Looking Back #17: San Francisco ALA Book Hunt

I’m counting down to the publication of The Unbreakable Code with highlights from the past two years since Book Scavenger was published. So much has happened in such a short time, and I’ve been so busy trying to keep up, that I’ve neglected to share many of the big and small moments. So here we go, in no particular order . . .

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Book Scavenger was published on June 2, 2015, and coincidentally that month the American Library Association (ALA) was having their big annual conference in San Francisco.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do something fun for the librarians, so I contact Kirsten Cappy of Curious City and together we came up with the idea of doing an ALA Book Hunt.

Curious City made maps that feature different San Francisco locations used in Book Scavenger. (You can download this map on the Book Scavenger website, by the way.)

These maps were handed out at the conference and distributed to local booksellers. Throughout the weekend of ALA, over 100 copies of Book Scavenger were hidden at these locations for book hunters (both accidental and intentional) to find.

I couldn’t fly out to San Francisco to attend ALA or be there in person, but it was almost as much fun watching the photos pop up on social media as people shared where they’d hidden or found a book.