You can get some feel for the hustle and flow of the weekend via the Spier-NY blog, which has video clips. It's much more representative of things happening around the booths of the commercial publishers during Book Expo -- which I, to be honest, only zipped through, stopping just long enough to grab catalogs.

My visits to the university and "academic trade" presses -- and the indy publishers doing interesting books, such as Soft Skull and Verso -- were, for the most part, time well spent.

There were a handful of exceptions to that rule, however. Best to deal with them via the following statement.

To whom it may concern,

For more than two years now, I have been writing a column that discusses scholarship and works of serious nonfiction. It appears each week at Inside Higher Ed, the publication devoted to American academic life having the single largest audience among university professors. At present IHE reaches more than 350,000 distinct readers per month.

If you are working at a university press and have never so much as heard of IHE, let alone my column, that is sufficient evidence of gross incompetence to suggest that you should probably step aside and let an intern have your job.

sincerely,
Tired Guy Who Spends His Waking Hours Reading Your #&?!(!!!) Books