NYC: Day 6

NYC: Day 6

With BEA over, I was exhausted and ready to sit and absorb some blogger knowledge. I woke up really early on Friday morning to haul my load of books to the post office near my hotel. Thank goodness for suitcases with wheels. It was a very strange sight for the post office crew to have three customers arrive at their doors at 7:30am with carts full of books to ship. We took over the entire post office to pack and label. Good thing it was early!

So for a total of $38.00 I sent out 3 big boxes of books. I can safely say now they are here with me. I was a little nervous waiting on my third box. It was the mother load box I call it, full of so many of my favorites that I picked up. I am so glad it did not get lost. The post office is the way to go. Shipping stuff out from BEA is obnoxiously expensive.

I will include a picture in tomorrow's post of all my books.

I grabbed a quick $400 latte (sarcasm, people) at the closest Starbucks to me and headed on downtown to the Convention. Breakfast and registration started early and the festivities started at 9:00.

The convention was located in the meeting rooms of the Jacob Javits Center, the same place BEA was at. I got my name tag, grabbed another goodie bag of books and headed on in.

The picture above was just a shot of bloggers mingling about in the common area outside the meeting room. I really didn't get that many great pictures of the space as a whole.

I wanted to include my picture of Jenny and Jennifer. If you don't know their blogs by now, shame on you! (j/k)

Aren't they adorable? So very nice and sweet people. I enjoyed talking and laughing with them. They are so smart and down to earth.

I sat with them at breakfast along with the COOLEST AUTHOR THAT I HAVE MET IN A LONG TIME. Why so many caps. you say? Well, the unique thing about the Blogger Convention is that is was not just us bloggers there. We had the opportunity to mingle with authors, publicists and publishers.

The author I met at breakfast was Sandra Brannan. She has a mystery book coming out on September 1 and it is called In the Belly of Jonah, a first in a series featuring Liv Bergen.

I received a copy from her that morning.

Let me just say, in my years of bookselling and doing author events, meeting authors can really make or break my "love" of them. I have had some situations where authors I've enjoyed have been none too pleasant and I have a really hard time supporting them after that. I know, it's silly. We all have off days but sometimes it does taint it a bit.

But Sandra Brannan was a hoot! She was smart, funny, delightful and so genuinely interested in the blogging community. Her book was raw and suspenseful. I liked her so much that I picked her book to read on the plane ride home and I really liked it! I will be featuring a review and maybe a Guest Post with her closer to the release date. Anything I can do to make this book and her successful.

Breakfast was a fun chance to meet others and chat. The convention started at 9:00 and after an introduction the afternoon was spent with panels of bloggers and publicists and publishers and authors. They discussed a range of topics; professionalism and ethics, writing content, social responsibility and relationships between authors and bloggers.

The panelists were thoughtful and honest and very informative. I took away a lot from this, as far as where I want my blog to go, how much I want to do and some tips to keep it going.

It felt like I was able to check out different blogs without physically having to go to them and scroll and read. There were so many different types of bloggers there talking about their styles that I really learned a lot. I have since went to many of them and started following them.

I did not feel overwhelmed by the info. I felt inspired and jazzed. I don't think I'm going to change much about my blog but I have some ideas for where my focus might go. Before this I tried to do some weekly and monthly features but "scheduled" posts have proven to be hard for me. There was a lot of talk on how to keep your blog fresh and I realized for me that, like my reading, I really work better being spontaneous. If I want to blog about Sweet Valley High, I will. So with that, I'm excited to be back and get to it and just have fun!

All in all, I had a really good time in my adventures in NYC. Great people, great books, great food, great shows, (some sore feet) and great memories. I look forward to doing this again next year and meeting more. The community itself now feels closer. Thanks to all of the organizers for making this happen.

"Don't fear the blogger" We are here to stay and have some fun!

My final NYC post will be tomorrow and it will include pictures of my books. Thanks so much for stopping by and reading about my adventures! I wish you all could have been there.

red headed book child