I went to Book Con again this year – it was only the second year of the event, but after last year I was a little wary. While I had fun the first time, I found it pretty disorganized, and for events of this size that’s a big problem. The exhibition space had been crammed full of vendors who didn’t seem to know who their audience was (Book Con, which is for readers, overlaps with Book Expo, which is for industry professionals – a lot of the vendors last year didn’t bother differentiating their booths for the distinct audiences), and the line management for the big events was abysmal. The folks at ReedPOP, the producing organization, must have learned their lesson, though, because this year’s con ran much more smoothly.
The con started at 10 AM on Saturday. A lot of people were getting there early to get in line for the mainstage panels, featuring, throughout the day, guests like Mindy Kaling, Nick Offerman, Aziz Ansari, and YA author heartthrob John Green. I would have loved to have attended any of those (except Green – sorry, I guess I’m outside the target market), but I wasn’t willing to get up extra early (I was in technical rehearsals for a show I’m directing all last week), and there were so many other panels I wanted to go to, I didn’t want to trade any con time for waiting in line for hours. (That said, the con handled the lines so much better this year, and I probably could have made it to one of the later mainstage panels if I had tried. But I didn’t.)
The first thing I did was make a bee-line to an autograph session for an artist I love. Chris Giarrusso is the creator of G-Man, a comic series about a kid super-hero, and he was doing a signing at the Andrews McMeel Publishing booth. I misread the description and thought he’d be at the signing tables at the other end of the Javits Center, so I arrived at his booth rather sweaty, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Isn’t he handsome? I have a mild crush. (Talent is sexy.) I’ve gotten two other books signed by him at New York Comic Con, but I didn’t have a copy of his new book, The G-Man Super Journal: Awesome Origins. I was all set to buy it, but they were giving it away. Score! He drew a little sketch of G-Man saying my name on the inside. I love it.
After that I had to hurry all the way back to the other end of the Center again, to catch the 11 AM panel, “We Need Diverse Books presents: In Our World and Beyond”. We Need Diverse Books is a great organization, spawned (I think) from a social media hashtag campaign, that promotes diversity in literature (primarily children’s literature, I believe, but not entirely). I went to their panel last year, when they were still a fairly new organization, and it was well-intended but a bit of a mess – lots of speechifying from officers and founders before getting to the actual panelists, lots of preaching to the choir. This year’s was much better. It was focused on diversity in science fiction and fantasy literature, and that slightly narrower focus made for a much more spirited, interesting discussion. Also, no speechifying.
Left to right – and hopefully I will get this right – are Miranda Paul (who did the introductions), Daniel José Older, Kameron Hurley, moderator Marieke Nijkamp, Ken Liu, Joe Monti, and Nnedi Okorafor. It was a pretty interesting discussion – obviously there wasn’t anybody there arguing against diversity, so there was a lot of talk about definitions and terminology, as well as the problem with inertia in the publishing industry when it comes to change. I particularly enjoyed the comments about internationalism, and the potential pitfalls involved with writing from an American-centric view of what constitutes a “minority” or a “person of color.” (They all had good points, but I found Okorafor the most engaging.)
But the panel ended on a sour note for me. A question came from the audience about how self-publishing fit, or could fit, into the diversity landscape (with the idea being that self-published authors don’t have to worry about publishing houses squashing their attempts to diversify their characters). (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the exact wording of the question.) Daniel José Older fielded that one, and his answer was essentially that self-publishing was a solution, but it could not be the solution. Which is fine, obviously we don’t want to stop pushing the major publishing houses to become more inclusive.
The trouble was his tone. He sort of smirked and laughed his way through the answer, making repeated parenthetical remarks about how he didn’t mean to suggest there was anything wrong with self-publishing, while all the time suggesting exactly that. I don’t remember anyone else on the panel commenting, but there was some laughter at his backhandedly deprecating remarks. The overall implication was that self-publishing isn’t real and doesn’t count.
So, you know. Fuck that.
I get it. Self-publishing, for a lot of people, is still tainted by the idea of the “vanity press” from the pre-e-book days, when it meant spending thousands of dollars on paperbacks that you desperately tried to sell out of the trunk of your car. To a lot of people, self-publishing your book means you failed at getting a publishing contract and so putting the book out yourself was your only option.
Of course, that’s complete bullshit, and I suspect that many of the self-published authors I know are doing way better, financially, than many, perhaps all, of the authors on that panel. (Snap!) The simple truth is that a successful self-published author is just going to make far more money than a comparably successful published author. Not that it’s all about money, of course – there are many ways to measure success.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with being, or wanting to be, traditionally published. The houses make a lot of things easier on an author, and they offer some perks unavailable to self-published authors. Such as sitting on a panel at Book Con.
