Today I’m leaving for London, where I’m spending the night before hopping on a plane to New York City!
Nine reasons to go to BEA’s Blogger Con
Check out those beauties! I have printed out over a hundred 50% off coupon cards for the Ultimate Book Blogger plugin and scattered throughout that deck of cards are nine coupon cards that give you UBB for free!
I’ll be handing out these cards randomly during the Blogger Conference, and then throughout the rest of BEA too, so keep an eye out. 😉
As a reminder, I’ll be speaking at two panels at Blogger Con with a few other lovely bloggers:
- 10:00 am – Optimizing Your WordPress Blog
- 2:30 pm – Going Beyond Blog Formatting
I’d really love to meet you guys there! If you attend, please be sure to come up afterwards and introduce yourself. I’d love to meet you! Give me your business card, we’ll chat, and you can pick up a discount card for UBB.
Will you be at Blogger Con? Which panel(s) are you attending?
I made a BEA floor plan!
Normally I don’t feel like I need a map at BookExpo America. Usually if you look up, you can see where the booths are. Many of them have huge banner type things that you can see from all the way across the room. Particularly Scholastic and Sourcebooks. Plus, after a few minutes of walking around, I feel like I know the place very well. This is particularly true because the booths are often in the same places each year (or similar).
But this year things look way different! The autographing area is in a completely different place, for starters! So I thought it would be cool to make my very own map that only highlights the things that are important to me. The one on the BEA website is crowded, busy, and has crazy lines and groupings everywhere. I wanted everything to fade to the background except the booths/areas that interested me most. Soo, voilà!
My BEA schedule
If we’ll be at any of the same places/signings, I’d love for you to seek me out! I’m kind of shy and suck at starting conversations, so it helps if you come up and introduce yourself. 🙂 I’m going to be doing my best to be fun and social this year!
Legend
| Colour | Priority |
|---|---|
| Red | High |
| Green | Medium |
| White | Low |
Thursday
| Time | Location | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30 | Disney | Alexandra Bracken | Passenger |
| 10:30 – 11:30 | Table 6 | Rebecca Serle | Truly Madly Famously |
| 11:30 – 12:00 | Table 14 | Claudia Gabel | Etherworld |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Table 13 | Carolyn Mackler | The Infinite in Between |
| 1:00 – 2:30 | Harlequin | Eleanor Herman | Legacy of Kings |
| 1:30 – 2:00 | Table 13 | Margo Rabb | Kissing in America |
| 1:30 – 2:00 | Macmillan | Charlie Anders | All the Birds in the Sky |
| 3:00 – 4:00 | Table 4 | Jennifer E. Smith | Hello, Goodbye, and Everything Between |
| 3:00 | Sourcebooks | Natalie D. Richards | My Secret to Tell |
| 3:00 – 3:30 | Macmillan | Leila Sales | Tonight the Streets are Ours |
| 3:00 – 4:00 | Table 13 | Barry Lyga | After the Red Rain |
| 4:00 – 5:00 | Abrams | Katie Lee | Endless Summer Cookbook |
Friday
| Time | Location | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30 – 10:30 | Disney | Margaret Stohl | Black Widow: Forever Red |
| 10:00 – 11:00 | Table 13 | Carrie Ryan | Daughter of Deep Silence |
| 10:00 – 11:00 | Table 7 | Julie Murphy | Dumplin’ |
| 10:30 – 11:30 | Table 4 | Leigh Bardugo | Six of Crows |
| 11:00 – 12:00 | HMH | Michael Buckley | Undertow |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Table 5 | Amy Spalding | Kissing Ted Callahan (And Other Guys) |
| 1:00 – 2:00 | Table 4 | Leila Sales | Tonight the Streets are Ours |
| 1:00 | Sourcebooks | Renee Collins | Until We Meet Again |
| 1:00 – 2:00 | Table 8 | Jennifer Walkup | The Ordinary Life |
| 1:00 – 2:00 | Table 5 | Alexandra Bracken | In the Afterlight |
| 2:00 | Sourcebooks | Marieke Nijkamp | This is Where it Ends |
| 2:30 | Macmillan | Leigh Bardugo | Six of Crows |
| 2:30 – 3:00 | Table 12 | Erin Bow | The Scorpion Rules |
| 2:30 – 3:00 | Table 6 | Aaron Hartzler | What We Saw |
| 3:00 – 3:30 | Table 7 | Patrick Ness | The Rest of Us Just Live Here |
Have fun, I wish I could go but I don’t have the monies. I am saving up for next year as it will be closer to me. 🙂
I hope we can meet up next year! I think I should be there. 🙂 Heck I’m already thinking about buying my plane ticket!
