Book Expo America: Part 1

And after walking through a crowd of people (there was also a graduation there on a different floor), I finally picked up my badge!

It’s kind of crazy that I, 16 year old writer, went to Book Expo America as a “Publishing Personnel: Blogger”!

Remind me to send my friend who made this all possible a bouquet or something equally fancy! Unfortunately, they were out of town, so I went with another friend of ours who is a costume designer and has published 2 books on women’s fashion and is hard at work on one for men’s fashion. He also did my Halloween costume of Taylor Swift’s Love Story Dress, but that’s another story. His name is Wade Laboissonniere, if anyone wants to look him up.

After leaving school early at 9:50, I arrived at the Javitz Center around 10:40 (NYC traffic, what can you do?).

My friend and I had a little time before our 11am seminar called “Perspectives in Publishing” with Guy Kawasaki (a self-publishing genius with a great sense of humor), so we ran up to the 4th Floor to see some of Literary Agents I wanted to meet (little did I know that I needed an appointment. Oh, well. But I did wind up giving Donald Maas my business card and getting his, so it’s all good.)

Now, you’re going to be mad, but I didn’t take any pictures of Guy Kawasaki. I forgot! And I didn’t want to be rude while he was speaking (I was also taking diligent notes, so that was another reason why I couldn’t take photos–I’ll share the main points of the presentation in my next #BEA13 post). But he gave out free copies of his book APE (Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur) and I got a signed copy!

After that, my friend and I had lots of time to kill, so we spent 2 hours walking around the Exhibition Floor. I got so many cool books and book swag from some publishers (Harlequin, HarperCollins, Scholastic, and Spencer Hill Press) and met Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo at the CreateSpace booth!