BEA must-do

Make room for one more awesome event during BEA!

Announcing:

THE TRIP TO GREENPOINT TO

VISIT WORD,

MEET BOOKAVORE,

AND HAVE A DONUT.

What? The title wasn’t clear enough for you? I think the purpose and content of this trip are obvious enough.

Where? Again, see title. 126 Franklin St, Brooklyn, NY 11222.

Why? Because there is only so much show floor you can walk before you get sick of ugly carpet and the feeling of your arms going slowly numb under the weight of four overloaded tote bags. Because you like donuts, or at least are curious about these donuts I talk about all the time. Because you have always secretly wondered if I do, in fact, really eat books for meals. Because all purchases at WORD are 10% off this weekend when you show your BEA badge. Because I have to work all day so I want to bring BEA to me!

When? Saturday, May 30, 11am-9pm.

Who? You! Me. Donuts. Cat pictures. Books.

How? Follow these insanely-detailed directions from Javitz to WORD (hey, I get lost all the time, don’t want that to happen to anyone else):

1. Walk east on W35th towards 10th Ave (those of you without a compass, this means walk out the front doors and in the direction of the construction. They’re still doing construction there, right?). At the corner of 35th and 8th, descend into the subway station.

2. Take the E train heading UPTOWN. Get off at 23rd St/Ely Ave (this is the stop after Lexington Ave/53rd St).

3. Walk through the station toward the G train. At some point it will stop being the 23rd/Ely station and start being the Court Square station, for reasons that have never been made clear to me. Get on the G heading to Smith and 9th St. Almost inevitably, wait for awhile. Wait a little longer. Keep waiting! This is good, you’re getting the real Brooklyn experience.

4. Take the G to Greenpoint Ave. When you get off the train and go through the turnstiles, don’t take the exit immediately to your right, take the one further back on the right.

5. Go up the stairs and immediately turn right. You’ll walk down Manhattan Avenue for a hot minute and then reach Milton St. Make a right on Milton. Walk down it. Then you’ll be at the corner of Franklin and Milton. More importantly, then you’ll be at WORD! Good on ya. If you get lost, you can call me at 718 383 0096.

So there you go. When you need a break from the craziness of BEA, come visit your friendly neighborhood Bookavore for a donut and a smile. And cat pictures.

ARCreader; or, ARE YOU LISTENING, SONY?

Quick post to link to advanced.reader’s post suggesting the potential for publishers to help pay for e-readers for booksellers, with the understanding that they would primarily be used for reading ARCs (and thus cutting down on the ARC mountain).  She calls it a modest proposal and I think it’s definitely something that should be considered.  In fact, in my case, I think it would lead to increased sales–books I really loved I would go out and buy, instead of just keeping the ARC.  Lots of pros and cons discussed in the post.

I will definitely second the shout-out to Sony at the end.  

Sony, if you’re listening?  Get a booth at BEA if you don’t already have one.  If you can’t, get a sidewalk permit and sit next to the falafel stands outside the Javitz Center.  Offer anyone with a badge $100 or $150 off an online purchase of a Sony Reader in the next two months.  You’ll never have a better opportunity to get in good graces with some of the most prolific readers in the country.  As a side bennie, all the indie booksellers attending have a vested interest in your reader becoming and staying more popular than the Kindle.  And we read A LOT.

You know you’re a bookseller when…

I wasn’t going to post this originally, but my new co-worker assures me that it is funny rather than sad.  I hope you agree.

You know you’re a bookseller when…the end date on your weight-loss plan is “BEA.”

BEA: A few final bits

I did get a picture from Debbi Michiko Florence but I am not posting it because I think I look horrendous. However, I will link to her awesome book, China: Over 40 Activities to Experience China–Past or Present. It is great!

Jay Asher, author of the fabulous Thirteen Reasons Why (which YA book group read in March, and then Jay spoke with us by IM, and then I promptly lost the entire conversation) posted about BEA on his blog, including the part where he and Jill and I had drinks. Which was cool, except for how a gin and tonic costs $10 dollars in LA.

Two more great BEA reports:

From Pub Rants, another sum-up of the graphic novel breakfast, hers much better than mine, as well as a great picture of the signing lines. She talks about an author describing them as “horse racing in reverse.” Personally, I’ve always seen them as cattle chutes.

And from Bookselling This Week, former bookseller and author of Swollen and Upstream Melissa Lion wrote the funniest BEA article I have read. I share her sentiment about the ABA bookseller lounge, which was definitely an oasis: “I arrived at BEA and felt very fancy because I got to bypass the lines for tickets and march right up to the ABA Booksellers Lounge, which will henceforth be known as the Chill Out Room because I secretly hope that by calling it that, next year it will be rechristened and indie booksellers will say things like, ‘Enough with these publicists and their new, hot books, I’m going to the Chill Out Room.'”

In an odd piece of news, I was told by a reader of this blog that co-op is actually his dream job. Booksellers are free to look as flabbergasted as I did when I heard this. I offered him a volunteer position at the store doing co-op–all the ARCs you can read!–but he already has a real job, unfortunately.

And in a final note to myself: never, NEVER schedule 2 off-site events for the week you get back from BEA. Don’t even schedule one.

BEA: Sunday (fin)

There is not much to say about Sunday except that I was completely exhausted.  (Still was, until today, when I slept through my alarm and was three hours late to work.  Ooooooops.)  Though I did see Debbi Michiko Florence, who I recognized from LJ.  Debbi, if you see this, send me the picture you took of us so that I can include it in this post!  Shipped 65 pounds of books home, and then wandered around LA for a bit before heading to the airport on one of the weirdest cab rides of my life.  That was Sunday!  And now I am home, and trying to incorporate many of the things I learned into what I’m already doing.  This week is full of off-sites, so it’ll have to start next week, I think.  But the store is psyched about IndieBound, and can’t wait for the Literary Liberation box, so that is great.  Will update in the next day or so with a LOOOOOOONG list of books that are patiently waiting to be blogged.  For now, I am diving back into the new Octavian Nothing book!