Ashley – I love your map…how did you do that??? Such a great idea!!! I’m trying to print the map off the BEA website and it keeps printing only part of it, even when I change the layout to landscape. Oh well…I’ll keep trying. But if you have any hints, I’d love to hear them. Have a safe trip to the NYC and hopefully I’ll run into you!
Here’s what I did:
1. I added all my publishers to my planner on the BEA website. This way they were highlighted on the BEA floor plan.
2. I took a screenshot of the BEA map online.
3. I created a new Photoshop document the size of my paper (A5).
4. I pasted the BEA map screenshot in my document.
5. I started ‘tracing’ over the map with shapes. So I used the rectangle tool to create boxes over each booth.
6. Any time I got to one of my saved publishers on the map, I created the box in a different colour.
So in short, I just copied over the official BEA map to get the layout right. 🙂
I really hope we see each other! If you see me please do stop and say hi. 🙂 I can be kind of shy sometimes!
Hi Ashley:
Great post…thanks. Have a safe trip and a great time at the BEA.
I am going to be in your blogger conference session on Going Beyond Blog Formatting. I don’t have a Word Press blog, though, so I hope it works for me.
I hope to see you there.
Elizabeth
Silver’s Reviews
I can’t wait to see you there, Elizabeth! That panel isn’t specific to any one blogging platform, so it will definitely be of great use to you on Blogger. 🙂
Great to hear it isn’t specific to one blogging platform.
So where do you live in Europe? That is wonderful you are coming all this way. Can’t wait to hear your ideas.
Elizabeth
I live in Cambridge. 🙂 But I’m originally from California, so I’ll have a typical California girl accent!
🙂 on your California accent.
Looking forward to seeing you.
Thanks.
See you there Ashley!! I hope you get every single book you want 🙂
Have lots of fun Ashley!
I’m so bummed I can’t come and meet you! Ah well, I will one day!
From that list I’ve already read The Rest of Us Just Live Here and it was fantastic! Good luck getting all the pretties you want and have fun! Also have a bit of fun for me too. 🙂
I’ll be at Blogger Con and BEA as well! I hope to see you there! 🙂
Also, your BEA planning skills are amazing. I feel like I have received insider knowledge just by looking at your schedule, haha.
I’ll be there!! Looking forward to meeting the genius behind my blog hosting 🙂
Ashley! Like last year, I’m not able to attend because America </3 However, I'm extremely excited for you 🙂 Looks like you have a pretty busy schedule and wow you seem to be excited about the books. I know I would be if I were you. I wish I could have hauled myself up there…another time. Have fun! You owe us lots of pictures 🙂
Hope to see you there! This post made me realize I forgot my business cards. Seriously how dumb is that. I’m excited to see your panel though!
So awesome. Wish you an awesome BEA 🙂
I would love to go, but unfortunately I can’t make it. Hope you have a great time!
Ashley, I hope you’re having a fantastic time!! I’ve seen some of your Twitter updates, and I’m totally jealous of all the books you got. 😉 There’s so many signings I wish I could go to- Alexandra Bracken (dream author!!), Patrick Ness (also dream author lol), Leigh Bardugo, and so many more. I couldn’t make it this year, but maybe next year!!
I can’t wait to read your recap post! 😀
It was wonderful, thank you!!
I’d love to see you there next year. 🙂
Those promo cards are too cool, Ashley. And have fun! Though from your Twitter, it seems like you already did rock those panels of yours.
They were pretty darn awesome! I had a lot of fun. 🙂
I was in your session at the BEA.
Very nice job.
THANKS.
Elizabeth
Silver’s Reviews
My Blog
Thank you so much for coming!! 🙂