When my publisher invited me to do a book signing at Book Expo America (BEA) in New York this past weekend, I had no idea what I was in for. Most book signings I’ve done are relaxed, pleasant affairs where I get to chat at length with readers and scribble something special in their books—I like those events. Occasionally a book signing requires me to sit at a table looking forlorn while people walk by ignoring me—I don’t like those so much.

This was entirely different. I had never been to BEA before. First of all, it’s enormous. It fills a huge convention center—it’s like a car show for the publishing industry. When I first arrived I was pleased to see a stall selling sushi in the atrium. Apart from the modern structure of steel and glass surrounding me,

and except for the thousands of gaijin talking on cell phones everywhere, I felt as if I’d returned to Tokyo in the 1800s, where (as you’ll learn in The Zen of Fish) fast-food sushi stalls dotted the city.

I met my wonderful publicist Jane Beirn at the HarperCollins booth, which was plastered with posters of gorgeous celebrity authors like Ann Patchett (right). (I glimpsed Ann in person at the Harper party later that night and yes, she’s ethereally beautiful. Alas, at the party I’d also been hoping to meet the Vivid Girls, whose book How to Have a XXX Sex Life is currently earning HarperCollins bazillions of dollars, but they were nowhere to be found. Instead I fell into conversation with a man who started telling me about the time he’d slept with Diane Sawyer.)

Jane led me downstairs at the convention to what looked like a cattle slaughterhouse. It turns out that book signings at BEA are a massive industrial operation, not unlike meat packing. Under an acre-long roof with a huge banner that reads “Autograph Area” innocent readers mill around, waiting to be herded by convention staff into long fenced rows leading up to one of the thirty-four different author signing tables simultaneously in action at any given time. Each author gets half an hour to sign books—and that’s a strict time limit, because some conference organizer who accidentally ingested a bottle of amphetamines signed up 600 authors to do signings, and the conference only lasts three days.

I was whisked to a green room where I received a list of rules (sign only one book per customer, limit any conversation to 2.74 words) and then at the appointed time I was whisked to Table 15. The staff removed the chain guarding my row and the readers flooded down the chute toward me. Jane handed me a copy of The Zen of Fish and then another and then another and then another and then another and ... soon it was all a blur. I must have been scribbling my name at, like, 20 miles per hour. Smoke was coming off the point of my pen. The endless line of people pressed down through the long fenced row toward me—I swear to God, like cattle in a scene from Fast Food Nation.

But they weren’t cattle, of course. They were wonderful booksellers and librarians and book reviewers—the people who are my bread and butter as an author. I was thrilled to have so many people interested in The Zen of Fish, but I was sad I didn’t have the time to stop and talk with each person.

Thirty minutes later, on the dot, the chain was pulled across my row and I was whisked away from the table and behind the curtain to make room for the next author. Behind the curtain were piles of boxes of books and an army of workers making it all work, shuttling books to the signing tables, in a scene somehow reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz.

I turned to Jane. “Wow,” I said, “so many people bought my book!” I had been really flattered. She smiled. “Trevor, at BEA it’s a promotional thing. We give the books out for free.”

Ah. That could, um, explain the enthusiasm. But hey, I’ll take whatever adoration I can get.

And later that day, I stopped by the Barnes & Noble in Union Square in the center of Manhattan, where regular people have to pay for books, and my spirits were buoyed by the sight of a fresh stack of The Zen of Fish piled near a fresh stack of my first book, The Secret Life of Lobsters. That put a smile on my face, and I signed every copy they had.

In the end, I never got to speak with any of the gorgeous celebrity authors that were wandering the halls of BEA. In fact, Ann Patchett and the Vivid Girls would all have to wait. Because I ran into another author who was much more important. He was attending BEA to promote his new book for children. We shook hands and exchanged compliments—apparently he had read The Secret Life of Lobsters and loved it, since lobster is one of his favorite foods (eaten with the shell still on). And then he did something really sweet. He asked me if he could have his photo taken with me. What a prince.