{"id":78089,"date":"2026-10-25T22:25:44","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T05:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=78089"},"modified":"2026-10-25T22:25:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T05:25:44","slug":"world-fantasy-2026-last-day-and-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=78089","title":{"rendered":"World Fantasy 2026 \u2014 Last Day and Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today was another day spent in the dealer&#8217;s room.  Melissa and I helped pack things up, retrieved our stuff, and drove home without a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a number of thoughts for summarizing the weekend, my experience of it, some stresses, and some joys.  I&#8217;m not sure how to organize them, so I&#8217;ll just list them in bullet format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I heard good things about the programming, but I did not attend.  I used to go to panels with great interest and take notes like I was studying for a test.  After a while, I found myself writing the same things down over and over, often from the same people, and my enthusiasm towards attending panels diminished.  There are a few from time to time that draw me in, and I&#8217;m not saying I don&#8217;t have anything left to learn.  I have just found that after attending panels long enough, they&#8217;ve lost their appeal.  Lots of them are worldbuilding in disguise, anyway, which is worthy of its own entire post.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Attending panels is not the same as being on a panel.  I quite enjoy that, and I even like moderating.  It&#8217;s a shame I wasn&#8217;t invited to be on a panel at World Fantasy, but it&#8217;s not that big a deal.  I don&#8217;t take it personally.  I don&#8217;t think I knew I was coming to the convention until late, which might have had something to do with it.  Or, it could be that I&#8217;m still an unknown, which is also fair.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I go to conventions like this to work.  It&#8217;s easier.  If I&#8217;m not on panels, then I prefer to be at the table.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I stayed at the table most of the time, only intentionally taking a break once on Saturday because my feet hurt and I needed to do a mental reset.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While working at the table, I pretend to be an extrovert.  Melissa told me in the car tonight that I do a very good job of pretending, and that makes me happy.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When people come to the table, I usually start with asking what they like to read.  One of my main goals is to quickly find out what their tastes are, so I can line them up with a book on the table that will make them happy.  But it&#8217;s also a great conversation starter, and it&#8217;s the conversations I enjoy.  Depending on how they answer, I sometimes talk to people about books and never try to direct them towards anything on the table.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I managed to sell some books from the table this weekend that we&#8217;ve all found difficult to sell.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I don&#8217;t think I talked anyone into buying a book they will dislike.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Honesty is still the best policy, even when it comes to selling.  Perhaps especially when it comes to selling, because most of us can smell bullshit from a mile away.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The best table conversations for me at the table aren&#8217;t necessarily the ones where I find the right book for the customer.  The best conversations are the ones where I find a writer that needs a little encouragement, and I&#8217;m there at the right time to provide it.  Those are the moments that make it all worth it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When it comes to selling books from the table, I don&#8217;t usually start with my own.  Obviously, if they say something like, &#8220;I like The Dresden Files&#8221; or &#8220;I really like urban fantasy,&#8221; I&#8217;ll go to mine first, but that&#8217;s a natural progression.  I&#8217;m focused on what they say they like, so when if they say something like, &#8220;I&#8217;m looking for a cosmic horror story for my trans daughter,&#8221; I&#8217;m going to immediately try and put <em>The Insane God<\/em> by Jay Hartlove in their hands.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sometimes, the best thing to say is nothing.  This doesn&#8217;t just apply to selling at the table.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s already late on Sunday night, and I&#8217;m not looking forward to what this work week will be like.  I wish I had more time to recover, but that&#8217;s just how these things go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next convention is Loscon, taking place Thanksgiving weekend.  We&#8217;ll have a table, and I suspect I&#8217;ll be on some panels.  Bryanna will be going with us, which I think is awesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today was another day spent in the dealer&#8217;s room. Melissa and I helped pack things up, retrieved our stuff, and drove home without a problem. I have a number of thoughts for summarizing the weekend, my experience of it, some stresses, and some joys. I&#8217;m not sure how to organize them, so I&#8217;ll just list [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78090,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78089\/revisions\/78090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}