Book Expo America! Next Week!

So you might have noticed the lack of scintillating posting this week. Or not. Anyways, the reason is that I’m furiously getting ready for Book Expo America, which is happening next week in New York.

If you aren’t familiar with the event, BEA is basically the biggest publishing trade fair in the States. It’s 3 days of packing out the heinous Javit’s Center and talking to publishers, bloggers, librarians and other professionals during the day, and making the rounds of publisher parties and bars in the evening.

New York and I have an…exciting history. Every time I go there, I end up with Stories To Tell*. More accurately, stories that make people who have stories to tell look at me and wonder how I haven’t died yet. Anyways, I’m hoping that this year is much better.

I’ll be there to run the SFWA table and hold signings with some amazing authors. Check out the schedule, and if you’ll be there, come and say hi!

Thursday
1:30: James Sutter
2:00: Michael Martinez
2:30: Jeri Smith-Ready

3:30: Alethea Kontis
4:00 Laura Anne Gilman

Friday
11:00: Sarah Beth Durst
11:30: Shelly Reuben

1:30: Doug Molitor
2:00: Leanna Renee Hieber
2:30: Patrick Matthews

3:30: Jim Hines
4:00: Karen Heuler

Saturday
12:00: SFWA Reading
1:00: Diana Gabaldon

Wish us luck!

*The current highlight** is the cabby who couldn’t figure out where I needed him to take me. We drove around the Bronx for about an hour, stopping to ask people at stoplights for directions. This is, by the way, at about 3am, after a day that started at 9am, included a convention day, an event, a dinner, drinking, Ray Bradbury’s death, a radio show ABOUT Ray Bradbury, and seeing Ground Zero for the first time.

I finally got in a yelling match with the driver and made him let me out on some random street. I called the guy I was dating, told him what was going on, and asked him to pull up Google Maps and get me back home. We had a very long talk about safety later…which is another common theme in my life.

**Followed closely by the time I had a connecting flight through Atlanta and our plane fishtailed on the icy runway.

James Crossley on the Bookseller’s Perspective, for Authors

As noted on Monday, I’m kicking off my book tour this week. Tonight I’m at the University Bookstore in Seattle with Cat Rambo and Cherie Priest. Tomorrow I’m at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Friday, Nov. 6, I’ll be appearing with Jay Lake, Cat Rambo, and Jeff Johnson at the Press Club in Portland–and then doing a solo reading at Powell’s in Portland on Saturday. Sunday, I’m doing a Booklife workshop at the Hugo House in Seattle, and then a lecture titled “Bookwork for Booklife” Monday night, Nov. 9, also at the Hugo House.

Today, an excerpt from the Booklife appendices, which include a variety of opinions and resources to support both your creativity and your career. James Crossley works for an independent bookstore near Seattle:

Island Books, an independent, family-run business, is one of the oldest bookstores serving the greater Seattle area, with an experienced staff that helps match readers of every age and interest to the right books, whatever they may be. We ship for free to any location in the US, but you’ll have to come to Mercer Island in person to see our collection of antique typewriters.

Here, he shares some tips for writers in their dealings with booksellers. – Jeff


(James Crossley)

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My Endurance Tour–and Book Tours in the Modern Era

As you can see by visiting the events page, I’m embarking on 28-event 35-day Endurance Tour in support of Booklife and my new novel. I’ll be hitting a variety of venues on the West Coast and East Coast, and I hope to see Booklifenow readers at many of these events. The tour also includes guest blogging, interviews in local media, engaging with local writer groups, and much more.

Booklife covers book tours, including how to conduct a virtual book tour through guest blogging and the like. But as my friend Matt Staggs and I put together my Endurance Tour, I think we both realized that the modern book tour is a complex, organic entity, the dimensions of which are even more dynamic and three-dimensional than depicted in Booklife (I can already see I’ll need to revise that section for the second edition).

Here are some thoughts just from planning the Endurance Tour. When I get back in mid-December I’ll report on how much of this I still believe in and what new ideas were sparked by the experience.

(1) Real-world events are still important because a real-world event still triggers certain responses from local media and from the blogosphere, which is especially useful for events in large cities, where local coverage can translate into national attention. (Besides, doing a reading or other gig contributes to the cultural literacy of your country.)

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