This Saturday will be the first BookCon event. A few months ago now ReedPOP, the organizer of BEA (Book Expo America) as well as NY ComiCon, officially announced the first BookCon. If you are not familiar with BEA, it is essentially a trade show for books. There are writers, authors, purchasers, librarians, media,  bloggers, publishes, self-publishers, distributors, and basically anything else you can think of related to books and publishing. There also tend to be a lot of ARC books, of which many received a ridiculously heavy bags, needing to be lugged around all day (I know I’m bitching about free books, but seriously, print editions are not light).  A few year ago the final day of the trade show was opened up to the public as “Power Reader Day” where consumers got the chance to walk the trade floor at Javits and see the latest things on the market. This was not only publishers showcasing their latest works, but groups like SFWA, new eBook distributor, indie publishing assistance and all sorts of book related booths. I have attended these and it is quite interesting and very enjoyable. There were great book signings and authors taking the stage. I got to see authors ranging from Neil Gaiman, to comedian Jim Gaffigan.

This year ReedPOP decided to change the image of the Power Reader day and re brand it as BookCon. Now I am not sure if your average readers are as open to a “Con” environment as my fellow SFF readers, but I have sure seen some mixed feedback on this. While this even sounds great, there are some drawbacks. If you were one to purchase the power reader ticket early, and expect the same event as last year, you are out of luck. Sure we are told that there will be more public centric events, but much of the trade aspect is no longer available to you. BookCon will only have access to a specific area. There will no longer be access to BEA as a whole. This is a thorn in a lot of people’s sides, and honestly I understand. It feels like bait and switch. On the other hand, being on that end, I remember going and thinking “Ok, I’m here, what now? Who can I speak to and in what ways can I interact with these people?” I honestly thought it very overwhelming at first.

What turning this into a Con should do is make it more of an approachable event to the public. Events and authors will be focused on the reader this day, unlike the trade event, focusing on all of the other aspects of the industry. The guest list is probably more consumer minded with people such as Stan Lee, Cary Elwes best known as the the Dread Pirate Roberts/Westley, Danielle Fishel from Boy Meets World and R.L Stein. While I can appreciate the guest list, I do feel that the SF/F world is a bit underrepresented. Lev Grossman will be there which is great, but there are not many other big names in the genre that call out to me. This is mildly disappointing (not Lev he is quite the opposite of disappointing, I mean that there are not more like him) considering that there are many great authors with upcoming books or recently released books that I would have loved to have seen though. YA and romance certainly have much  larger presence. All in all it does have the potential to be a nice experience. There are certainly negatives to the new format, but perhaps it will successfully bring more of my fellow book nerds together with a great opportunity to interact with the publishers and authors we love. Maybe if this has a better turnout than the previous Power Reader days, it could grow and we the fans could dictate what we would like in the future.