My Complete Rundown of BookCon 2026

As you've registered from my latest content (and always), I've been a bit nostalgic lately about my years as a book blogger. Words Like Silver turned 15 this month, so that was to be expected.

(Relatedly: I recently picked up The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym.)

Today, I wanted to write through my experiences at the big spring events, although I narrate this through the veil of the first good sleep you've gotten in two weeks. You know how you still feel absolutely asleep that next morning? Like your body remembers it should be tired.

One of the events that "kicked off" my book blogging way back when was attending BookExpo America 2012, an industry fair where I met a lot of other reviewers and first felt the rush of being "involved in" the industry. I came home with suitcases full of upcoming releases that shaped my blog for the next year. It absolutely kickstarted my adventures in book publishing.

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Me then.

This spring, after years living in Hawai'i and months buried in the actual book part of my author career, I rejoined the land of the living by attending my first massive in-real-life book events since college (aside from individual signings and events.)

There are plenty of journalist friends, authors, and other reviewers whom I'd worked with or engaged with online—at this point—for years, and it's always strange, lovely, and disorienting to meet them face-to-face for the first time.

(Prime example: heights. I'm 5'10, and I do think I "seem tall" online somehow, but people are nearly always surprised by how tall I am in reality. Especially if I'm wearing boots.)

Last weekend, I went to BookCon. Then this weekend, I attended (and helped out with) YALLWEST 2026.

My first round of these events was wonderful, productive, and also more emotional than I expected—because of:

• the transition to considering myself an author here for the first time, and seeing where the reader/author lines would blur,
• the marker of how much time has passed and how much I'd given to my book blog and debut novel since first starting each,
• the terror of worrying I'd be "bad" at socializing after a solid year of tunnel vision, and:
• also the most intense realization of what the next few years will look like. I've been grappling with a lot of existential questions lately about what I want my day-to-day to look like, how to balance art and stability, etc. So a lot of this is helpful data in learning the ropes.

I was going to combine my experience at both events into one post but decided to just debrief BookCon and tackle YALLWEST in a separate post.

First, BookCon in NYC last weekend.

Crowds outside the Javits. Credit / @fiercereads.

What is BookCon?

The first BookCon was put on in 2014, tacked onto the end of the trade show I just mentioned: BEA. BEA is a lot still, but—dare I say it was way more chill?

The event was full of librarians, marketers, booksellers, press, and other industry professionals, so it wasn't quite as crowded. There were still signings and meetings and panels and galley (review copy) giveaways, and you meticulously planned your day via an extensive color-coded spreadsheet, but it was much more "business" which did make it more streamlined—in my opinion. Nowadays, the closest equivalent to me would likely be the ALA conference.

A lot of these events dissolved during or after the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. BEA is likely not returning. ALA dropped from two annual conferences (annual and midwinter) down to one. This year, for the first time, BookCon came back, which accounted for the crowds.

How did I prep? Why did I go?

I snagged a ticket when they were first announced and got lucky. The rollout of tickets felt like a mess, and I'd gotten lucky in remembering the timing the day of. I ended up having to piecemeal together a Saturday and Sunday ticket. I personally didn't queue to secure tickets to meet any authors (a required process a few months later, which operated like a concert queue), which was partly because of what I value in a book experience (waiting two hours for a signature is not entirely my vibe) and partly because I'm lucky enough that I'd likely encounter those same authors through my jobs at some point.

Admittedly, I tracked the online chatter and agreed with plenty of it. It was difficult to find out much about BookCon beforehand, and there was a lot of confusion that could have been cleared up with more direct messaging. Some of the snarkier responses by the brand to sincere queries were confusing to me. Also, there were bits that people should know going in—like, you either cannot sell your ticket or they make it difficult to.

(Even now, I'm not sure, but that's good to know because I definitely bought mine as an "If it works, it works" situation. And even my ticket is a business write-off, so spending on it mattered a little less than someone in a more vulnerable situation. Also, I had friends I could stay with and flight credits stored up—so the stakes were lower for me on whether or not BookCon actually worked out.)

Most people trying to figure out more about BookCon weren't being malicious in asking.

I cared most about seeing people adjacent to publishing: the excuse to meet up with industry friends or new contacts who would be at the show. I love wandering the booths; I discovered some new reads. I'm also not in any particular "fandom" spaces, so I'm not inherently the type to rock themed merch or gather around those events. BookCon absolutely was more fandom-focused, which was fun to see. This year was big on Heated Rivalry and romantasy, for example. (Some consumers complained that it might as well have been called RomantasyCon for the emphasis on genre.)

The thought of going as press?

If they'd had press passes that were easier to secure, I would have applied for a press badge. They reserved those for targeted, topical reporters with confirmed assignments—like the books and culture sections at ELLE and USA Today.

