ReedPop made book lovers’ dreams come true last year with the reveal that BookCon would be returning in 2026 after the beloved publishing convention was retired in 2020.
Since that June 2025 announcement, readers have been dissecting every new piece of information about the two-day show leading up to its opening day this Friday. Tickets sold out immediately when they went on sale last September and reservations for author signings and exclusive events were snapped up just as quickly when they opened last month.
Now, the eve of BookCon 2026 is upon us and the organizers are shelving and stacking to prepare for the influx of authors and readers about to descend upon the Javits Center in New York. It’s a bright new chapter for the publishing industry as a whole, which had largely accepted BookCon was gone forever after its six-year hiatus.
“We never let it go,” ReedPop’s Kristina Rogers, the company’s vice president of its US comics portfolio, BookCon and Star Wars Celebration, told Variety. “We shuttered it through the pandemic. We held this incredible, great online [BookCon] event that, out of all of the online events we did during the pandemic, was our strongest. And every single year, the conversation continues: Is this the year? Is this the year? And we finally got into post-pandemic shape and recovery with the team. Jenny Martin, who is the event director for BookCon, was able to make the time and we got together and said, OK, let’s bring it back.”
The process was a long one, beginning 18 months ago, well before ReedPop made the official announcement of BookCon’s return for 2026. The planning included figuring out what elements of the original show to keep and what new features to introduce amid the rise in romantasy readers, book-to-screen adaptations and the widespread influence of TikTok’s #BookTok community.
“It’s really hard to take a show that used to run and bring it back years later, and bring it back in a way that is new and different,” Rogers said. “While everybody knows what BookCon was, or at least had heard of BookCon of old, I’m incredibly proud of what the new team has brought. It’s got the bones of it, but the diversity, the community, the inclusiveness, that’s at the forefront of everything. You can see it on our guest list. You can see it all throughout our programming. You can see it through everything the team’s doing.”
One bump that’s appeared along the long road to BookCon’s return is a boycott against the convention that began earlier this year. The movement started when it came to the attention of authors and ticketholders that ReedPop’s parent company, RELX, is also the owner of subsidiary LexisNexis, which has a contract with ICE. Upon that information coming to light, some authors who had already signed up to participate decided to pull out of participation.
While ReedPop is pressing on with BookCon despite that response from some, Rogers says the convention organizer does not begrudge those who have made this choice.
“We’ve worked really closely with our author guests, and we really support their decision,” Rogers said. “This is a personal decision that everybody makes, and we’re here for the community and our authors, and it’s our job to support them. I feel really good about where we are. I feel really good about the engagement we’re getting, the support from authors. And at the end of the day, a boycott choice is a personal choice.”
Among the many notable authors and guests who will be in attendance are Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, Holly Black, Veronica Roth, Casey McQuiston, Jasmine Guillory, Tracy Deon, Matt Dinniman, Emily St. John Mandel, R.F. Kuang, Scarlett St. Clair and Andy Weir. Events include everything from a panel featuring “Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid and the showrunner behind the popular TV series adaptation, Jacob Tierney, to an “after dark” fantasy ball event.
“The team has done an amazing job of saying, what are the non-solo parts of reading? And how do we get 400 people doing that at the same time?” Rogers said.
See below for more from Rogers’ BookCon preview interview with Variety.
The #BookTok community has emerged and subsequently become a huge part of the reader community and publishing industry since the last BookCon. In what ways are you incorporating that change in book culture into the show?
The community, and that’s what #BookTok has created, really excellent bubbles throughout our social media that connects us with the community. I think the show feature that reflects that the most is The Grove, and that’s our third space. It has workshops, it has dwell time, it has some stages, it has some conversations. We have some book clubs. It’s got a little bit of everything. And I think that’s really the best way we’re representing, the online version of this community,
Hollywood has become even more interested in what readers are interested in recent years and is making more decisions about what to adapt for film and TV based on what appeals to the publishing community. How is BookCon approaching that relationship between Hollywood and publishing at the event?
I think we’re going to grow that bridge significantly over the next few years. That’s a really big focus for us. It’s exciting. The fans are really excited about it. They want it. So that’s really what drives us. But I think that we are positioned so well to bridge those gaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if next year and the year after, you’re seeing celebrities at the show that are representing these adaptations and things like that.
Con-goers had issues with the reservation system for author signings and panels this year. What do you think went wrong and how do you deal that process?
First, we make peace with heartbreak. And then it’s a lot of math. My math teachers of old are very smug somewhere. It’s a lot of sitting down and saying, OK, what is the throughput? What can we do? And what’s the best way to approach it? Reservations are going to be an ongoing conversation. I think the team got a lot of really great feedback. It didn’t go exactly the way we wanted it to go. Throughput, that was the real problem, is we couldn’t get enough people in at the same time onto the page. So that really throttled things.
I think moving away from a first come, first served and moving towards something where you select your interest and we are then able to send it back out, is definitely the next step for BookCon 2027. So the team is going to go work hard on that, but we make the best plan and then we fix it based on the results. And that’s event planning at its core. And for the rest of our signings, it’s still a lot of math and line science. We’ve got a really robust team. I think we’ve seen at certain BookCons in the past, and certainly at other shows in the space between, signings not go very well. Stampeding issues, crowding issues. When you have a couple 1,000 people there for the same thing, it becomes a problem, and we’re going to answer that in part by reservations. So that alleviates some of the biggest crushes for us on site, and then we have a lot of security and staff down there. Get everyone in their spots, get everyone happy, make sure everyone’s walking. Speed-walking is the top speed, that’s it.
What plans are you already making for BookCon 2027?
We’re already talking about reservations ’27 and how we want to adjust that. We are putting together our ’27 guest list and we are looking at a couple of different spaces, looking at ways to grow the show that can make sense. I think the big thing is really just seeing how and what our fans engage with on site. Our post-show survey, which people feel like we don’t read it, but we really do read it. I read all of it, usually with a bottle of something, and make notes. But that post-show survey will be really driving for us. The one big thing I can say is there’s been a lot of feedback online about romance and fantasy taking over, which is fair. We do have a ton of those guests. I think us as a team could do a better job of advertising our non-romance and fantasy stuff. But I also think that we’re going to meet that demand in a better way next year. Have sci-fi, have horror, have what people are feeling like are “secondary interests,” let’s give them some more breathing room as well.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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