I Went to BEA 2012!

I know I promised to have a post about Book Expo America earlier in the week, but I had some family matters to take care of and I was waiting for my friend to send me more pictures since hubby sent the camera with the boys to Puerto Rico without giving me a chance to download the pictures first :(

I have a few words to describe my first BEA experience: overwhelming, fascinating, crazy, crowded, and amazing.  As you know, I only attended on Tuesday and Wednesday (see my pre-BEA post here) and my friend and I drove there.  We left Maryland at 3:00 AM (yes you read it right!) and we got to the hotel in NYC a little after 7:00, after checking the baggage and the car, we took the shuttle to the Javits Center. 

I had done a lot of research beforehand and armed with an empty suitcase and our autographing schedules we register for the event and proceeded to wait in line for the exhibit hall to be open.  The place is HUGE and there is so much to see and to do that it’s quite overwhelming.  Even though I had a schedule done, the sad reality is that I could only be in one place at a time; therefore I missed many of the books that I wanted to get.  The craziest lines were for YA books (everyone commented on it) which didn’t made things easier.  The longest line I made was to get The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, which took about 1 ½ hours in the autographing area.  There is also plenty of ‘in booths’ autographing going on and that is part of the crowded factor; some publishers were better at controlling the lines than others. 

On Thursday morning we went to the Random House Power Reader Event, were Nate Berkus spoke as well as Charles Duhigg.  There other authors mingling about and many bloggers as well.  The breakfast was quite amazing and at the end they gave us a great goodie bag.

I was a little awed by all the bloggers (I saw Allison from Allison Can Read, Grace Fonseca from Books of Love , Hanna from The Irish Banana Review, and many more *waves hi!*)  We also say many authors and it was amazing to meet Julie Kagawa (she recognized Reading with ABC! *swoon*), Rachel Vincent (she’s gorgeous), Jonathan Maberry, and many more.

Next year I hope to take a week off from work and make this a vacation.  As I had limited time I couldn’t do any of the touristy stuff.  Now, I’ll leave you with some pictures.

The amazing Kady Cross

One of the walls at Random House

Jennifer Armentrout

The hotel room

The view from the window

Right across the street from the hotel

The goodies!