We’re flying to San Francisco this weekend for the ALA Annual Meeting, and we couldn’t be more excited!

If you’re going too, we hope you’ll connect with us there at booth #1109. It’s a busy weekend, we know. You no doubt have a lot of other things to do and indie publishers to meet.

Still, here are ten good reasons to make a visit to Eerdmans booth #1109 part of your ALA experience.

1. Indie publishers are cool.

2. Everyone needs more posters, postcards, and bookmarks in their conference totes, right?

3. You can page through (or even take home with you) copies of each of our Spring 2015 books, including Chris Barton and Don Tate’s The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch and Koen Van Biesen’s Roger Is Reading a Book.

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4. You can catch early sneak peeks at our forthcoming Fall 2015 titles, including the latest from Amanda Hall and Cassandre Maxwell, as well as a sweet, quirky book that’s quickly become a staff favorite here at Eerdmans: The Dog That Nino Didn’t Have.

5. Other publishers may send lower-level lackeys to represent them at conventions, but not Eerdmans. At booth #1109, you’ll find the best of our best: our president/publisher Anita, our art director/associate publisher Gayle, and our managing editor Kathleen.

6. While we’re on the subject: Anita, Gayle, and Kathleen are all super fun, completely passionate about children’s literature, and exactly as nice as you might reasonably expect Midwesterners living practically on Canada’s doorstep to be.

7. Melissa Sweet and Jen Bryant (also incredibly nice people) will be signing copies of their Sibert Medal/Caldecott Honor-winning picture book biography The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. You can meet Melissa on Saturday, 10:00-11:00 a.m., or catch Melissa and Jen together on Sunday, 2:00-3:00 p.m. at our booth. (Again, in case you missed it, that’s booth #1109.)

8. We’ll have stacks of The Right Word in stock. (Those of you who, earlier this year, had to wait months for your copy to arrive while we went back to press three times will certainly appreciate this.)

9. Every Eerdmans book you see in the booth (including The Right Word) will be available to purchase at 40% off the cover price throughout the conference. (No need to dig out your calculator: yes, that is cheaper than Amazon.)

10. Visitors to Eerdmans booth #1109 can enter our ALA drawing for a chance to win every book we publish in 2015 — 16 titles in all. Surely that’s worth stopping for?

For all these reasons and more, we hope to see you in San Francisco!