BEA 2015: Day One - Day at the Show

So after lots of planning and a stupid day of travel, we had finally arrived at my first day of BEA. Katherine, Emilie, and I left for Javits together. The other three girls had taken off at a ridiculously early time to try to get the big book of the day. (Truthwitch) A caffeine stop was necessary so we stopped at Gotham West Market (somewhere I definitely want to go back to) for iced coffee (for them) and a tea (for me) on our way from our apartment to the venue.

Verdict: basic tea. But their logo
matched my nails!

We had signed up for Blogger Con in order to get BEA passes but the consensus was that it wasn't necessarily useful for veteran bloggers so we weren't concerned about making any of the panels. What really concerned me was the lunch voucher that was included with our registration. I wasn't about to pass that up! Katherine, Emilie, and I registered and made it downstairs to the Blogger Con area just as a panel was starting so we popped into "Tactics to Create Killer Content Fast." We didn't really learn anything too groundbreaking but the time in the panel gave me the chance to take an official "I'm here!" pic.

Look, Ma, I made it!

As we were waiting to get our lunch vouchers, a semi-familiar face walked by. A quick glance at the name tag of the woman in question confirmed it was Julie Valerie, blogger extraordinaire, and one of the women going out to dinner with me that evening. The four of us made our way to the lunch area (me, once again, playing sheep and following the ladies who knew where they were going) and Julie thanked us, again, for letting her sit with us. She felt better once she realized that I had basically invited myself into the girls' apartment without knowing them in person. :)

After an overpriced, but essentially free, lunch of chicken fingers and fries, Emilie and I went to check out the line to get into the exhibition area. Katherine set out on a mission to fix her misbehaving phone and Julie had to head off as well. The line to get in was insane because of Truthwitch. Emilie and I found the rest of the girls we knew and then backed the hell up as the line started moving. There was no way we were getting caught in the stampede to get that coveted book.

I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped as we walked onto the exhibition floor. It was huge. Like you couldn't even see anywhere close to the other end huge. I spent most of the afternoon wandering with various roommates and even ventured off on my own a bit too. I tried to get used to the floor and how the drops seemed to be working. At some point I ran into Tiff and Sarah. While I was with them, Jamie of Perpetual Page-Turner came by so I finally had the chance to meet her in person, which was awesome. Her first words to me were something along the lines of "Holy crap, you are really tall!" Classic case of me telling people online that I'm very tall and them not realizing how tall is tall (6' in my case). She felt bad because she knew I probably heard that all the time but it was a hilarious and genuine reaction so it was fine by me :)

Because I was so overwhelmed and wasn't sure what the hell was going on, I didn't get a ton of books on Day 1 at BEA (I'm going to do a big haul post at the end of all these recaps). There also wasn't that many authors I really wanted to see in the autographing areas so I ended up with just two signed books from my day at Javits: A paperback copy of The Sweet Spot by Stephanie Evanovich (I really liked Big Girl Panties) and a sampler of Last Night's Reading by Kate Gavino (check out her Tumblr for an idea of what the illustrations are like).

I met up again with Tiff and Sarah and we went back downstairs to the networking hour for Blogger Con. While I came out of that with a copy of Nowhere But Here by Katie McGarry, I almost lost a limb and understood, for the first time, why bloggers tend to get a bad reputation. There were books on a table and it was total pandemonium as everyone grabbed what they wanted with no respect for others. We got out of there quick. Tiff and I met up with some other bloggers (Andi of Andi's ABCs, Tiffany of About to Read, and Gail of Ticket to Anywhere) and made our way to the Simon & Schuster event for Laura Dave's (excellent) novel Eight Hundred Grapes. This post is already huge so I will recap that event, and the two others I attended, in another post!

In case you missed it...

Planning + Travel Day