As far as I can tell, not a single panel at Book Con featured a self-published author. Which is no surprise, as whatever the discussion topic, these panels are meant to sell books, and the publishing houses can provide a lot of support to a convention that individual self-published authors can’t match. Still, it would have been nice if the beginning writers in the audience, particularly those who want to write something other than straight white male protagonists, were given some indication that self-publishing was a viable option for them, that they don’t have to wait for validation from Random House, that they could go home that night and have their book for sale on Amazon the next morning. Changing the publishing industry is a worthy goal, but the person who asked the question doesn’t need to sacrifice himself to a life of rejection notices in its name.
But I digress.
I left the panel, fired off some angry tweets, and immediately got in another line. It was going to be an hour wait, and I had to pee, but the short line was rapidly lengthening as other panels let out. This was one panel I did not want to miss, so I crossed my legs and got in line to see Felicia Day.
All hail the Geek Queen! I took about ten pictures of her with my crappy camera to get this one good one, but isn’t it nice? She’s so pretty. I love Felicia Day, from her appearances on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Supernatural, and her self-created webseries The Guild. She’s also a lot of fun to follow on Tumblr. She was promoting her upcoming book, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). She was funny and charming and told some great behind-the-scenes stories about the various shows she’s worked on. Well worth holding my bladder.
Side note – I love attending cons with friends, but there is one great benefit to attending alone: it’s very easy to find a single seat towards the front at panels, even if you’re near the back of the line coming in. I was third row center for this one.
After Ms. Day, I rushed up to the showroom floor, where the Downtown Stage was presenting an interview with Norton Juster, author of my absolute favorite book when I was a kid, The Phantom Tollbooth.
Also being interviewed was Cathy Goldsmith, former Art Director for Dr. Seuss. She was promoting a recently discovered new Seuss book, and it was somewhat interesting, but I was there for Norton. It started as Felicia Day was ending so I missed the start, but I got there in time for some great stories about working with Jules Feiffer. I grabbed a seat and listened and just grinned from ear to ear the entire time. Man, The Phantom Tollbooth is such a good book.
It was close to three by the time that ended and I still hadn’t spent any time exploring the exhibition hall. But there wasn’t time for that yet, I still had someplace to be. Michelle Visage was signing at the Chronicle Books booth, and what kind of a gay would I be if I missed that? The bigger publishing houses sort of made rooms on the exhibition floor, with walls made out of shelving. The line for Michelle Visage was out and around two corners by the time I got there, but I expected it would move fairly quickly. And while I waited, I got to look at this:
Yes, Scientology had a booth at the con, offering free stress tests, Dianetics in numerous languages, and photo ops with two young people dressed as pirates for some reason. I was very tempted to see if I could find a copy of Going Clear somewhere and ask one of them to sign it.
Several people were getting the free stress test. I found this quite distressing. Book Con, maybe no booths for dangerous cults next year, okay? Okay.
So! There weren’t a whole of gay boys at the con that I noticed, but we were all in line for Miss Michelle. There was an adorable young couple in front of me, they kept alternating running to the front of the line to get a peek at her. I had been told by a woman at Chronicle that she was a hugger, so my excitement was building the closer I got, as were my nerves.
It’s only occurring to me now that there might be some poor souls out there who don’t know who Michelle Visage is. She’s a singer, radio DJ, talk show host, and, most importantly, a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I kind of love her on that.
Anyway, I got to the front at last, passed my camera off to the nice woman from Chronicle, and met Michelle. They had been giving out posters to be signed (she’s promoting a book, but it’s not out yet), so I handed it over. I told her I was a fan, she asked me who I was rooting for on Drag Race. I said Pearl, but only because I wanted to fuck her.
And Michelle Visage laughed.
Michelle Visage has a unique laugh, it’s a sharp, loud, “Ha-HAAAA!” that comes right from her gut. And I got her to do it. I was, and am, immensely pleased with myself. We had a quick conversation about Pearl (out of drag, he’s super hot), but I won’t repeat it – it probably would be fine to do so, but she said something about people working on the show that maybe shouldn’t be repeated. Anyway, she was very nice, she gave me a big hug, and I got a great picture.
Doesn’t she look great? And I also got this signed poster, which I will treasure always:
She called me darling!
After collecting myself, I had to make a decision as to whether to try to make it to the “Brave New Worlds” panel on writing for fantasy or not. I decided to take some time to explore the show floor instead – that panel would have taken me to five o’clock, leaving only an hour left before the floor closed, and I still had yet to explore.
So I wandered a bit. No pictures, I’m afraid. They were pretty stingy with the free books this year, although maybe they were all given away first thing and I just missed it. I picked up a fantasy freebie from Random House, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which I’ll give a try, but passed on some free children’s books. I was hoping to find some services for self-published authors, but there wasn’t much. I stopped by the booth for the Editorial Freelancers Association – the woman I spoke to was very nice and I’ll check them out, but I think they work more with established houses. She asked me a lot of questions about how self-publishing works, which gave me the idea that it wasn’t something they were overly familiar with. (Although to be fair, it’s not like an editor really needs to understand the self-publishing business to edit a book.) And there was a service I won’t name that’s fairly new, meant to be a sort of social network site for readers where they can get and share free books. I got a really hard sell from the woman manning the booth, it was difficult to extricate myself. It didn’t seem like something that was destined for great success, and she lost me completely at the twenty-five bucks a month fee for authors. There was one other I’ll check out, that provides various author services (but isn’t Author Services, the great evil) (although Xlibris was represented, who are affiliated with Author Services – authors, beware!).
