursday on the show floor bought a repeat of Wednesday, though I admit to being a bit more tired and as such only really did a half day.  I snuck back to the hotel and hung out for a little while knowing that later in the afternoon I’d be working the door for the Book Blogger Convention Reception.

What a reception it was too!  The organizers of the BBC were super excited as all our hard work started to pay off with a very well attended event.  In the lower levels of the Javits we packed a room solid with fabulous industry peeps (book bloggers, publishers, publicity reps, authors, we even had a cute puppy named Lucy) for a couple of hours of schmoozing.  I don’t want to speak for all the organizers but I felt good seeing everyone making connections and having great conversation.  It was a fabulous way to kick off the BBC.

Of course, Thursday evening ended with us working into the wee hours preparing for the big event the next day.  But BBC recaps are for another day!

Well the news has definitely been spread!  Book Bloggers took NYC by storm last week, participating in Book Expo America and The Book Blogger Convention.  I’m pleased to say, based on comments made to me, that both appeared to be a rousing success.

I know I said I’d try to update my blog throughout the week, but yea, as you can see that didn’t quite happen.  I had all these grandiose ideas that I’d have a couple of hours here and there to throw up a quick post.  HA! Looking back on it now I see how laughable that idea really was.  So as a result here is a brief synopsis of the first half of my week:

Days One and Two (Saturday & Sunday)
As my BEA kickoff post shows, I did indeed arrive in NYC on Saturday and got all checked in.  Trish arrived not too terribly long after me and we enjoyed a quick dinner in the hotel restaurant before turning in for the night.  Sunday, however, was another story.  We drug our patoots out of bed and, along with Natasha ( who arrived early that morning after taking the red eye in from Utah) went to a greasy spoon for breakfast.

Sunday also found Trish and I filling up BBC swag bags with more great items provided to us by wonderful contributors.  Man, it was truly a sight to see when we sprawled all the bags out around the lounge of The Renaissance Hotel.

**  I need to sidetrack a second to give big shouts out to their staff.  I can’t begin to tell you how amazing everyone was — from the front desk (who gave us an awesome break on our room rate) to the bell staff (who drug up each and every one of the 250 bags then drug them back down and put them into my car for storage) we were cared for extraordinarily well.**

Once we got what was on site stuffed into the bags Trish took off for some fun bookstore time and I took to relaxing in the hotel room with miss Amy for a bit before our evening festivities commenced.  Speaking of which, the later hours of the evening brought with it fun and frivolity as a whole big group of us hung out and watched the series finale of LOST.

It was a sad affair to see some of my favorite characters leave us but I was glad to have experienced it with great friends!

Days Three and Four (Monday & Tuesday)
Monday found us traipsing across New York participating in some really awesome publishing house tours of Random House, Harper Collins and Scholastic.  I’m not going to do much writing about it here as it deserves a post of its own.  Watch out for my thoughts on those experiences later in the week.  Sadly, after all day on my feet I wasn’t able to get to the Teen Author Carnival as planned.  I was extremely bummed as I was really looking forward to it.  Thankfully I was able to follow it a bit on Twitter — looks like it was an excellent event!

Tuesday was the start of Book Expo America.  Given the fact that BEA is home to some really great educational sessions (not just free books y’all!) Rebecca and I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass without getting out there and seeing what the publishing industry is doing with social media.  We attended two great sessions (which we’ll likely recap on Social MediU at some point) — “Brining Authors to the Social Media Party” and “Building Online Reader Communities”.  Excellent presenters, excellent information, and overall a great experience meeting some awesome Twitter friends who are equally invested in the impact and influence social media has in the publishing industry.

Rounding out Tuesday Jenn and I went to Books of Wonder to see some awesome authors from the Class of 2K10.  Each of the lovely ladies in attendance spoke a bit about their book, did a small reading and then fielded questions from the crowd.

