CRP's Blog

This year was my first time at NYC’s BookExpo, and so I somehow narrowed down my top five favorite moments below. Embarrassing pictures included!

Author Signings. One of the top highlights was leading people—who were often out of breath after having run from a different author signing—to our signing line and welcoming them in to a new line with open arms.

Star Spotting. It may be a sign of the changing times that two of the stars I was super excited to spot were people I recognized from social media: literary agent Eric Smith, whose witty Twitter account I highly recommend following, and Christine Riccio from YouTube, aka BookTube. From a far distance, I also watched a beautiful woman chatting with a friend for a while before realizing it was Lupita Nyong’o, so that was a thrill!

Fascinating panels. One of my favorite panels (which our marketing team helped coordinate) was The Importance of LGBTQ+ Literature. It was an immensely important panel that discussed what librarians, publishers and bookstores can do to be more inclusive across all genres, including making more of an effort to promote LGBTQ+ titles year-round, not just during pride month. I also enjoyed a Goodreads presentation about Celadon’s successful marketing strategy for The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, which included helpful ROI charts to really show the impact.

Putting faces to the emails. I represented Triumph Books and Chicago Review Press at the Publicity Speed Dating event and got the opportunity to meet many people whom I’ve only ever emailed. It was great to finally put faces to the names, and I also met so many new people that I may have transformed into an extrovert for a short while there.

Freebies! Who doesn’t love free things? Although supposedly the amount of galleys and other freebies were a lot less this year, I still spotted some sweet totes, pins and the occasional galley. There were also a lot of interactive opportunities, including IPG’s beautiful Instagram backdrop.