If you're unclear about what that means, any press events fall into two camps: you go and pitch a story later, or they need to know your exact assignment before going. The former is better for journalists, but it depends on context, vertical, etc. For BookCon, I was a little surprised by requiring a confirmed assignment beforehand. Still, it made total sense for them to keep press passes limited to books-focused reporters as opposed to journalists who wrote about books in addition to other topics.

I thought about pitching BookCon-oriented pieces to my various outlets, but didn't mind being a consumer here. Maybe next time, but also—maybe next time I attend (hopefully), I'd be a participating author anyway.

Side note: For ALA, I would go as press purely for the book blog. For YALLFEST and YALLWEST, too. BookCon was absolutely massive, so it made sense that they wouldn't be able to extend press passes beyond traditional media; press focused on major interviews in a dedicated room, and needed full access to any and all programming.

Extending that to broader press (creators, influencers, etc.) would have been an absolute nightmare, so I wouldn't have applied for BookCon solely as a book blogger. My coverage here is too personal and limited in scope! Overall, happier to see more book-oriented creators who fall into my same bucket, even if there are also problems that arise with the sheer volume of it.

My travel to the city

Now, April's been a big question mark for me. When I moved back from Hawai'i around the turn of the year, I was doing book edits until March. Then I had some housekeeping to do, like business admin and catching up on other life to-dos. I know my life narrows in on the writing process when I'm in the thick of it, so have to build in time after to rebuild other pillars of life.

I thought I might have some big news announced in April, so was preparing for that targeted push. I have some tasks and schemes I'd like to time for that reveal that will take a lot of time and effort on my end.

And then, of course, I had my trips mapped out, which would for sure be a lot of energy and effort since I hadn't been exposed to that intense of a turnaround in a while—and these were all for new events I hadn't been to before, so I didn't have a clear vision of how packed or not my month would actually be.

For that reason, one bit of my tour I felt a little bad about is that I was actually very last minute about letting people know I'd be around/in their respective cities. I just didn't know my schedule, and because it'd been so long, I had no real clue about how much actual time I would have outside of any given event. Would it be a drop-in type thing where I actually have the whole day to work with? Or would I be going-going-going and unable to speak after such exhausting days?

In NYC specifically, there's a certain proportion of book/journalism/friend socializing that I always have to figure out before going in. Luckily, I should be in NYC enough that anything I don't get to can be saved for the next trip.

For example, I definitely need to do a journalism-focused trip in NYC where I'm getting coffees with my editors or visiting more offices or saying yes to brand events and activations, for example. This trip was mostly bookish, so helped me more with my publishing presence than my current day job career. (There was some overlap in that I did get to hang out with a book journalist friend. Best of both worlds.)

I usually end up crashing with a college friend. College friends abound in NYC, and I'm so grateful for them. Because of that, I did end up going out Friday and Saturday, so I definitely stretched myself stamina-wise. It'd been a minute!

Saturday at BookCon—My Observations

Back of the line!

I got up pretty leisurely, and looked at my ticket for the first time. When I felt appropriately caffeinated (enough), I took a car to the Javits Center and was absolutely shocked by the line. The floor opened at 10, and it was maybe 10:40. The line wrapped around the block.

Now, BEA was different. For one, we were allowed inside the conference center. For another, apparently BookCon this year only had access to a small portion of the Javits, so they funneled foot traffic through specific doors which made it appear massive. The inside of BEA felt quieter because everyone had a different schedule, even though we were all eager to get onto the exhibit floor as soon as it opened.

They also apparently oversold tickets. There were about 25,000 people there—many in themed costume or t-shirts. Most people seemed to have comfy sneakers, backpacks and totes at the ready to stock up with books, etc. Walking to the back of the line (which took several blocks and actually 10-15 minutes to reach the end.

Where the line ended.

Not going to lie: when I saw the line, I really considered bailing on BookCon entirely. Like I said, I was mostly there for the adjacent people—so maybe I should just wait until the event was over and go grab a drink with them after, for example. My people at BookCon were very much the people who were like "I can only do this for two hours"—or were staffing it in some way. (A friend told me later that some people started lining up around 6 A.M.)

In general, I told them to come find me if they need a spot of peace; we could chat and wander, or exist in total silence. I'm definitely not bothered by someone needing to be catatonic around me because their social battery is wiped—I am always happy to be that person!

Luckily, the line moved really quickly. Also, God bless the volunteers. It took about 30 minutes to get through. As a note, I looked at the end on my map and figured that on Sunday, I would Uber directly to that spot the next day versus wasting time and line placement by being dropped at the entrance.

Later in the day, I looked outside and the line was nonexistent. So I also thought—if I'm really just there to see people and what's coming out and to wander, the next day I'd come in closer to noon and skip the line entirely.

