eruthros

1. The woman at the post office informed me that my packages, in total, weighed somewhere around 25 pounds. (This made me feel better, as they'd seemed really heavy going down the hill.)

2. This is the second set of packages I've mailed off of BEA books for people.

3. Several people that we gave books to did not require the US Postal Service's help -- e.g. our friend B. here in Philadelphia and strange_selkie and darthrami when they came up to visit.

4. There are still a few things that need to be given away to people who live in the area or to family members.

5. We gave away a lot of books, but in total they made up less than a quarter of the amount we kept.

6. We also got tchotchkes and candy and posters and postcards and catalogues &etc.

Conclusion: When I was swearing in the heat as I pushed a cart filled with books from 52nd and 2nd Ave to 34th and 8th Ave in NYC, and thinking that it must've weighed at least a hundred pounds... I was, if anything, underestimating.

Conclusion (2): When we go to the BEA in D.C., I'm getting a ride back to Philadelphia.

Post-BEA, we have extra copies of a bunch of books, even after counting the ones we're already giving to friends. Here's a list of everything we have extra copies of; if you want one (or two or three), claim it!

In ARC or pre-press (U.S.) editions:

Chicks with Sticks (It's a Purl Thing). Elizabeth Lenhard. September 2005. ( YA knitting-friendship novel )

The Highest Tide. Jim Lynch. September 2005. ( Giant Squid! )

The Amphora Project. William Kotzwinkle. October 2005. ( Kotzwinkle's first book in ten years. Features space pirates. And timid botanists. )

The People's Act of Love. James Meek. January 2006. ( He's compared to Kafka. So. )

Cotton. Christopher Wilson. October 2005. ( This book is written by a consulting semiotician. A CONSULTING SEMIOTICIAN. )

The Shroud of the Thwacker. Chris Elliott. October 2005. ( Parodies historical crime/conspiracy drama )

All the Fishes come Home to Roost. Rachel Manija Brown. October 2005. ( Memoir of a girl growing up on an ashram )

Every Sunday. Peter Pezzelli. September, 2005. ( Pezzelli was a BookSense pick for Home to Italy )

Pardonable Lies: A Maisie Dobbs Novel. Jacqueline Winspear. September 2005. ( Third Maisie Dobbs historical mystery novel )

The Sisters Mortland. Sally Beauman. January 2006. ( The main character here is also named Maisie. What gives? )

Widow of the South. Robert Hicks. September 2005. ( OMG marketing push of DOOOOM )

Chet Gecko's Detective Handbook (and Cookbook). Bruce Hale. September 2005. ( I have no idea why there's an ARC for this )

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. Mary Roach. October 2005. ( I have almost no interest in the subject, but Mary Roach is writing about it, so it'll be interesting. )

That's it for the pre-press!

Guess what's up? The BEA's list of author autographing, that's what! In three parts, just to make it difficult -- for Traditional, Sunday, and In-Booth.

*peruses all sixty-plus pages happily* *reports findings more or less in order*

Barbara Boxer! Signing a novel "of political intrigue." Have you ever noticed that political novels are never about anything other than "intrigue?" Isn't there another noun we could use?

*peruses more* *giggles* Donald L. Boisvert, Sanctity of Male Desire, A Gay Reading of Saints "Explores the connection between devotion to saints and homo erotic desire." (m_shell: Do you want that just because it has the word homoerotic in it? Me: Well, yes.)

Hey, a picture-book biography of Albert Einstein! Get your kids hooked on physics early. Also, many opportunities to draw a man with really poofy hair.

Bruce Coville's signing again ... I swear he hasn't been there in ten years. (I had him sign Aliens Ate My Homework lo these many years ago.)

Laurent De Brunhoff is signing a Babar book. *wants* (Laurent is the de Brunhoff child that Jean and Cecile originally told the stories to. His dad Jean wrote and illustrated the first six Babar books, and Laurent took over when his dad died incredibly young -- 35 or something.)

