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I Can’t Believe I Wasn’t At BookCon This Weekend

Here's what we missed at New York City's BookCon last weekend: author sightings, cosplay, and more.

Emily Wenstrom

Staff Writer

By day, Emily Wenstrom is a content marketing specialist. By early-early morning, she is E. J. Wenstorm, an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author whose debut novel Mud was named 2016 Book of the Year by the Florida Writers Association.. Her Chronicles of the Third Realm War series includes Mud (#1), Tides (#2), Rain (#0), and more to come. Follow her on Twitter @ejwenstrom.

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Started in 2013, BookCon is the sister event to BookExpo, a massive publishing industry trade show for bookstores, publishers, agents, librarians, and other publishing professionals. BookCon is focused on readers and fans—in short, it’s a massive comic con, but everything revolves around books. It’s even run by the same company who throws New York Comic Con.

This year’s event ran June 2–3, last Saturday and Sunday. I was not there.

So this was me all weekend:

Here’s what we all missed:

Celebrity Sightings

BookCon isn’t just for readers and authors, it’s for celebrities who are breaking into books, too. And this can lead to some headliners as big as any other con. This year’s event featured Taye Diggs, Chris Colfer, Diane Guerrero, and more.

Even cooler than that, BookCon is a place where your author idol might be caught just wandering the floors. It offers nonstop events featuring top authors all day long, and hey, authors are readers too, so they might also be seen browsing:

 

Free Books

There will be more books than you can fit in your suitcase, even after you decide to go ahead and sacrifice everything you brought with you.

How? Publishers use this event to build buzz for the hottest books they are releasing over the year. They want to get these books into the hands of the greatest enthusiasts (galleys) to get that started. Word of mouth is everything.

So get ready, because the swag is amazing, and you may have to fight for it.

Cosplay

BookCon is a con in every way, and that means fans come ready with their cosplay to celebrate their favorite stories and characters. There’s reportedly not as much cosplay as a true ComicCon, but there’s enough for it to be a thing.

So why wasn’t I at BookCon? Why???

 

In conclusion, I leave you with this: