Thursday Blurb: BookExpo America and the Book Blogger Convention

Lest you think I have completely forgotten BookExpo America (aka BEA) and BookBloggerCon and been totally swept up by the American Library Annual Convention (squee!) … I haven’t. Most of this week has been consumed by organizing the volunteers for swim team and … the end of school.

My 8-year-old is telling everyone and anyone that she really doesn’t want school to end. I can promise you that there will be lots of real tears tonight, tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon.  This morning she flummoxed (love that word) two of our neighbors by telling them that she wanted school to go on all summer … one of them later stopped me to talk about how incredible and unique she is. Yep, that’s my girl!

Oh, but we were talking about BookExpo and Book Blogger Con. As I may have said before, this year I was there to help out at a client’s booth, so most of the nuts-and-bolts things about blogging and promotion I will post on the Mom’s Choice Awards blog. Here are the posts that are in progress …

• Seth Godin’s remarks about the future of publishing at the Publishing University lunch sponsored by the Independent Book Publisher’s Association (Thank you again Florrie Kichler and Dan Nathan!) Great stuff that is relevant to bloggers, too.
• Notes from Social Media Marketing Basics: Beyond the Hype, emceed by Marika Flatt, PR by the Book, with paneliests Dave Marx, PassPorter Travel Press and Tolly Moseley, PR by the Book. Fascinating stuff.
• Maureen Johnson and Ron Hogan‘s remarks at Book Blogger Con. Why over at Mom’s Choice … because I want to make sure their incredible perspectives are shared with as broad an audience as possible. They are THAT good. I promise to link them here.

One of the better things about BEA this year is that it was a little lighter on the wallet. I was VERY selective in the number of books I picked up and only came home with 3/4 of a box (still 30 pounds). Instead of picking up books I wrote down LOTS of titles because I’m sure I’ll see a lot of the same stuff in Washington, DC … where I can DRIVE the boxes home instead of paying for shipping.

I want to do a shout-out, though, to Lara Starr of Chronicle Books for taking the time to chat about the entire fall lineup. We met at 4 o’clock on Wednesday, and Lara had been at this all day, but she still had great enthusiasm for every book she shared … and I fell in love with a lot of them! Two favorites. First, I love books that make themselves stand out on a shelf, and Katie Williams’ The Space Between Trees does just that. Click on the image, but it doesn’t do the cover justice … that is a laser-cut tree. Just beautiful.

Just after Lara book-talked Prisoners in the Palace: A Novel of Intrigue and Romance About How Princess Victoria Became Queen with the Help of a Maid, a Newspaperman, and a Scoundrel, I was in line getting an autograph and who should I meet? Michaela MacColl, the author! We had been chatting about the children’s author breakfast and Sarah Ferguson. She mentioned that she wrote a book about Queen Victoria and that since she knew Sarah Duchess of York was a Victoria afficianado, she stood in line to get an autograph and also offered her one of the ARCs. Michaela was surprised when the Duchess said yes she’d love a copy … and then Sarah wanted to know if was autographed. When it wasn’t, she promptly asked Michaela to sign it. How cool is that? The cover on this one is pretty cool, too. It’s metallic.

My other shout goes to Ryan Milligan of Campfire Books (a division of Steerforth Press).  Campfire is taking classics (think The Invisible Man, Gulliver’s Travels) and other books with more formal language and turning them into graphic novels. What I particularly love is that they are using almost ALL of the original narrative and only changing the vocabulary to polish it for more modern times. I am really looking forward to seeing more of these and gauging their reaction with our readers.

Book Blogger Con … what can I say that hasn’t already been said? It was an incredible day and a perfect way to round out BEA. If you weren’t there this year, be sure to pencil pen it in for next year. Hopefully it won’t overlap with just walking the floor … I really like that it’s a day unto itself. I had hoped that maybe there would be a Linky-type post at the Book Blogger Con so I could send you to everyone’s thoughts in one place. There is a great wrap-up at Stiletto Storytime, complete with some ideas for next year: T-shirts, ways to meet everyone in the audience (speed dating?).

The enthusiasm was a great send-off for an incredible week. Having had such a wonderful time in New York and ending the week on such a high note has me all the more excited about my first ALA Annual Conference.  There is more to come on that, too.