Creativity Friday: MISTRESS OF THE SUN winner! and BEA!

Drum roll please…..

Congratulations to Kim V! She’s won a copy of Sandra Gulland’s MISTRESS OF THE SUN—I hope you enjoy the book! As soon as you send me your mailing address at kris at kriswaldherr dot com, I’ll post your book to you.

Thanks also to everyone else who entered this giveaway, and took a moment to share their royal crushes with us. My personal favorite was those who’d mentioned Cleopatra as a possibility for a “walk on the wild side” fling. How very Angelina Jolie!

I’m really enjoying these book giveaways and author interviews. If things go as planned, I suspect we may have another one in June with another author who has a lot to say about the art of writing and creativity.

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In other news (possibly more publishing-related than creativity-related), I’m in the midst of getting ready for BEA, which happens the weekend of May 29th. Inquiring minds might be wondering, what’s BEA? Book Expo America—probably the biggest publishing convention in the United States. It’s held by the American Booksellers Association, the national trade association for independent booksellers, at the Javitts Center in New York City. So if you’re interested in publishing, this is the not-to-be-missed event.

What will I be doing at BEA? I won’t be signing any books or decks (though I’d done so in previous years). Instead, I will be wandering the aisles, looking to see who’s publishing what and whom. Just about every big and small publisher exhibits at BEA. It’s a great opportunity to get a sense of what’s going on in the industry, for better and worse, and how my work fits into the big picture. This year, I suspect there will be a lot of talk about the emergence of e-books via the Kindle, and how this is affecting publishers’ bottom lines. Like it or not, the industry is being transformed by all these technological changes. On the fun side, there’s book signings and readings, and more. One year, I even got to hear Bill Clinton talk about his then-new memoir—very thrilling!

At BEA, I also like to catch up with colleagues who I might not see otherwise. Strange but true: There have been editors and art directors that I’ve worked with that I’ve never met in person. BEA sometimes allows me that opportunity to connect the name to a face, which is a lot of fun. (Lynne Menterweck at Llewellyn, I’m thinking of you.) It’s also gratifying to meet the salespeople who work so hard to sell my publications to bookstores.

Bottom line: BEA is huge, exhausting, overwhelming, exciting, depressing, boring, and fantastic—a microcosm of the publishing world. It’s like a big family reunion in some ways, albeit a big, book-obsessed family. I also always leave with new ideas and a better sense of my work’s place in the world. So it’s worth it.

You can learn more about Book Expo America here.

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