BEA Happenings

One of the great things about BEA (or a curse if you need to arrive at Javits by 6:30 a.m. on a daily basis) are the many, many, many parties.  It is a who's who from the industry with a healthy dose of great authors that are being feted, sharing the inspiration and details from their latest works all the while mingling with booksellers from all over the US, as well as all over the world.  It is fun, exciting and includes drinks and food - what is there not to like?

A frequent question I am asked is SO - What's happening? Expecting that I know who is doing what, where it is, when it is happening and WHO will be attending. Well, I do get some inside info, but these events really for booksellers, authors, librarians and industry folks.  To be fair, people are thoughtful and generous with their invites, but I recognize these events are for the people who are in the trenches of bookselling, library services and people who make a real difference in getting a book discovered.  There are literally hundreds of intimate dinners or events with authors and booksellers that take place during BEA, making that wonderful connection that gets a book getting noticed, but those smaller events go unnoticed (you don't miss water until your well runs dry, right?).   
 
As I often do, I am digressing from the original message - I wanted to share the list of a few of the notable events happening at BEA this year.  THIS IS IN NO WAY A COMPLETE LIST OF BEA PARTIES/EVENTS AND MANY ARE INVITE ONLY, THIS IS ONLY MEANT TO SHARE A SAMPLING OF WHAT IS GOING ON.  SO IF YOU GET  AN INVITE AND ATTEND ANY OR ALL OF THESE, THEN GOOD FOR YOU!!   

Here are things happening on the show floor:

• Digital Cocktails Networking Happy Hour Thursday, May 30 at 4:00pm in the Digital Discovery Zone (D2Z) brought to you by IDPF  
• BEA Bloggers Conference Wednesday May 29th 4:30 pm Networking Happy Hour 
• Sidelines Pavilion Networking Happy Hour— Friday, May 31 at 4:00 pm to enjoy some drinks and check out a variety of sidelines items

Here some things happening around NYC during BEA:

• Workman's Office – Thursday evening May 30th - I love this event, GREAT people, fun food and really good beer.

• Penguin Blogger's Party – Thursday May 30th at the Penguin office

•  Penguin Young Readers – Friday at Standard Hotel - No Invite, No Way to get in, this is such a cool venue, make friends with someone at PYR if you want a shot

•  HarperCollins Bloggers – Thursday May 30th

•  Random House - At the ABA Headquater's Hotel - Loads & Loads of Authors, always fun - Tuesday May 28th - Must be an ABA Member!!!

• The PGW Party - The 1st one was in 1976!  Friday May 31st and had bands like Buddy Guy, Morphine, The Radiators and Wilson Pickett - if you go to this, I will not be seeing you at 6:30 as I roll into Javits....

• Bookrageous Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - Wednesday May 29th 7-9pm Invite Only 

There is soooooooooooo much more happening, but I hope that this gives you a notion of what to look for and see if you can score an invite to 1 of these great events or find your self out with the many publsihers that are fantistic hosts to the whole industry every year from Hachette, to Sourcebooks, Simon & Schuster, Kensington, and many, many, many more..