Today I bought a day pass to Bouchercon, which is an industry conference for mystery/crime writing. It was actually much like the World Fantasy Convention, except that people dressed nicely. I only knew a few people there, so it was rather nice to not be the target of The Questions.
Mystery, as it is a more commercially significant genre, had a better selection of flyers and leaflets, with only a few that were amusing. Here's one of the few, though the ridiculous part is a little blurry:
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One way not to sabotage your submission—use a better copy editor than the copywriter here, who thinks that famous HBO show is called First Blood. Tsk tsk.
I only went to a couple of panels—one of genre/writing for the "market"/literary snobbery and it was much the same thing as one would see at a fantasy convention, specifically a faux populist hooting about how awesome Story is and how those literary folks are just the worst. The bright spot of the panel was Dreda Say Mitchell, who put the kibosh to the counter-snobbery nonsense, but whose books were sadly unavailable in the dealer's room. The Scientologists were there though, so it really was just like an SF con.
Some differences—mystery is a big money genre (with few short fiction venues) so as Ben pointed out, virtually every conversation one could have moved very quickly to the discussion of film/tv options, launching this or that series, etc. Big business crowd. The book selection in the goodie bag seemed limited—at least the pickin's were slim-to-none in the bookswap room compared to the WFC where there are fewer copies of more books distributed in the bags. I was able to get rid of my Marcia Clark book though (yikes!)
I eventually fell in with the Harboiled in Hard Times touring bunch and made my way with them back to East Bay, where the reading climaxed with an audience member crying about some altercation with an ex-boyfriend, an abandoned novel, and the horror of possibly returning to Kentucky. Also, she wanted to borrow a pen. I had a pomegranate limeade, which was pretty gross, actually, but a good time was had by all.
Mystery, as it is a more commercially significant genre, had a better selection of flyers and leaflets, with only a few that were amusing. Here's one of the few, though the ridiculous part is a little blurry:
One way not to sabotage your submission—use a better copy editor than the copywriter here, who thinks that famous HBO show is called First Blood. Tsk tsk.
I only went to a couple of panels—one of genre/writing for the "market"/literary snobbery and it was much the same thing as one would see at a fantasy convention, specifically a faux populist hooting about how awesome Story is and how those literary folks are just the worst. The bright spot of the panel was Dreda Say Mitchell, who put the kibosh to the counter-snobbery nonsense, but whose books were sadly unavailable in the dealer's room. The Scientologists were there though, so it really was just like an SF con.
Some differences—mystery is a big money genre (with few short fiction venues) so as Ben pointed out, virtually every conversation one could have moved very quickly to the discussion of film/tv options, launching this or that series, etc. Big business crowd. The book selection in the goodie bag seemed limited—at least the pickin's were slim-to-none in the bookswap room compared to the WFC where there are fewer copies of more books distributed in the bags. I was able to get rid of my Marcia Clark book though (yikes!)
I eventually fell in with the Harboiled in Hard Times touring bunch and made my way with them back to East Bay, where the reading climaxed with an audience member crying about some altercation with an ex-boyfriend, an abandoned novel, and the horror of possibly returning to Kentucky. Also, she wanted to borrow a pen. I had a pomegranate limeade, which was pretty gross, actually, but a good time was had by all.