In the vast expanse of the Los Angeles Convention Center, one feature stands out: bags, bags, and more bags. Book Expo America will run until June 1st and the more than 25,000 visitors look like overzealous students happily loading up their backpacks and totes.

The goodies in this literary candy store are staggering. In the exhibition hall filled with publishers booths, there are posters signed by Disney artist David Willardson, teen vampire books, TokyoPop, and hot literary offerings. But my favorite stall of all is a publisher called Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, whose booth is complete with pop culture books, word searches and even a music trivia title called “Plunges into Music.” My second favorite is a Ripley’s Believe it or Not book but that is just because the museums are so cool and the cover has a shape-shifting wizard on it. Nothing too highbrow for day one. Maybe the marketing genie worked. I was drawn to the shiniest covers and crudest marketing gimmicks. However, I did ruminate for ten minutes about buying a newly translated Rumi book as I walked past the chair massage booth.

Still, on a truly gorgeous, post-rainstorm day in LA, the fact that this many people would be inside and sequestered in rooms listening to panels of authors should be heartening to the members of what some would say is a troubled publishing industry. After spending eons in the cafeteria line because the place was packed to the gills with hungry book lovers, I heard a group complaining that the LA event was already—on Day 1—a bust. LA was “disappointingly thin” in terms of attendance, one said. New York, another grumbled, was “too, too crowded.” Apparently, the trio agreed, Chicago was just right.