Thursday, May 31, 2007

BEA/HNS conference trip, day one

I'm writing from the official BEA librarians' hotel in NYC (Holiday Inn Midtown) and there are a lot of librarians here. The publishers are even marketing to us, here in the hotel - after check-in, the desk clerk gave me a bag of goodies with a hardcover kids' book about libraries, a galley of a Jewish women's fiction novel, and promo material from Holtzbrinck, who are hosting an author breakfast here (in this hotel) tomorrow morning.

I guess this is technically day two, rather than day one, of the trip because we flew from Indy last night at 8:30 (after a day of shopping, which included some nice purchases at the Half Price Books in Castleton) and got into Hartford just after 11pm. Then, after less than 12 hours at my parents' house, we took Amtrak to Penn Station via New Haven, which was a surprisingly pleasant ride.

Tomorrow morning I expect to meet up with a few HNS people at the Javits Center, after which the grabbing of galleys will commence. I do plan to talk to a number of publishers, too, about their fall historical fiction titles, and get catalogs so that I can request ARCs later on of what they don't have here.

5 comments:

  1. Have a great time. And I LOVE the HalfPrice Books in Castleton (it's only about a half hour from my house).

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  2. I wish I could be there with you... eating bagels and grabbing galleys! Give my love to Crown and all of their wonderful historicals about to be released this Fall ;]

    And have a wonderful time.

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  3. We also stopped at the Half Price Books on the west side of Indy, though I didn't have as much luck there.

    Bagels! I haven't had decent bagels since I left New England... the ones in Illinois are more like English muffins.

    I saw a few people from Crown at the RH booth but none whose name I recognized. Of course, just getting through the RH booth was quite the adventure :)

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  4. I haven't been to the one on the west side (actually didn't know there was one) but there is a pretty big one on the south side by the mall in Greenwood.

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  5. I've been to the one in Greenwood, but probably won't go back - it wasn't exactly near anywhere else we normally visit in Indy. Plus I figure there are always the other two. The one on the west side of Indy's also on 82nd/86th St (I forget which it is at that point) and in the same plaza that's got the Russia House restaurant. It's not as well-trafficked as Castleton, and I tend to have better luck there.

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