BEA Part 2 - The Book Signing

In the previous blog post, I discussed my journey to Book Expo America 2007 in New York City.

I'm sure the average BEA attendee was blown away by the cool new innovations on display, such as Google's Book Search and whatever fancy gadgets you could find in the great big Microsoft booth. But as far as I was concerned, they could have kept all that other stuff. I wanted books! And if the author was there, well that was just the icing on my chocolate cake.

There were author signings galore! And many of the authors there signed advanced copies of their books. I was completely bummed when I realized I'd missed Janet Evanovich signing Lean Mean Thirteen, but the picture I got of Tiki Barber signing one of his children's books make up for it.

Many of the authors signed in their publishers' booths. There were several of my fellow Dorchester authors, including Liz Maverick and Marianne Mancusi, signing in the Dorchester booth.

I, however, attended BEA under the Romance Writers of America umbrella. I'm grateful RWA allowed me to sign in their booth, but there were two problems I encountered. First, the RWA authors did not sign until Sunday. By that time even I was tired of BEA. I'm sure the magic had waned for a majority of the other attendees, as well. Secondly, RWA's booth was located alllllll the way on the other side of the Javitz Center. Pretty much in no man's land. I doubt the people who were really interested in romance novels even thought to travel to that corner of the center. Still, I managed to sign just around forty books during my half hour.

The funniest part of the morning was when a gentleman came up to the booth and started poking around. I asked him "Sir, would you like a novel?" He looks at Deliver Me and asks me what type of novel is it. Of course, the first thing I say is that it is a romance novel. To which he replies, "I don't read romance." The current president of RWA politely informed him that he was sniffing around the wrong booth if he didn't read romance. Yet, he didn't leave. It was the funniest thing!

Okay, if you're not laughing, it's probably because it was one of those you had to be there moments.

posted by Farrah Rochon @ 5:07 PM Comments: 4