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Books & More Books On My Mind

My week started by taking the red eye at midnight out of LAX. I got into NY early morning, ready to take on the day.  Monday I joined the Jewish Book Network in presenting a 2 minute pitch of my book along with another 50 authors. Our audience included organization leaders, who are looking for interesting books, authors, and topics to present to their respective communities.  As an author, I really enjoy watching authors present their material and see what kinds of topics they are writing about.  The Network runs a tight ship, and they managed to get everybody present their books within the time constraint.  Believe it or not, one does get a good overall impression of the books and the author’s speaking ability.  After the presentation, we got a chance to talk and mingle with other authors and organizational leaders. My overall impression of the event was that it was stimulating and I was so impressed by the quality of speakers and books.

The next day I went off to the Book Expo 2010 at the Javitz Center.  I remember the first time I attended the book expo a couple of years ago. At the time I had just finished my book, and I was looking for a publisher. Now, I was attending with a tag reading, “published author”, which delighted me to no end. I attended a few seminars about building on-line readership, etc… I guess what I got out of these seminars that authors need to write away on facebook, their web sites, and tweet! So, here I am this week, opening my twitter account!  On everyone’s mind was digital books and publishing and there were many booths in the expo dedicated to this new venture in publishing. To think 2 years ago, there was no talk about this at the conference.

If you haven’t ever gone to the book expo–let me tell you, it is not wise to wear heals, which I did anyway! Big mistake. I walked for 3 hours straight, going to different booths and seeing the new seletion of  books due to be out for the coming year.  I even stopped by Assouline’s booth and said hello to my friends and colleagues.

Just to keep you in the loop, I am now really serious about writing another book. So I know this coming year, I will be spending more time doing research, reading, and writing.