Booksmiths at BEA

Next week, the powers that be are sending me and a few other Booksmiths to New York for Book Expo America, an annual event that brings in book people from all over.  Booksellers, publishers, authors, bloggers, fans, you name it.  They're all there, ready to talk about books and brave the floor show.  I'm really looking forward to it for a lot of reasons:

• Putting faces to a name. Yes, I've e-mailed you more times than I have my mother within the past few months, but I haven't met you yet!  Also, a lot of you probably think I am a man as "Jamie" is a very gender neutral name, but alas, I am a lady.
• Getting advanced copies of books and dancing in joy over media mail rates after you realize how much it would cost to ship all those books back home normally.
• In that same vein, free tote bags.  I love tote bags.  I love putting free books into tote bags.  I love distributing tote bags to other booksellers when I realize I have taken way too many home.
• Seeing booksellers and publishers I know, my absolute favorite, second only to jumping into those same people's arms after realizing they're less than 100 feet away from you and hoping they won't be so caught off guard that they can catch you.
• Hearing a lot of really awesome authors talk.  Yes, I'm at an author event nearly every day, but I still love going to talk.  In addition, there are amazing panels about anything and everything related to bookselling which I'm excited to attend.
• Parties. All the parties. 

I'm really jazzed about this, and if you're heading to BEA next week--hope to see you there!