Ooooh! Ooooh! Barbara Ehrenreich is signing her new book! Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream "Bestselling author of Nickel & Dimed undercover again to do for middle class what she did for the working poor." In pre-press, yet. Doesn't come out until September. Wouldn't that make you feel special?

Neil Gaiman's gonna be signing an Anansi Boys chapbook, and also Mirror Mask. (Want to make your admission back three times over? Sell this on Ebay.)

Daniel Handler, signing the Twelfth Book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, which seems to be as yet untitled -- it's not out until October, so it really may have no title to date. (I take it back -- sell this on Ebay. He only signs about once a year.)

Gregory Maguire signing the sequel to Wicked -- Son of a Witch. (Ha, ha.) Taking advantage of the musicals's popularity, I'd wager.

*snerk* "Fiction about Hank Williams' gay costume designer turned vampire." Called The Haunted Hillbilly. (As m_shell said, "the things that get published.") Also on the subject of "the things that get published," we have Dorm Room Feng Shui. "Quick and innovative fixes designed to cure any student's troubles." (I wonder if they mention, say, studying?)

TAMORA PIERCE! Signing The Will of the Empress. I shall squee any moment now. *bounces* Alanna was my childhood hero. I still have all of her books, even the Daine ones that nobody seems to like. (Also, the book's not coming out until NOVEMBER.)

TERRY PRATCHETT! The Ps are clearly a good letter here, because PTerry is signing Thud!, which doesn't come out until October, and which features Commander Vimes again.

Kathy Reichs, who I will be amused to meet as she's a colleague of my (third) adviser -- she does forensic anth, and she writes forensic anth, which puts her far ahead of the Patricia Cornwells of the world.

Hmmm, Robert Sabuda's doing a pop-up about dinosaurs. Innnnteresting... (Robert Sabuda does those faaaabulously complicated pop-up books.)

Jon Scieszka's gonna be there. He wrote the Stinky Cheese Man and the True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Remember those?

And Maurice Sendak! Signing Bears. This is a kick-ass year for my childhood memories, obviously.

Oooh! Jonathan Stroud's signing the third book (Ptolemy's Gate) in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. We have the first one (The Amulet of Samarkand) signed from two years ago.

Gary Trudeau (Doonsebury) and Ruben Bolling (Tom the Dancing Bug) and John McPherson (Close to Home). And other cartoonists that I don't much like, like Cathy Guisewite, who's there EVERY year.

Wynona Judd "reveals her heartbreaks and her triumphs in this no-holds-barred memoir." Which I'm sure she wrote herself. Yeeesh. Spike Lee also has a memoir, but I bet he can actually write.

Heh. C.L. Lindsay, The College Student's Guide to the Law. "Get a grade changed, keep your stuff private, throw a "police-free" party, and more!" Oh, if I had only had that book, I wouldn't have got into any ... wait. Actually, I never did get into any trouble. Oh well.

This actually sounds quite interesting: Betsy Burton, The King's English: Adventures of an Independent Bookseller "The trials, triumphs and the complexities of staying afloat as an independent in the world of chains and superstores."

NANCY DREW GRAPHIC NOVELS? Oh, lord, the world is coming to an end.

Also: Orson Scott Card, signing something that seems to be more young-adulty than most of his books. Cornelia Funke, author of Inkheart, signing the sequel Inkspell. Kyle Baker and Frank Miller and Brad Meltzer and many other graphic novelists. Bill Griffiths signing a Zippy collection. Bob Gruen, who did a photo-book of Lennon in NYC. Many NYT bestsellers, few of whom I've heard of, which just goes to show. Carl Hiassen signing something published by Random House Children's Division - huh. George R.R. Martin signing excerpts of a book that's already out -- lame. (They call it "long-awaited," yet. No-one's still waiting, thanks.) A biography of Buster Keaton. Laura Numeroff's signing If You Give a Pig a Party from her endless series of If You Give an X a Y books. Joyce Carol Oates will be there. Also giggle-worthy, At Knit's End -- meditations for the yarn-obsessed. R.A. Salvatore, but it's a book that's already out. And Debbie Stoller's signing SnB Nation -- I expect long lines, man. Kevin J. Anderson, who's trying to out-Asimov Asimov, quantitatively speaking, is signing a Dune-based book. Tom Wolfe, writing about the university experience. Nick Hornby, who wrote About a Boy. Timothy Leary! Signing a new edition of Start Your Own Relgion -- now there's a blast from the past. Carl Reiner, doing a kids book about the 2000-year-old man.

