Today I attended my first Books by the Bridge author signing
event #BBTB2019
Over 70 romance authors under the big top at Lunar Park
Sydney which is located right next to Australia’s iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.
To get the BBTB full experience we need to rewind to April
2018. This is when the coveted entry tickets went on sale. The limited number VIP
entry is the ticket to get and I was literally sitting at my computer the
minute they went on sale. I was super excited to get 2 VIP tickets (for my
sister-in-law and myself). The VIP tickets sold out in 10 minutes. Morning,
afternoon and all-day tickets were still available so nobody missed out.
VIP
meant we were allowed entry 1 hour earlier plus received a swag bag of books
and a light lunch.
So now the waiting began but to while away the months we had
a very chatty and enthusiastic Facebook group were we could chat to authors get
to know other members and pre order books to pick up on the day.
The day
has arrived!!!
We arrived bright and early at 9:30am and armed with our
first coffee of the day we didn’t let the wet weather dampen our enthusiasm.
Free books were immediately thrust into our hands (it’s
already looking like a great day) and one publisher’s display even had a lolly
bar. I purchased a BBTB signing sheet and we were ready to go.
What a marvellous, busy, full on day we had! Authors to chat
to, books to be signed and swag to collect. Wow, was there plenty of swag!
Keychains, pens, bookmarks, lip balm, chocolates, the most amazing cookies,
lollypops and free eBook downloads. I was in bibliophile heaven.
We lunched, we coffeed, went for some more signings,
purchased books and mugs and then dragged our weary but contended bodies home.
We
decided we will definitely do this again and we also learnt a couple of things
(this being our first time).
1.
When you say you are only going to buy a couple
of books; just laugh at yourself and say ‘sure’.
2.
Take a suitcase with wheels because not only
will you buy books, there is loads of free stuff and heaps of book raffles
which we couldn’t enter because we just couldn’t carry any more.
I would
like to thank Kat T Masen and Jodi L Perry and all the attending authors who
travelled from afar to make this the most amazing day.
We will see you all at the next one!!
I'm so glad you had an awesome day, Veronica. The experience for me from the author's perspective was just as much fun at West Coast Fiction Festival last November in Perth. We are about to have another event in Perth town - an ARRA (Aust Romance Readers Assoc) coming up in March. Cheers to your day in bibliophile heaven!
ReplyDeletexx Lily
Thank you Lily. I missed out on the West Coast Fiction Festival by a few weeks. I was staying in Scarborough in October. I do hope to get back one day and spend more time there and hopefully meet up with some of my fav WA authors.
DeleteWow! What a brilliant day Veronica! And how many goodies did you get!!! You should list the books and post the same thing as your blog in the group - I know there would be heaps interested, and loads of Sydney people who might attend next year :) Good job woman! I'm jealous ;) x
ReplyDeleteIt really was such a fun day and there were some veterans there that had signing books made and suitcases for their books. I will post something in the Goodreads group. I don’t think it’s on again for two years :(
DeleteWhat a great event, and what an INCREDIBLE HAUL!!! It sounds like so much fun!!
ReplyDeleteThis is great I’m so excited for the next event this time I got myself VIP tickets and this time I’m definitely bringing a small suitcase with me. Great idea and love the post definitely a great experienced :)
ReplyDeleteYay for VIP tickets. I was so lucky to be able to get them again. Counting down the days.
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