Book Blogger Hop March 18th - March 24th: New Horizon's Flyby of Jupiter Slowed the Planet, xkcd's "what if" 146 Works Out How Many Such Flyby's Would Be Needed to Stop Jupiter Completely

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: Has your contact with authors usually been in person, via e-mail, social media, or something else?

If we are talking about volume, then the answer is social media. Between Twitter and Facebook, most authors are easy to interact with (and most authors who are on social media are open to interactions with readers). I sometimes interact with authors via blog comments - usually on other blogs but very occasionally an author posts a comment here. I have exchanged a few e-mails with some authors, but that is fairly rare.

I do get to interact with authors in person a fair amount, although not as often as I do via social media. Most of my in-person contact with authors has come at science fiction conventions, which are usually fairly heavily attended by genre fiction authors. I've met and spoken with numerous authors at conventions including Catherine Asaro, Elizabeth Bear, Wesley Chu, Tom Doyle, Scott Edelman, Charles Gannon, Kameron Hurley, Alethea Kontis, Jay Posey, Lawrence M. Schoen, Ursula Vernon, and Fran Wilde, and so many others. Meeting authors, listening to them speak on panels, talking to them informally, and so on, is most of the reason I go to the conventions I attend.

Sadly, there is a definite limit to the number of conventions that I have the time and money to attend. This year I am planning on attending five conventions: Balticon in May, InConJunction in July, Worldcon in August, CapClave in October, and Starbase Indy in November. That is, by any reasonable standard, a fair number of conventions to be attending in a year. (I will note, however, that I know some very dedicated genre fiction fans who would consider double, or even triple that number of conventions to be a slow year). But that means that I will only have five weekends this year that I can expect to be able to meet and speak with authors - and to be honest, Starbase Indy really isn't a particularly good convention for talking with authors, since so few attend. Despite the fact that in-person interactions are usually of better quality than those that take place over social media, they are rare enough in comparison that they are swamped by the quantity of online contacts.

For the record, xkcd what if number 146 can be found here.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: Marcus Aurelius Became Consul in 145 A.D. (So Did Antonius Augustus Pius, But Most People Don't Care as Much About Him)

Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: "147-Break" Is a 1983 Documentary About Snooker Featuring Steve Davis

Book Blogger Hop     Home