We have lots of people on the ground this year at BEA (check out this post to see who you might run into). But, alas, I am not one of them. Instead, I am half-listening to the livestream events (watch them via our Facebook app!), scouring Twitter, and living it up as an Armchair BEA participant.

I gather that the Armchair BEA crowd tends to be book bloggers. I am not technically a book blogger, but I blog about the book industry, so I’m crashing this party and joining the Armchair BEA movement. Our first assignment is to introduce ourselves, so here goes!

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? I am Amanda and I have been one of the bloggers for Bookmasters for about two years now. I started out in sales and marketing, and as social media grew, the company decided we needed someone familiar with our company and the publishers we represent to be our social voice. I’m the lucky girl who gets to do that.
2. What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2012? I’m almost done with The Snows of Kilimanjaro and other short stories by Hemmingway. It has been on my TBR pile for a long time after I picked up a used copy. It has been a long time since I’ve read a collection of short stories, so I’m having to readjust my thinking.  My favorite book I’ve read so far this year has been The Night Circus.
3. Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you. I just had baby #2 a few weeks ago! Yay!
4. What is your favorite feature on your blog (i.e. author interviews, memes, something specific to your blog)? I love our video interviews with people in the company. Only one is posted now, but we have a slew of them prepped for the rest of this month. I love our people, so I love to see what they have to say.
5. Where do you see your blog in five years?  We will see more user interaction as we become more of a place of community for writers and publishers.
6. Which is your favorite post that you have written that you want everyone to read? Back in August 2010 I did a post titled Understanding Amazon in which I defined and described the various programs Amazon has, especially programs for vendors and individual sellers. Though a lot of this information is still relevant and hasn’t changed, it is probably time to do another post like this that includes eBooks and Amazon’s publishing programs.

Photo: PseudoGil, Creative Commons