Admittedly, every other conference/event I'd been to had much cleaner signing lines and more room between booths. I found it pretty impossible to figure out where any given line started or what it was even for, which is a sentiment I've heard echoed by attendees; if I'd had certain events or books I was really beelining for, I would have been pretty frustrated by the lack of clarity. The overall organization of the event felt chaotic.

On Saturday, I stayed from roughly 10:30 to 2:30. As expected, my favorite part was just taking a lap through the booths and seeing what was coming out and what people were excited for. Later on, I camped out in the Allurial lounge, which had some activations like a spin-the-wheel galley giveaway, a smaller panel stage hosting some discussions and crafting activities, and even a bar. Some decent seating! I saw a book blogger friend, Jessica, then headed out.

Sunday at BookCon—My Observations

Again, if I'd felt super urgent about particular events at BookCon, this might have been different. But because I was already headed to YALLWEST the next weekend, which would be much more intimate, I wasn't feeling particularly pressed to clamor for galleys. I loved what conversations I saw from the panels, but also enjoyed the fantastic journalism coverage of those panels from afar.

On Sunday, I got up wiped and told myself I'd get ready for the event soon. I planned to wander the floor with Erica Barmash, the VP of marketing and publicity at Bloomsbury, who was largely in the same boat: just there to walk around a bit then duck out. She's always been so wonderful to run into at industry events. And then I wanted to see Iyana, who was having a blast running around, and Christina Li, and a newer Substack friend, Mike, who runs Books on Gif. But also, I figured all of them were people I'd see another time in the city.

So—I skipped and went to a ballet class at Broadway Dance Center instead. Since my favorite part was wandering the booths floor and I'd already gotten my fill...I didn't feel like I'd get much more from Sunday. I do think it was slightly more organized, from my understanding, because people had figured out a bit more of what it would look like by the next day.

Some scattered thoughts on BookCon—

I was hanging out with aforementioned books reporter friend as she was putting the finishing touches on her BookCon wrapup, so I'll just direct y'all to Clare's article at USATODAY for the full picture. Think Dungeon Crawler Carl's popularity, Veronica Roth's announcement of The Sixth Faction, and a whole lot of Heated Rivalry.

Epic first line:

“The booklovers in your life are probably in need of a little sleep. ”

• It's fantastic to see readers so invigorated by a fan-focused event centered around reading. The hunger is still there. The numbers should remind us that, despite the issues with literacy, there is a real community to tap into. That reminds me of a take I saw last year that I agree with: the number of overall readers may be lower, but the number of people who identify as readers are more intense about it. And then, that affects some of the reader demographics i.e. romantasy commanding attention, YA being read by more adults, etc.
• Behaviorally, there were some issues. Some were expected but still disappointing—like people being horrible to each other in the desperation to get in certain lines.
• Others were pretty mean towards the authors themselves, which surges all sorts of thoughts for me. While I'm sure it existed before, recently I've noticed this strange, severe disconnect in people forgetting that the creator of their favorite media...created that media. There's this thought as if the book just appeared fully formed and isn't from this one person, like the reader owns it more than the writer does. There are a lot of directions for me to go in from this point, but I'll try to limit it for now. Small example: I've been genuinely surprised by the amount of readers I've seen this year claiming online that an author does not understand the characters within their own work. That seems to ripple into commentary on elements of craft I'm seeing also like a demand for first-person for self-insertion, etc. There's a difference between blindly reading (death of the author?) versus whatever this is.
• I've also been mulling over how the sheer prevalence of the book industry being online has translated to this dehumanizing behavior IRL towards authors and other people. I love book people—don't get me wrong. But seeing the way the tides turn so rapidly because some readers forget that authors are people is...a lot! In reader spaces especially, people get used to a comments section or a hot take, and that can become very obvious in-person. That negative shift somewhat intersects with my questions of visibility, author brand as "persona," the blurring lines of what readers feel entitled to within a given work, so I'm still thinking about it.

I do believe they're on different weekends for 2027, but this year, BookCon and L.A. Times Festival of Books were on the same weekend, so I had some friends and peers opt for the latter.

Next year, I would probably do the same—not because BookCon was miserable or anything (I still had a decent time, but mostly enjoyed everything outside of BookCon) but because the nature of the L.A. Times Festival of Books looked more up my alley: more genre diversity, wandering outside through the booths, events that align slightly more with my taste. I do know of a few authors who did both—so, all the power to y'all. I cannot imagine.

A bunch of other authors, publishing workers, etc. hit BookCon last weekend and YALLWEST this weekend, so there was some solidarity and exhaustion baked into that. I'm wiped from two events back-to-back and I wasn't even working them, so I have so much sympathy for it. Which, again, intersects with everything I'm mulling over about the reader behavior aspect, and how we view the authors of our favorite books (even when positive too! Not just in reference to some of the bad that came out of BookCon.)

See y'all next year, maybe?