Here are the fun things that happened at the show:
I met with GooglePrint. And I read today that Google has surpassed Time Warner Inc. as the media industry’s most valuable company. The market value of Google is $83.4-billion vs. Time Warner’s paltry $79.4-billion.
Michael Winter signed a copy of his novel The Big Why for me. There’s a paperback coming out soon and the cover looks awesome. I’m not a fan of the cloth cover. I really enjoyed Winter’s first book All This Happened, and The Big Why sounds promising. The first sentence is “I have been loved. I can say this. But back then, before it all went wrong, I did not know enough to consider the question.”
Do you have first sentences that draw you in, are your favourites? Covers and first sentence. That’s my hook.
I saw Joseph Boyden, who I played pool with last year but didn’t get a chance to speak to this year.
I got a copy of On Bullshit, which I love. It is oatmeal coloured with black type. Apparently there are 4 different colours. I’ve only ever seen the white and green one.
I saw Hayley Wickenheiser signing autographs at the show.
I went to dinner with friends and had an amazing pork tenderloin crusted with pine nuts and surrounded by apples. It was delicious, and James will tell you that I don’t like pork. It’s a thin slice between the pork I like and the pork I don’t.
I got to see the new logo for McClelland and Stewart. It is a chariot rider with a bow and arrow. The photo is of the M&S tattoo I have on my arm. Temporary tattoo, it wasn’t that kind of weekend. I’ll tell you the background story of the tattoo and logo later.
Aside from that I steered clear of the bargain-basement style hoarding of free books. Most people at the show are carting enormous book bags packed with titles they’ll never read and will likely abandon in their hotel. But there are also those who I admire, those who will be totally enthralled with your description of a book and will kindly tell you that they don’t want to take it now, but will watch for it. I prefer that approach, which leads me back to a previous post where I questioned why we do this show. According to everyone I asked, albeit it was a small but high-quality sampling, we do it because of the people. Buyers say they can’t do their job without the show. They need to make the personal, face-to-face contacts, and more important, they need to see what books we’re making a fuss about. Sometimes it isn’t clear that a title is huge until a book buyer is at the show, sees the blow-ups of the cover, the light boxes, everyone carrying around the advance copies. But mostly people just want to be around other book people, talking shop, networking and smoozing.
