*If you visited between midnight and 4am PST, read again! This is an entirely new post! I didn't think my original post fit the prompt that well, so I scrapped it and wrote a whole new one :) Thanks!
Truthfully, I don't have much experience networking outside of my blog - I'm still relatively new, and I've been hesitant to really embrace the title of Book Blogger, for some reason. I've been fortunate enough to go to a ton of author events (all shared here!), but I haven't really ever put myself out there as a Book Blogger and specifically met up with people as a direct result.
Screencapped from their Facebook page. |
The next thing that I know is coming is ALA Annual! This will be the first year I'm attending, and I'm SO excited. I'm practically giddy at the thought of chatting with real people in the publishing industry and meeting up with industry professionals, book bloggers, and other authors. My dream is to surround myself with books, and this is pretty close to it, don't you think? I'm going to be going to The Great YA Blogger Meet Up hosted by YA Highway and Stacked Books, and I'm really looking forward to meeting and mingling there. (If you're going to the conference and/or Meet Up, tell me! I'd love to meet you!)
Which, attending ALA is a weirdly indirect result of being a Book Blogger and sort of an Offline Networking thing. To make an incredibly long story short (you can read the whole exciting story here!), I went to an author event that was moderated by Kirsten Hubbard, the author of Wanderlove. As mentioned yesterday, Wanderlove is my top 2012 read -- and when I was reading the ARC, I was seriously HARASSING poor Kirsten on Twitter because I couldn't stop tweeting her about how amazing the book was. Usually I don't do that, but I just could not help myself with her book - it was that good. Kirsten recognized me from Twitter and we started chatting before and after the event. Cutting out several details and moments of happenstance, I ended up hanging out with her and a few of her friends for the rest of the night - which was AMAZING and I'm still in awe that it happened. BUT anyhow, how this relates specifically: I had entirely separate conversations each with Kirsten, Cindy Pon, Debra Driza*, and Shannon Messenger and they were each very adamant that going to conferences were the best places to really meet people in the book industry. They all recommended BEA and ALA, as well as SCBWI (if you're a writer as well), Comic-con, and other smaller conferences. I'd always considered going to ALA, but hearing the insistence from them was definitely a driving force as to me pushing to go.
Basically, I have a really exciting June lined up because of my blog and the want to Network. I don't quite have real stories to tell yet, but I have the prospect of them - and that in itself is something quite exciting!
Wow, I'm amazed by how much networking you've been doing!! I love the idea of Rock the Drop! I'll have to look into that more and participate!
ReplyDeleteI'll be attending BEA tomorrow and can't wait to rock some face-to-face Networking!
Here are my posts so far for Armchair BEA:
Day 1 | Introduction
Day 2 | Best of 2012
Day 2 | Giveaway | Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Day 3 | Networking
You definitely should do Rock the Drop if you can, it's exciting and I love the idea of getting more teens to read. And I hope you had TONS of fun at BEA!
DeleteRock and Drop sounds great Glad you've got to do so much stuff and meet up with people.
ReplyDeleteRock the Drop is tons of fun! Thank you for stopping by :)
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