Recapping Day 1 of 2018's BookCon

Alright, ya’ll. It’s time for me to finally write this BookCon recap that I’ve been mentioning for the past week. Here’s Day 1 of BookCon in all it’s glory!

First, I guess I should make the disclaimer that this was my first BookCon experience, and I only was able to go because I live in NYC. If I didn’t live in NYC, I don’t think I would go. It’s just too expensive. But, I only had to pay the ticket prices, no travel expenses, so that was good for me.

Also, I was unable to sign up for any autographing tickets, simply because I accidentally overslept when the tickets went live. Ugh. I’m just glad I got to meet Renee Ahdie and co. the day before BookCon started, so I didn’t miss out on author-meeting opportunities.

Now, onto the actual things that happened during BookCon, starting with the line. My roommate and I got up around 7 a.m. to get to the Javits Center (BookCon’s location) and get in line around 9 a.m. (It’s a one-hour train ride to Javits from our apartment.) But apparently, some people got there ridiculously early, because we were in one of the last sections set up for when security released the lines one-by-one to enter the convention center. This meant my roommate and I missed our first planned ARC drop of Empire of Sands from Hachette. They’d all been nabbed.

Fortunately, though, we did get in a random line for Harper Voyager for two finished fantasy books: The City of Brass and The Poppy War. That was super exciting. The City of Brass had been catching my eye.

That all happened in the first 15 minutes. After those 15 minutes, our plan was to go to Penguin Teen’s Underlined birthday giveaway at 11:30, so we had some time to kill between 10 a.m. and 11:15 (because all lines can only form 15 minutes before the planned event. Note that this tidbit becomes important for Day 2’s chaos.). We just walked around for a while and ate some food, but once the Underlined line formed, we actually left once we learned what was being given away—just portable chargers and random stuff. I did get a free tote from another Penguin giveaway though. It was for Melissa de la Cruz’s Hamilton books.

Our next plan was to go to Epic Reads’ ARC drop, but apparently, that one had a ticketing system. You had to stand in line an hour early just to get a sticky note ticket. Then, you had to stand in line an hour later to play a plinko game for one possible ARC out of a few options. Needless to say, my roommate and I did not get a chance to participate in any of these plinko events. The lines were crazy. But, the only ARC I wanted from Epic Reads was What If It’s Us, so I wasn’t too bummed. We did end up nabbing a Harry Potter poster from the Scholastic booth, though. And it is awesome!

As much of the Harry Potter poster as I could take a picture of. It's huge!

Our first successful event was for Penguin Teen’s Book It giveaway. Penguin had postcards with three different travel options, and, when you checked one, you got an ARC for that destination. There was a European option, which was for an ARC of The Brilliant Death, a Middle East option for Darius the Great is Not Okay, and a tropical option for Seafire. The first day, I got Darius the Great is Not Okay, which I had never heard of before, so that was a surprise. Oh, they also had luggage tags for everyone.

Me and Aelin, because I can totally blend in. Right?

After the travel event, we chilled around the Hachette booth until more ARCs of Empire of Sands dropped. Thankfully for my roommate who was dying to get her hands on a copy, we were able to grab one. I also got back in line for an ARC copy of Annex as well.

Once the ARC drop was over, I had some time to kill because my roommate had to go to a Naomi Novak signing. I rested my feet for a bit and ate the brownie I got from Starbucks earlier in the day. When her event was over, we thought about trying for the Epic Reads ARC plinko game again, but the line was stupid long and icky, so we called it a day.

City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri (ARC)
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram (ARC)
Annex by Rich Larsen (ARC) 
Slayer by Kiersten White (sampler)

All in all, day one was fairly successful. There were a few snags, mostly with the Epic Reads booth, but I ended up with two finished books and three ARCs, so all was well in the world. Oh, and I forgot to mention, my roommate and I were being super picky about what books we were getting in line for. We didn’t even worry about Macmillan or Simon & Schuster’s booths (or any of the smaller booths), simply because we both work at those two companies.

Did you go to BookCon this year? Or any year? If so, what did you manage to get? And if not, what would you have liked to get?