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<\/a>Egmont scored a elegant coup in using the gorgeous Mexican Cultural Institute in DC during Winter Institute as a venue for its party celebrating Walter Dean Myers and Pam and Jon Voelkel.<\/p><\/div>
\nToday I received my first (very early!) invitation to a publisher dinner at BookExpo America in May. These dinners are so wonderful, one of the highlights of a bookseller’s year. A publisher will bring phenomenal authors and illustrators to some delicious restaurant with a quiet room (or a rooftop garden, or a museum, or a boat, etcetera) and invite a group of booksellers to feast with them. Some of these dinners are quite small and intimate; others are full-scale parties. Before the economy tanked, some of these festivities were outrageously elaborate. Whatever the size or venue, they are pretty magical. Publishers invite store owners and book buyers to these dinners. The featured authors and artists are scattered around the room or table(s), and often shift stations between each course to give all of the booksellers an opportunity to become acquainted with them. It’s such a terrific opportunity to hear behind-the-scenes inspiration and anecdotes about the making of books, and to get to know the three-dimensional people behind the stories we love. It certainly gets us fired up about the great books and authors featured.
\nIt takes a while for a new store to start getting invitations, since the groups are often limited to 8 or 12 booksellers. As a rookie store owner back in the mid-1990s, I was lucky enough to have found a mentor in the magnificently sharp, funny, brilliant (and well-read) Carol Chittenden of Eight Cousins<\/a> in Falmouth, Mass. Before I’d ever even heard of publisher dinners, she was the one who put a quiet bee in a few important ears suggesting that Josie and I be included in a dinner or two. Every bookseller should be so fortunate to have a Carol.
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