I have to say, Books of Wonder does a great job putting together these events.  It’s not the largest of stores but the staff is super helpful and things work really efficiently.  Seriously, a kidlit/YA centric bookstore?  How can I possibly find anything wrong with that.  Oh, and I totally didn’t, they made a pretty penny off of me. LOL

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So that is the first of what will be many BEA/BBC centric posts this week.  In fact, some days you may actually see more than one post pop up in ye olde feed reader!  I plan to spotlight some of the awesome books I picked up, speak to a few issues (line jumping anyone?) I noticed during the main event, and just general chatter.

I’ll end this first recap by encouraging anyone who wasn’t able to go to BEA/BBC this year to start saving your pennies.  It is *totally* worth the trip to meet awesome new people, learn great new information and of course find some fabulous new books to read.

Have you heard of the 48-Hour Book Challenge?

I have! Not only have I heard about it but I’m totally excited to be participating in it. It will be just what I need after a full week of bookish and blogging activity while at Book Expo America and Book Blogger Convention the week before. It will be perfect for getting some of the books I have for review read before digging into the pile I night be bringing home with me from New York.

Here are the details:

I’ll likely be doing most of my reading from the couch, much like I did with the Readathon. I know I won’t pull off a full 48 but I so enjoy the challenge of putting in as much time and getting as many pages/chapters/books read as possible over a set period of time.

You all should think about joining me too!

The Book Blogger Convention has never felt more close than it does today!  I want to extend a big welcome to those of you who may be visiting my small corner of the blogosphere as a result of the wonderful piece Shelf Awareness published.  I’m thankful to Shannon Mckenna- Schmidt for taking the time to speak with Trish, myself and a variety of others about our event it certainly makes us proud and excited.  Elated really!

In an attempt to leech off of their graciousness I’m going to put my publicity hat on today and pimp out the Book Blogger Convention.  This may turn into more of a list of links than anything else, but rest assured full details can be found on the Book Blogger Convention website.

I’ll start by saying that anyone and everyone is welcome to join us we’d love to have you!  Blogger, author, publisher, publicity representative, anyone in the industry, heck anyone at all, can attend.  We’ve got an amazing agenda scheduled with fabulous speakers and presenters.  It will be an educational and fun day.

Registration for the whole shabang is $115 and that gets you access to the Thursday reception and Friday convention.  The deadline for registration is May 20th so please do head on over to the BBC registration form and fill it out if you’re interested in attending.

If, you are unable to join us for the whole day Friday but still want to participate at some level we encourage you to register for attendance at just the Thursday evening reception.  For $20 you get to mix and mingle with a great variety of people. To register to attend this event only please hop on over to the Reception Attendance form.

We’re excited to be hosting the reception, having a charity raffle, and are giving away some awesome swag.  If you’re interested in contributing to any (or all) of those opportunities please feel free to read more about it in our BBC blog post or contact us at bookbloggercon@gmail.com.

These are all the highlights, but by no means is it all of the information related to the Book Blogger Convention, I encourage you to visit our blog to learn more.

Once again a giant thank you for visiting me and tremendous gratitude to Shelf Awareness for providing us wonderful press coverage.  We’re most appreciative!

We hope to see you in May!

Today wraps up my week of Meg Cabot awesomeness.  I hope that you all have enjoyed hearing about her Airhead series.  Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t also let you all know about the culmination of the fun.

It’s a party y’all!

Wanna know even more?

There are going to be some awesome prizes.  Participants using the #MegCabot hashtag during the party will be entered to win a limited edition Runaway t-shirt featuring the winning design voted for by fans at Trashionista. Participants should also watch for questions from @booksmugglers in order to qualify to win such fabulous prizes as an iPad, $50 Sephora gift card or $25 Visa gift card.

But wait, there are some standard operating procedures:

1.  Use the #MegCabot hastag to participate
2.  You can use the official party tweetgrid
3.  No spoilers!  Not all partygoers will have read all of the novels yet.
4.  Party starts at 8:30 EST prompt — watch your time zones

So who’s with me?  Gonna party with Meg Cabot?