Ah BEA- where the book nerds of the universe gather once a year to geek out over their Tom Hiddleston- some obscure author only 3 people have ever heard of. BEA is Book Expo America, an annual industry event where booksellers, book buyers (including librarians) publishers and industry insiders meet for 3 days to sell, pitch their hot titles or new authors, gather to meet authors, get never before read books or Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), learn about self publishing, whats hot in YA and other genres and much more! BEA is followed by the one-day fan event (feels much more like a typcial CON) Book Con.
Nikki and I attended for two reasons: Our agency Method Agency does Social Media for Authors and we went to meet with some people, stay up on trends and find out what is new in the book world. Plus we wanted to find out EVERYTHING book-related so that we could come back here to TN and bring all the goods to you. And of course, we wanted to enjoy free cocktails with some awesome book-people.
We had an incredible time, got to preview some upcoming books (WHO HAS THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE 2017 VERONICA ROTH? WE DO), never ONCE saw this supposedly “lake” that Chicago has (really foggy/cold/rainy/all-in-all terrible weather!) and got to see tons of book nerd friends!
Here are our BEA Highlights
Nikki met her hero Marcia Clark
Some people dork out when they see the pink head of Laini Taylor bobbing through a wave of convention-goers. Nikki fangirls over the prosecutor from the OJ Simpson case. Marcia has a new book called Blood Defense (under pen name Samantha Brinkman) and we got signed copies that I’m sure we’ll be telling you more about soon!
There’s never a sexy book cover photo opp we’d pass by
We saw these bad boys at the Harlequin booth (of course)
And much to our delight, there’s a new cookbook called Weslo’s Home-o-Erotic Cookbook. A quick peek inside told us all we need to know about How to Bake the perfect souffle AND the exact size (probably) of that guy on page 27’s dick.
They graciously begged us to let us pose with Eduardo:
That may or may not be his name. It doesn’t matter. We weren’t there to take names…
We got an ARC of Kami Garcia’s latest novel
The cover didn’t remind us of anything we have ever seen before……. #egbtt
Cocktails upon Cocktails upon Cocktails
It won’t surprise you to know that one of our favorite parts of any con, book, comic or adult entertainment* are the parties. Thursday night we hit two AWESOME events.
The first was thrown by Abbeville Press celebrating two of their authors and books: Oysters: A Celebration in the Raw by Jeremy Sewall and Distilled Knowledge by Brian Hoefling.
The party theme was, you guessed it, Oysters and cocktails:
This picture features no Oysters because we ate all of the things all of the night. It was DELICIOUS. The party was held at Shaw’s Crab House and we highly recommend their oysters and raw sushi.
*haven’t been. yet
Upcoming Release: Wonder Woman by Sam Maggs
We got a signed early release of Sam Maggs (Author of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy) new book from Quirk Books out this October Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History and attended a killer party Thursday night in her honor, as well as Grady Hendrix (author of Horrorstor- a mystery that takes place in a faux Ikea! We reviewed it here) and a few other Quirk authors.
Quirk ALWAYS throws a killer event and this year’s party in a swanky speakeasy was no different!
Can’t wait for: Amy Schumer’s book
“The Girl with the lower back tattoo” is going to be incredible.
And even if it’s not, we have fake lower back tattoos from Simon & Schuster to wear for fun!
What’s new in Young Adult
TONS. Including books by these killer YA authors on this panel (moderated by Veronica Roth herself!) who then took this picture, holding a crocheted turtle (some inside joke they thought was hilarious):
From Left to Right: Kendare Blake, Melissa de la Cruz, Alyson Noël, Lauren Oliver, Veronica Roth
Nikki and I got a chance to spend some time with Kendare Blake (author of Anna Dressed in Blood and the new book due out this Fall Three Dark Crowns) AND SHE IS SO LOVELY.
Fake Donald Drumpf
I love the books! You’re gonna be YUGE! Making #BEA16 great again with faux @realdonalddrumpf
A photo posted by Method Agency (@methodagency) on
The most amazing Donald Drumpf impersonator was there to help promote the new book by one of the founding editors of The Onion “Drumpf’s America: The Complete Losers Guide.“
We fell in LOVE with Obvious State
Just stop what you are doing and peruse the products on their Instagram and check out their store.
BOOK TATTOOS!
Litographs– the awesome literary-inspired product company has tattoos featuring lines from famous books and have put together a “tattoo chain” that we submitted pictures for. Here is mine which features a line from Alice in Wonderland “I don’t want you to hire me — and I don’t care for jam” which is the grounds for friendship-divorce if I ever actually ink that on myself. But I looked pretty cool:
Day 4: Book Con
Book Con featured some exclusive snapchat filters, of course:
Congrats on your new books nick sparks!
We fell in love with Jenny Han
We met the on-so-adorable-and-amazing Jenny Han on the day AFTER she announced a THIRD in her “To all the Boys I’ve Loved before” Lara Jean book series! Jenny was on a killer panel about Diversity in books with Leigh Bargudo, Francisco X. Alarcón, Sherman Alexie, Gene Luen Yang and Anna-Marie McLemore:
Stephenie Meyer wasn’t at bookcon but…
She’s always with us. #EBGTT
Booktubers galore!
We hung out with some of our favorite book tubers (including JessetheReader, Xtinemay, Katytastic + readbyzoe and maureenkeavy and seen here Natasha (Tashopolis) and Sasha (A Book Utopia) who had a signing line to rival most authors!
And that’s just a SAMPLE of our week! All-in-all, bookcon and BEA were two great events: we got so many new books, met some incredible authors we admire and found new publishers we can’t wait to tell you more about (BOOKS, DIY, HOMEOPATHIC STUFF). Books are such a passion of ours personally, we love working with authors professionally and the book corner of TN is such a fun part of our community here. It was great to be in a place full of book nerds as obsessed as we are!
Until next time BEA!
