Book Con 2015 Experience

Saturday BookCon Day 1

 

Book Expo America was only 3-days this year and naturally I didn't want my trip to end just yet! I decided even against my best judgement of last year—because it was a zoo—to buy a BookCon pass for Saturday Only. Besides, what was the worst that could happen?? UM, try, a stampede of 15,000 people for starters...The Jacob Javits Center was basically ground zero for a mob scene. People, mostly younger girls were swarming the place—it was INSANE. Normally I expect there to be a lot of people but woah...I guess it makes sense that there'd be since Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, Aziz Ansari, and John Green were in the building. Anyways, at arrival which I got there around 6 a.m. I found out I was kicked out of the place because they were forming a line literally on the opposite end of the entire building OUTSIDE (here I had no choice but to bring all my luggage and BEA books with me, since I needed to checkout of my hotel that morning). It was kinda back-breaking to roll them all the way outside the building to what seemed like the opposite end of the universe. Hours spent on line to very slowly crawl back inside the Javits center to what could only be described as a giant warehouse basement. Again, another massive line. Then came the time to open both the showroom floor and the panel rooms it was like an herd of elephants stomping around. To make matters even more extreme they only allowed one path and one accessible escalator to make it back upstairs to the floor so it took even longer to actually officially get in.

ANYWAYS, I beelined to the Macmillan 
booth to buy David Duchovny's (The X-Files actor, 'Mulder', and most recently Californication, & Aquarious.) book Holy Cow to guarantee my ticket to his signing and his small panel. There was only 200 copies available but thankfully more people were there for Rainbow Rowell who also shared the same book/ticket purchase line (which I thought was just a little strange..) but who cares I was #31! My whole goal of BookCon was to meet Duchovny, so my mission was accomplished! It was worth the excessive wait and the long lines! I also managed to grab a front row seat to his panel!

Other mentions of people I got see there were: Julianne Moore & Felicia Day! Felicia is amazing and I ran into her randomly on the floor which was super cool! If you weren't on line and you were walking the showroom floor it was mostly booths selling books (horribly overpriced) so I just kind of bounced around until I found things to do. Which now that I remember I met Kim Harrison!! I didn't even know she was signing but I got into her line and grabbed The Drafter (she's an amazing writer, and such a nice author!). After the Expo I didn't think I'd get to meet with any more authors so this was a double win. Her new series The Peri Reed Chronicles also looks ridiculously good..and the last thing I did was get my tarot cards read! Which I've always been a little bit skeptical and fearful, but, Macmillan had a reader set up there and she read my cards which—I kid you not—were creepily accurate. I won't go into details but she asked me a question about what I wanted to know (relationship, past, present, future etc..) now, I said relationship (I'm a girl, sue me!) but I've been thinking a lot about where I was CURRENTLY at. & Instead of telling me about where my relationship was headed she literally told me about how I felt about my current decisions (like I said she was dead on!!!). That was a neat experience and has made me a believer. She also gave me a deck of tarot cards for free which is wicked cool! Not going to lie, ever since I read Kresley Cole's Arcana Chronicles series I have been deeply fascinated with tarot!!


In a nutshell that was my one and only day at BookCon! If you're wondering if I will go back again next year...my answer to you is MAYBE. I think they still need to improve and figure out the giant lines, and organization of the event but if there was someone I was dying to see there next year and it didn't conflict with anything else I think I would go out again for BookCon.

I hope you enjoyed my experience, and if you have a comment or any questions please comment and let me know! I love hearing what you have to say! :)