The Ontario Library Association Superconference (2026) (Patreon)

Recently, I was invited to the OLA 2026 Superconference to help promote the A Thousand Li: the First Step re-release by Ace Books (Penguin Random House). Even after living in Toronto for nearly five years now, I didn't even know it was a thing, so I was super-excited.

The conference itself is held in the the Toronto Conference Center near Union station, so getting there was easy enough. I was the first signing, so I was up early, and had a chance to meet the Canadian PRH people.

Btw - did you know that Penguin Random House have a BIG office in Toronto? I didn't. Didn't realise they had this massive, multi-floor office not far away, which they run everything through. Quite cool, really.

So, the conference hall and vendor side isn't massive - there's probably only five or six rows of booths. It's big, don't get me wrong, but it's not FanExpo or Dragoncon vendor hall big. However, it's all dedicated book and library organisations, from technology companies and 3D printing companies to publishers and distributors for libraries.

I got set-up on the PRH booth quite fast.

Yeah, I'm awkward. It's so weird, to be doing this - but I had brought the pins (which will be around if you come see me at a signing) and the bookmarks and PRH had brought the ARCs.

We had about 35 ARCs which was amazing to have, and we even had a couple of people all lined up in anticipation which is always a little intimidating.

10am turned up, we started signing.

And I forgot, entirely, to take any photos. There are a few more, but they started handing me books with names on them and numbers, and I had to focus on chatting and answering questions and within twenty minutes, maybe thirty, all the books were gone.

Poof!

35 ARCs, vanished in moments.

It's amazing how fast giving away ARCs can go, and it was great to see the librarians excited to read it. I can only hope it pushes them (and their readers) to pick up the books and spread the word.

After that, I hung out at the table for the rest of my scheduled hour (and a bit); talking to anyone who came by. I met a few more of the local tradpub people, as they came by to say hi to my publicist.

When I was released, I wandered the halls. Forgot to take photos, for the most part; but noted a few things:

lots of publicity from the local publisher group (all who get supported by grants)

there are multiple organisations that deliver books to libraries

there's also a lot of publishers (mostly in the kid fiction space) that I had no idea about. Kid books do amazingly well at these places.

There's a small indie author alley! So, guess where we'll be next year... ;P

Overall, it was quite cool to see. It was amazing to see so many people super excited about books, it was a great place to have our first signing and publicity event and I'm really excited to see what happens with the release.

If you haven't picked up or put a pre-order in for the First Step, you should. Don't forget that there's an exclusive short story in all 3 re-releases, this one featuring Fa Yuan. And I call it short, but they range from 9k words to just over 10k. So... basically a novelette. :P