Submitted by Barbara Radisavljevic, Jun 4, 2007 12:24

I couldn't go this year. Nor have I been able to go since Chicago in 2000. Every time the publishers start offering their BEA specials I am reminded that once again it's too far away from California, too expensive, and that I hate crowds. I used to be very excited about going on the rare occasions the show was in Los Angeles, but I'm afraid getting older has made me reluctant to pay a lot of money to be alone in a strange city, spend my days trying to see how many booths on my list I can hit before the convention is over and if I have time for any workshops at all and still finish my exhibit hall business. I carry a bag of trail mix to keep from fainting with hunger until I have to find something more substantial to eat before continuing the unfinishable race to see everything and place all the orders I want to make. When the doors finally close at the end of the day, it's back to my lodging place to put down the thirty pounds or so of accumulated books catalogs I've been carrying around since the wheeled helpers have been banned from the exhibit hall, and find a real meal somewhere. My evenings are spent looking at the catalogs and specials and getting orders ready to hand in at booths the next day as I make my rounds again.

Somehow as the years pass and I get older, I seems I've seen it all before, and I don't enjoy carrying the load as much as my body ages. I also wear out more easily on the exhibit hall floor, and seem to need more sleep than the five or six hours I get after my night of catalog browsing. And when I get home, it seems I've spent a lot of money to go spend more than I should spend because seeing all the new books makes me want to buy things I wouldn't otherwise know about.

So now I stay home. The business misses me when I'm gone for so long, and I don't want to chance missing that $5000 rush purchase order a school must make before the end of May. I can shop the specials at home on the Internet, sleep in my own bed, eat better food, and save lots of money I shouldn't spend. As to the free books the authors hand out, I do miss them, but I've discovered that many of them I've tried to read weren't worth the effort. I avoid the autographing area. Very few of the big names are worth the time in line to see, and once too often I've stood in line only to have the books run out just before I got to the front. I get my books at the booths from the authors and publishers I expect to enjoy.

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