BEA Wrap-Up: Another One Bites the Dust

By Lynn Rosen

Most of us are probably back in the office today post-Book Expo (jealous if you got the day off!), and, if you are in the Northeast, have navigated the rainy backed-up Monday morning commute. Hopefully all of us are feeling not merely exhausted but also exhilarated by our experience at the show. In these changing times, it’s nice to have this annual opportunity for publishers, booksellers and authors to touch base with each other and get a sense of the pulse of the industry. It is, I say emphatically, beating a good, strong, regular healthy pulse!

Here’s another snapshot of what I encountered on my travels through Javits-land.

Fabulous new books. Fall will be an exciting season in the world of literary fiction, with new novels arriving from the likes of Jonathan Lethem, Alice McDermott, and Jayne Anne Phillips (to name a few of my faves). There’s a new novel by Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Tan and Wally Lamb, a new book from Chelsea Handler, and ever so much more that there isn’t space to list. But you can check out the Buzz Books 2013 volume for a sneak peek at some of these books.

Interesting new authors. I took a turn in front of the camera this BEA, and sat in the interviewer seat for two great conversations in Shindig’s “Live from Book Expo America” series, a series of over 50 online author interviews that ran throughout the show. First I spoke with Amy Lupold Bair of Resourceful Mommy Media. Amy’s know as the Queen of the Twitter party, and has done really interesting promoting new books on Twitter. She was at BEA to promote her new book Raising Digital Families for Dummies. I came away convinced her techniques could change the life of my family and get our screen use under control. Check out the free download of her “Digital Family Policy” for starters.

Next I spoke with Loretta Nyhan, who went from being afraid to write fiction to having two new books coming out at once. And they couldn’t be more different: one is a World War II epistolary novel about the correspondence between two war wives (published by Harlequin), and the second a Harper Teen novel called The Witch Collector. In our interview, Nyhan went into detail about the experience of collaboratively writing I’ll Be Seeing You (the war novel), and how her relationship with her co-author went from barely knowing each other to deep friendship while writing the book—and they only met in person after the book was finished!

Smart new technology. Brian Howard and I will be writing more in the days and weeks to come about Slicebooks, NetGalley, BookBaby, BiblioLabs, Firebrand Technologies, Copia, Impelsys, and more, more more!

And by the way, thanks to all of you who asked about my feet. They are recovering well!

Happy reading y’all!