Over at Publishers Lunch, Michael Cader remarked that the way the booths were set up, people were more encouraged to look down at the floor than up at anyone passing by. I can only speak for myself, but when there are hundreds and hundreds of specific galleys piled up everywhere, it's hard not to notice them. Most of these piles were left by themselves, their visual display enough incentive for booksellers and other floor-walkers to pick up. But some people went for the hard sell (if you handed me a galley based on it, rest assured that it did not make the final cut in my take-home stash) while others tried and inadvertently amused me. That would be Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch, who stood in the midst of the Hachette Book Group booth handing out copies of Janet Fitch's new novel, her first in seven years after the Oprah-approved WHITE OLEANDER. Handing me mine, I reminded him we'd first met a few weeks back at the Edgars and silently wondered why the president of the company was taking on the role of sales rep. Then again, considering how many people grabbed Fitch's book (myself included) it must have worked!

Some of the other galleys prominently on display at the majors included Chris Anderson's THE LONG TAIL and Polly Williamson's THE YUMMY MUMMY (both from Hyperion) Kate Atkinson's ONE GOOD TURN (Little, Brown) Linda Francis Lee's THE DEVIL IN THE JUNIOR LEAGUE (St. Martin's) Nell Freudenberger's THE DISSIDENT (Ecco) and in a special "for BEA edition" Marcus Sakey's debut thriller THE BLADE ITSELF, which St. Martin's will publish early next year. It was a great surprise as - full disclosure - my blurb appears on the back cover of the galley, which is taken up by quotes from authors and booksellers. And as there were times I found myself doing the hard sell on this book, it's easy to see how anyone can, as long as they love the book in question...

Friday seemed to be the busiest day of the three (with Saturday seeing people taking off for the weekend and Sunday being essentially dead, according to reports) and book-gathering - or what I termed "drive-by galleying" the previous year - was out in force. And yes, the complaints about having to go up the escalator to go back down were totally justified - the Convention Center seems to have been based on something other than pure logic - but it did make things a little less crazy than Javits, where BEA returns next year. Then things will *really* get nutty...