Hey...long time no see, eh? Sorry for going AWOL on the blog for the past month (though if you've been following me on Twitter you know I haven't died...yet). Figured that before I return to regular posting, I'd write up an explanatory post...that can also function as a BEA post, since that's a large part of why I wasn't blogging.
'But BEA was just last week!' You may find yourself saying. 'It only lasted a few days! Why would it take you away for a month?'
For those who don't know, my day job is actually in books. Not quite publishing, but remainder wholesale. Consumers generally know these books as the bargain books you see on display at your large chain bookstores. We have a showroom in NYC and my fancy title (seriously, I'm getting it on business cards this week) is showroom manager. We keep books on display in the showroom year round, and when BEA comes to town instead of exhibiting at the massive Javits Center, we get extra books into the showroom, have a few extra salespeople come into town, and set up our appointments in the office.
Since during the actual show most of our customers want to be over at Javits, most of our appointments are made for the week (and weekend...ugh) before BEA. Which means that I need to have the showroom set up and looking pretty two weeks before BEA....and then work straight through until the end of the show. Long days with lots of manual labor meant that by the time I got home in the evening and then even on the weekends, I didn't want to do much more than sleep. So instead of writing some half-assed blog posts...I thought I'd just take a few days...maybe a week off.
And that turned into a month.
But I haven't totally slacked off this past month - even though I abandoned Goodreads for awhile, I have still been reading. I've also been considering re-tooling how I do posts here - there might be fewer reviews in favor of more general posts about writing or trends or style...I don't know. It's still very nebulous in my head, but I'm trying to figure it out, so I hope you'll bear with me if you start seeing some more experimental posts on here (there's a reason this blog was titled 'Bookish Blather' - to give me permission to rattle on about more than just straight up book reviews!).
So, sorry about that, y'all. Things should get back on track now that it's pretty much summer and I don't have to worry about a trade show until November (and that one's in Chicago! Less work for me!). Regular posting will resume on Wednesday. In the meantime, consider this an open post to ask/discuss whatever you want! Any questions about the remainder/bargain book business? What I've been reading? Did you go to BEA and get some awesome ARCs?