You know you want to go, don't you? *tempts whole flist* And you can! It's in June! It's easy! All those books are FREE except for some standing in line after you pay the $70 to get in!

And it is once again time for me to perform my civic duty and pimp the American Booksellers Association convention (now BookExpo America or the BEA). It's in NYC at the Javits Center June 2 - 5, 2005. And when it's in NYC, it's big -- NYC is the biggest location they get, because Manhattan and SF are the Centers of Book Publishing. Just as a for example, last year it was in Chicago, and had an attendance of about 25,000 "industry professionals". (Total crowd is about 60,000.) Last time it was in NYC? It had an attendance of about 30,000 "professionals." Which means more booths, more exhibitors, more authors, more everything -- it's big in NY and big in LA and not so big in Chicago.

For those of you who missed my last pimpage, let me explain to you why the ABA/BEA rocks. My. World. My parents are in the publishing industry, so I've been going to these things since I was four or five. Really.

Here's the basic deal: 2000 exhibitors, mostly in publishing but some in sidelines (bookmarks and all that). Want to know how big it is? Well, here's the floor plan -- as of September. Usually more than 600 authors doing autographs -- last time I went, this included Neil Gaiman and Laurie King. And there are books everywhere and book-people everywhere.

The details: So this is in large part about promoting books to press and booksellers. And publishing folks do that by ... giving their books away.

They give books away signed. So you look through the list of the six hundred people autographing (usually available online around March) and pick the ones from whom you want a free book. And then they give it to you, signed to whoever you like. (Okay, brief waiting in line is involved.) And then they'll give you a second copy if you ask, and then they'll thank you for taking the time to read their book, and I'm not kidding.

And they also just plain-old-give-them-away. Without lines. You know, there are three or four or twelve stacks of their forthcoming releases in the booth, as and you stroll by you pick up a copy (or two or three) of each. Some of them are already in-press, but a lot of them are ARCs (advance reading copies, which we used to call bound galleys before non-initial phrases go too passe) -- which means they're both free and make you feel cutting-edge when you've read the books six months before everyone else. (There's nothing like walking into a bookstore and browsing the new releases and realizes that you've already at least skimmed every one of them.)

ARCs are the cheapest way to publicize, because you often have to produce them anyway for book reviews and final revisions. But there is Other Stuff Aplenty. Candy and pens and bags and pins and hats and funny little puzzles and posters and action-figures and erasers and inexplicable fingernail jems that don't seem to have a publisher's name printed on them so when you open your bag at home you can't work out what in heaven they're advertising. I mean, last time I came home with about ten canvas bags of varying styles, and I spent most of my time in the autographing area and not on the show floor. And I got a Harry Potter OotP release date hat, which generated a lot of conversation when I wore it around town.

I would tell you some of the notable giveaways for 2005, but people haven't really started thinking about them yet, so. One can assume the standard drawings-for-vacations. And when you get hungry, there's really no point going to the overpriced convention-hall cafes. For the College Student At Heart, the person who loves free food -- take a quick spin down the cookbook section of the floor, followed by a loop through the children's books area, which is fraught with candy. Because in the Cookbook Pavilion, publishers attempting to promote their cookbooks will import the authors and there will be death-by-chocolate cake and marinated chicken and asparagus spears. ( (And ) And of course exhibitors have to pay the teamsters to pack and remove anything left on the floor at the end of the show -- union rules say they're not allowed to do it themselves -- and they pay by the pound, so often they'll give things away on Sunday so's to not pay for packing and shipping. Really.

