The annual trade show will take place June 5-7 in New York City, and registration is already open! Bloggers may apply for non-editorial media badges or obtain a pass by registering to attend the Book Blogger Convention on June 4.
For the record, the BBC registration costs less than the three-day BEA pass and allows the same show access, but if it means you’d be in New York City for an extra day, it could end up costing you more overall. You and your personal budget are the only ones who can make that call.
I’ve been looking for announcements about the BBC programming, and haven’t seen any yet–if you have, please share any links! But I’ve known since I came back from BEA 2011 that I wanted to go again in 2012, so I registered this week.
Registering is the easy part, though–I have travel plans to make now, and that’s where it gets interesting! Right now, I’m thinking that I’ll fly into New York on June 2 (the Saturday before) and have a free day on Sunday before BBC on Monday. I haven’t decided whether I’ll stay all the way through BEA or leave before Thursday. I also haven’t booked a hotel yet, and I’d really like to have a roommate this year–so as you make your plans, keep me in mind, and e-mail me if you’d consider that!
I love the idea of World Book Night. Each volunteer book giver will distribute 20 copies of one of 30 specially-selected books within his or her community, ideally to people who don’t read very much. The books are a mix of popular fiction, a few modern literary classics, accessible nonfiction, and young-adult favorites, and in keeping with the event’s mission, givers must have “read and loved” the title they are asking to hand out:
“World Book Night launched in the UK in 2011 and saw passionate readers across that beautiful country, give 1 million books to light or non readers to spread the joy and love of reading. Reading changes lives and at the heart of World Book Night lies the simplest of ideas and acts – that of putting a book into another person’s hand and saying ‘this one’s amazing, you have to read it’.”
Prospective givers list their first, second, and third giveaway choices on the application, and givers will be chosen based on “Where, to whom & why (they) want to give books away.”
And ultimately, those criteria are why I’ve decided not to apply to be a WBN book giver. I’ve started the application two or three times, and I may be overthinking things, but when the organization states that these are their selection criteria, I take them at their word. And it is painful to admit this, but I don’t have good answers for any of those questions. Besides that, the idea of physically handing a book to a non-book-loving stranger and telling him or her that they’ve got to read it is just a bit terrifying to this particular introvert; without solid motivation in the where/whom/why categories, it’s really hard to make a case for my doing this…aside from my aforementioned love of the idea, that is.
I’ll keep loving the idea, but I think it may be best to leave the execution of World Book Night to others. Have you applied to be a WBN book giver? What book do you want to give…and where, to whom, and why?
