Book Con 2015

I was so excited to go to Book Con this year.  It was my (early) birthday present from my mom and we had a BLAST.

We went to both Saturday and Sunday.  We consider Saturday our trial run since we had no idea what we were doing.  All the preparation I was doing on the official book con app wasn’t really helping.  A lot of people were confused but since this was Book Con’s second year, it was warranted. Sunday we knew where everything was and it went a lot smoother.  Now we’ll be prepared for future years.

I enjoyed making friends with the people around me in lines.  It was so fun to talk to other books lovers.  I loved getting book recommendations and hearing about others’ experiences at Book Con. The entire environment was a bit crazy and waiting in lines kinda sucked.  But from living at Disney, I’m really used to lines & waiting, though, it doesn’t mean I like it.

Litographs had a booth set up and was putting temporary tattoos on people for their third tattoo chain.  Each tattoo is one line from a story. It was so exciting waiting to see which line I got!  This tattoo chain was for Cinderella, or The Lost Slipper.  I got a line both days because the first one came off in the shower! I really liked the line, “the most beautiful ever was seen with mortal eyes;” I would totally actually get that tattooed on my body if I felt like I could commit to it.

Books I got signed:

• Royal Wedding – Meg Cabot (bought there)
• Twilight (Mediator #6) – Meg Cabot (brought from home)
• The Wrath & the Dawn – Renee Ahdieh (brought from home)
• Afterworlds and Uglies – Scott Westerfeld (Brought both from home)
• Let’s Get Lost – Adi Alsaid (free!)
• Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories- A.J. Palacio (free!)
• Captivated by You – Sylvia Day (free!)
• Mint Juleps and Justice – Nancy Naigle (free!)
• Melt – Selene Castrovilla (free!)

Authors I missed out on: 

• Rainbow Rowell
• Maureen Johnson
• Jodi Picoult & Samantha Van Leer
• Judy Blume

Books I’m Really Looking Forward to Reading: 

• Lois Lane: Fallout – Gwenda Bond
• My Life with the Walter Boys- Ali Novak
• Finding Audrey -Sophie Kinsella (ARC)
• Illuminae – Annie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (ARC)
• The Bourbon Kings – J.R. Ward (ARC)
• Sorcerer to the Crown – Zen Cho (ARC)
• Another Day – David Levithan (ARC)
• The Little Paris Bookshop – Nina George (ARC)
• Golden Compass graphic novel (ARC)

My mom and I walked away happy.  What more could we have wanted? Sure, we missed some authors, we didn’t get to the panels we wanted to see, mostly because of our own schedule problems. It started pouring when we wanted to leave on Sunday.  I was running to the car during a massive thunderstorm trying to carry the various tote bags of books.  We were soaked by the time we left the city but we were happy.  It took us over an hour to leave NYC due to traffic.  Still happy.  We woke up sore but I’m still happy about our weekend.

Tips for Future Years: 

• Bring a carry-on roller suitcase and check it in at bag check. Periodically go and put things in it to save your back/shoulders. By all means, this does not mean you have to fill the carry-on bag but damn, books are HEAVY.  Unless you’re only planning on only ever carrying about 4 books at a time, you need a place to put them.
• Only bring books from home if you have to (only because again, BOOKS ARE HEAVY). Try holding off buying new releases if author is going to be there and just buy them at book con at the end of day one, if possible- lines for bookstore are INSANE.
• Prioritize! Authors you want to meet will have signings/events at the same time.  Decide what’s important to you.
• Don’t pick up the random little things (or books) you don’t want or need.  It makes for very heavy bags at the end and realistically, you won’t end up reading some of the books that other people would love.
• Look at the schedules some booths have listed.  They tell you when they’re doing a book dump. Sourcebooks gave away a new free book at the top of every hour. Some were titles that were a little bit older and some were released last year.
• It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get to see a certain author. There will be other opportunities.  Complaining about it isn’t going to solve anything because this is still a learning process- Book Con was in its second year this year.  Let’s just hope they get more organized for future years.
• Have a game plan. Figure out which authors are a must and build in time to wait for an hour or more before their signing. Sitting on the floor waiting sucks, but at least you have free books to read while you wait!

I really want to go BEA and the bloggers conference. I think it would be awesome to experience. Maybe next year! But I know they’ll both be in Chicago so that would be a lot of money to spend, especially with the additional baggage of books!

Have you gone to BookCon or BEA (Book Expo America)? Do you want to go next year?