Plus there are Events, many of which you probably care more about if you're in the managerial wing of publishing -- mostly they're about, you know, How to Get Your Books Placed at Aisle Displays and How To Choose Chairs for Maximum Bookstore Success and stuff. Plus the standard How To Work the Frankfurt International Bookfair session, which they give every year. The BEA is about the size of UC Berkeley. Frankfurt International is... the size of San Francisco. (I exaggerate a little, but not much -- it's about 300,000 people. AND they're nicer to kidlets than is the ABA -- they offer interns a basically-free admission as long as your publishing company fills out a form. And for non-publishing students it's only four dollars a day for a total of twenty dollars. There is no student admission for the ABA -- even babes in arms need to pay for a badge. Although my family always bought just two and then played going-in-and-out-of-door-games. Anyway.) But also there's fun stuff -- publishing companies throwing on-the-floor parties for their anniversaries, the BookSense award ceremonies and author readings (which last year included Art Spiegelmen). And if I chat with folks from Consortium (a distributor -- Consortium Book Sales and Distribution; my dad's distributor back when he ran his publishing company) we can all go to the Consortium party, with free food and music and wine and did I mention lots and lots of free food?

And there'll be some Big Name Opening Speaker dude, who will be completely uninteresting -- last year's was Bill Clinton, who hadn't even finished his book at the time. And I remember once in LA it was Colin Powell. Ick. Also there are paid events, like author breakfasts, where everyone gets to sit and eat while people like Ursula LeGuin talk at you and answer many questions.

And best of all, lots and lots of book people. Sure, some of them are in it for the money, but lots of them are book people. These are people who read the bestsellers and the not-bestsellers and can gossip about J.M. Barrie and speculate about his endocrine disorders and can tell you all about their favorite childrens books and what they thought of C.S. Lewis and whether or not the BBC's latest adaption of whatever was appropriate and by the way did you know that Coffee House Press is doing coffe table books of the Wimsey books with illustrations by Robert Sasuma and isn't that a horrible idea? (I totally made that up, just in case you were worried.) If you ask someone about an author, they can say "well, his book won the PENN of course, but I've never really been able to get into it -- I feel like the characters are really overdrawn" or "oh, I love him, and speaking of him, have you ever read X?"

And consider the following not-made-up-but-averaged-statistic, 'cause I'm too lazy to look up the study for the exact numbers -- 60% of people never read a book after they graduate from high school. Not a one. Not even Harry Potter or Chicken Soup for the Soul. So then you get to spend time with all of these book people, people who read Chicken Soup for the Soul and people who read Tolstoy and people who read in Spanish and people who translate Neruda as a hobby and people who read Grisham and people who read Oxford Press books and people who collect dime novels and people who read E.E. Doc Smith and wish he'd come back into print and just a whole city's worth of people who read.

And for this, you pay probably about $75 for your three-day pass. Maybe around $60, if you know someone who works in a BEA-affiliated bookstore and will buy you your ticket (absolutely the way to go, since then you get a badge that says "bookseller," and everyone says "ooooh" and "ahhh" and gives you even more free things.) Or around $50 if you know someone in publishing who will buy you a pass. Or free if they're exhibiting and have left-over badges (they get some number free per size of booth). Or free if you write for a paper or can get an editor to write them a letter saying you're freelancing for them and will be writing an article on the event. Whee!

And we live in Philadelphia, and are the House of Futons (tm). So we figure y'all can come out here and sack out -- cheaper than a hotel in Manhattan, 'cause of the free. And then we can either train in ($30 round trip per person for three days) or rent a bigger car for the lot of us and drive in (probably cheaper). Claim your futon now.