There was a good-sized crowd at the con this year, but it did seem less than last year. Or maybe the floor was just organized better – it was a lot easier to move around. But after an hour or so, I felt like I had seen anything of potential use to me, so I tried to make that panel after all – alas, I was too late, and it was closed. I came back upstairs and sat in on the event on the Downtown Stage, “The Creative Journey”. It wasn’t a discussion, rather three speakers talking about being an artist in the digital age (whatever that means). I missed the first speaker, Elle Luna, but caught the second, Jessica Hagy.
She was fine, but I have to admit she didn’t catch my interest that much and I started looking for a place to charge my phone. I feel a little bad about that, I’m sure she was making very good points but I was distracted by my phone dying and sort of missed it. But then the third speaker, Austin Kleon, got up, and he was actually pretty good.
He had some interesting things to say about the importance of insulating creative work from ideas of success or failure. And he used the movie Groundhog Day as his primary metaphor. I was on board. (Although I disagree with him about the ending of Mad Men.) All three authors were signing at a nearby table after, so I picked up one of his books and got it signed – Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. Looks like a fun, quick read, and maybe I’ll get some useful tips from it. It was my only purchase of the day.
I tried to hit the exhibition floor again, but everything was shutting down so I came back to the stage for another panel – “Your Opinion Suck! Special Edition: Rotten Tomatoes Critics vs. Fans; Best and Worst Book to Screen Adaptations”. That’s a whole lot of title for a simple idea – audience members named a movie that had been adapted from a book, gave their opinion as to whether it was “rotten” or “fresh” and why, and then a panel of film critics either agreed or disagreed.
I have no idea who’s on the panel and I’m not looking it up. Sorry. But they were fun. Most of the people in line were kids arguing vociferously about why the film adaptation of their favorite book was an abomination. It was adorable – future cynics.
That ended around six, and the exhibition hall closed but the panels continued at the other end of the Javits Center. There was one I had been going back and forth on attending, as it didn’t start until seven. But I went downstairs, and the line was surprisingly short so I figured what the hell. I plopped down on the carpet and read my G-Man book until they let us in. I once again scored a seat front and center, this time for “The Laugh Button Live!” I do not know what The Laugh Button is, but it was hosting a really good line-up of stand up comedians.
And I apologize in advance, most of my pictures of this event are pretty rough. The lighting was terrible – the comedians kept commenting on it. They were basically in shadow for the whole night.
Anyway, that’s Sara Benincasa, the host. I’ve been peripherally aware of her for some time, I think through various internet writings, but I’ve never actually seen her stand-up or watched any of her videos – I’ve long meant to, but have never gotten around to it. I will, now. She was very funny – queer geek humor is right up my alley. (That’s not all she does, but it’s what I latched onto.) She was hawking a book, which I might check out.
Next up was Robert Kelly, whom I’m not familiar with (he’s on Louie, which I really should watch but don’t). He has this very white straight guy kind of act which could have gone very, very wrong with this particular audience of mostly queer-friendly intelligent young women, but it went pretty right instead. He knew who his audience was and did his thing without being at all insulting (except to himself). He was great.
Next was the main reason I decided to stick around – motherfucking John Leguizamo!
He didn’t do a routine – instead, he and Benincasa had an informal conversation.
He was promoting the graphic novel adaptation of his play Ghetto Klown, so they talked a lot about that, but they also just sort of riffed off each other. It was fun, and Leguizamo is immensely charming (and dreamy…), so this would have made the whole event worth it even if everybody else sucked.
But everybody else didn’t suck, everybody else was great.
Judah Friedlander, from 30 Rock, did a few minutes. He was amazing. Most of his act is one-liners, but he interacted with people in the audience and it seemed like he was coming up with a lot of stuff on the spot.
And finally…
Lizz Winstead also had a conversation with Benincasa rather than doing a routine. She told the story of how she co-created The Daily Show. I’m sorry I didn’t get a better picture of her. She rocks pretty hard.
And that was it! Overall a very satisfying Book Con this year. I was definitely more fan than professional, missing a few craft panels in favor of pure fun, but that’s on me. I’d like to see more acknowledgment of self-publishing next year, but I don’t know if that’s in the cards – that’s not where the money is. (Well, it’s where the money is for authors, but not for the people who produce conventions.)
I leave you with this year’s swag haul – pretty light. I usually leave Comic Con with a backache, but my bag was highly heftable after Book Con. More free stuff next year, please! I can always use more books!