BEA: Saturday (comics–oops, sorry–graphic novel breakfast)

For once, papers were where I thought they were, allowing me to bring you these quotes in a timely fashion!

Art Speigelman:

“Roy Lichtenstein did no more for comics than Andy Warhol did for soup.”

“I learned to read while trying to figure out if Batman was good or bad, which is something that Frank Miller is still trying to figure out.”

“Picasso: the first cartoonist who could pass for a painter.”

Again, on this panel, for the third time in three days, I heard the phrase “comics are a gateway drug.”

Mike Mignola, on the difference between cartooning and Hollywood: “In Hollywood, you can spend a long time working on something and have absolutely nothing to show for it.”

Jeph Loeb talked about his first job for DC, where he was asked to write Challengers of the Unknown, and where he first worked with Tim Sale.  Still accustomed to the medium of film, he kept making Tim re-draw pages over and over to get the angles the way he wanted them.  On the first issue they did together, Tim drew a total of 72 pages, meaning that there are 64 unused pages of art floating out in the world somewhere.  Jeph also said that he thinks that comic movies are not going away–they are a new, solid genre of film.

In the question and answer session, Lucy of Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo, NY brought up a point that had been bugging me–there had been a fair bit of name-dropping of box stores and Amazon, but NO mention of independents (in my margin, I had scribbled, “looks like comics folk didn’t get the IndieBound memo yet”).  Which, as she pointed out, was disappointing, since she was carrying Raw since before the box stores decided it was popular enough to include in their stores.  Then Art Speigelman said, to applause, “There would have been no Raw magazine if it weren’t for independent bookstores.”  Thanks, Art!   Jeff Smith jumped in to apologize as well.

The only other note I can read on this paper is “I have never seen so many iPhones in one place.”  Which is true, I never have.  BEA was positively chockablock with iPhones.

BEA: Saturday (pictures)

Well, as you can tell from the last post, Saturday was just a blur. But here are some pictures to document that blur.

BEA: intermission

I will be posting an update about Saturday when I get home and have a way to get pictures on here, and have access to the notes I took.  It was a crazy day!  Short story: went to the graphic novel breakfast, walked around the floor and went to many booths, had a lunch meeting in the middle of a short food service worker strike, more floor, signings, more floor, signings, more floor, more floor, super swank Workman party, super loud PGW party, BEDTIME.  Today was much more laidback, thankfully.  Look for an update tomorrow.  For now, I am vegging in front of the TV until I leave for the airport in an hour or so.  Hehehehe, that’s right, a book conference has driven me to television.

BEA: Friday

My god, my shoulders are literally numb from lugging around tote bags full of books all day. Which I suppose is actually a pretty good problem to have, all things considered. It was a short day, or at least it felt like it. I’m feeling a little whiplashed.

Okay, I’m trying to think about my day chronologically, and I’ve already forgotten what I did in the morning. I stopped by the Bookazine booth to say hi, wandered the floor a little bit, and then finally met up with my friend Jill from Square Books (Junior). We went over to the ABA Lounge, which was a blessed oasis amidst the BEA chaos, where I got a cool pin from the ABFFE and looked some more at the IndieBound stuff (have you checked out that website yet? You should!) Then we wandered the graphic novel section, where I was excited to see a definite increase in children’s comics that look awesome.

Then it was time for lunch–ABA author luncheon! Lots of great BookSense pick authors from the last few years, as well as many of the nominees and winners of the BookSense Books of the Year. The author at my table was Lisa Tucker, of The Cure For Modern Life, a book that is in my TBR pile already. The speeches from the nominees and winners were great, but there were two definite highlights. First, Ray Bradbury was a guest of honor, and when he was introduced, he received an immediate and sustained standing ovation from everybody in the room. It was an honor just to be sitting two table away from him, seriously. And second, Khaled Hosseini, whose A Thousand Splendid Suns won BookSense Adult Fiction Book of the Year, gave a great little speech in which he said that he believes that there are many writers from Afghanistan who are better than he is, but who for various reasons have not had the opportunities he has, and until one of them wins this award, he will accept it for them as a proxy. (He also said he’d be especially pleased if the author was a woman.) Now, I have just totally mangled that, but rest assured, when he said it, it was lovely.

The afternoon was primarily devoted to waiting in lines for signed books, not the ABA membership meeting, I’m sorry to say–as I said to someone in the elevator, if I have to chose between a meeting and a signed book from Sherman Alexie, I’m going to pick Sherman Alexie every time. By the time I was done standing in line after line, I was drained, and we took the metro back to the hotel and here I sit.

But words are boring–don’t you want to see pictures of famous authors? Of course you do, especially because they are pretty much all very good-looking.

BEA: Thursday, part IndieBound

So!  The big secret!  Can now be told!

It was revealed at the Celebration of Bookselling last night, where many great books, booksellers, and bookstores were honored.  And at the end, the big reveal!  BookSense, which has had an amazing 10-year run and has been crucial to the revitalization of indie bookstores, is going away, and in its place is IndieBound.  Words cannot express how excited I am about this–I think it’s just what indies need right now, and if it’s half as cool as the stuff I saw yesterday morning, it’s going to be huge.  Go poke around the website and see what you can see–I’ll be posting more about this in the coming weeks when I am not trying to a million things every day at BEA!   The logo is great, the slogans are great, the T-shirts are great, and the providing of a community not just for indie booksellers, but for people who love them, is genius.  I am so psyched!