Book Expo America 2010 in New York
Late Thursday afternoon, after cooking trotters soup with Chef Floyd Cardoz at Tabla, and then meeting with my book’s film producers, I made my way into the bowels of the Jacob Javits Center in New York, to a coffee-and-cookies get-together in a basement romper room. Up above us Jon Stewart and other lit-gliterati strode across the raging Book Expo America. I was down in the basement, however, with a loose-knit cabal of literary bloggers: stay-at-home moms and other book lovers, mostly “amateur,” who entertain themselves by reading and posting their book reviews on-line in blogging rolls.
A business journalist for 25 years, I’ve got pretty good antennae for sensing trends on the rise, and that’s just the feeling I got when down among the basement bloggers. I’m convinced this cadre of dedicated and passionate book-bloggers are going to systematically erode the role of the “professional” book reviewers, just like “amateur” reporters used blogs and YouTube to change the nature of journalism, or Zagats and city-focused websites have changed the restaurant review business.
I briefly met, for example, the unpretentious but rather formidable folk behind S. Krishna’s Books, Devourer of Books, The Zen Leaf, and Beth Fish Reads. All of these bloggers had, coincidentally, already signed up to The Hundred-Foot Journey‘s “blog-tour”. That means starting the day before my novel hits the stores on July 6th, a different literary blogger will, every day for almost three weeks, review my book on-line.
Many of these bloggers have established niches for themselves: Candace at Beth Fish Reads has, for example, made a virtue of her central Pennsylvania location by uncovering little-known authors all across the state; the DC-area-based S. Krishna has a taste for highbrow literature with multicultural themes. The cool public defense attorney from Orange County, Ca., I met as I was leaving has a passion for food and France, and that has shaped her literary interests at Chocolate & Crossiants. My fantastic guide through this blogging underworld was Allie Greenwald of New York, the energetic blogger behind the historical fiction reviews at HistFicChick.
It really was an eye-opening experience and you could see how new businesses and careers were being created in this overlooked corner of virtual space. The sheer creativity and fun and diversity of their blogging avatars is enough to command respect, and their passion and commitment to the joy of reading was palpable and infectious to be around.
Closer to publication date, I will post a complete list of all the book bloggers we know will be reviewing The Hundred-Foot Journey.
Tags: fiction, review, The Hundred-Foot Journey
Thanks for this post and for the shout-out. It was great to meet you at BEA, and our conversation sparked some ideas for my promotion of Pennsylvania authors. I’ll let you know if I decide to take the feature to the next level.
It was very exciting to meet you all. I think you’re on to something and happy to help any way I can. Best, R