Book ♥ Soulmates: Post-BEA Post 1: The Expo

As you all know, after four long years of sitting, waiting and wishing, we were finally able to attend Book Expo America in New York City. We want to share all our experiences with you so we’ve put together a series of posts, nothing too fancy, where we will tell you all about the adventures of the Book Soulmates Trio in NYC :)

Day 1: “The Expo”

BEA is a madhouse, yo!

Publishers, authors and bloggers galore! We arrived in NYC on Wednesday, but the first official day of the convention was on Thursday, May 30th and since we were a bunch of newbs, we were basically the blind leading the blind. Since we had no prior experience, we wandered around trying to figure out how the heck galley drops work, and where do you get books signed, and wait where’s the Harlequin booth again, etc!

It was a veritable sea of people! Luckily, everyone was very well behaved, at least compared to some of the horror stories we've heard from previous years. We heard that someone actually bit another person during a galley drop in a previous year. Seriously?! That's nucking futs!

By the end of day 1, we were camping out in front of the Macmillan booth to give our book-toting shoulders and achy feet a rest while we figure out a game plan.

Day 2 went far more smoothly!
We met up with one our favorite local bloggers, Ana from Owl Always Be Reading who gave us a few tips on publisher giveaways and author signings. She got to spend most of the day with us and we had a great time!

Here we are chilling in line while we waited in line for the Kat Zhang signing. It gave us a chance to sort some of the new books we had gotten and mingle with other bloggers also waiting in line. We had a lovely conversation with Amanda from Born Bookish, who isn't photographed but is just adorable :)

We also got to meet some AMAZING authors who took the time to sign lots & lots of books!

It was a very productive but very tiring day!

Particularly after it took us nearly walking six or eight or a 100 blocks and an HOUR to get a cab back to our hotel in the sweltering heat...because of course it would be 95° the week we're there!