This is my second year at YALC and I was so excited to go so that I could see all of my friends again and some more amazing authors. If you want to read about what I thought of YALC last year, check out my blog post.

I can’t believe that it’s a second year of YALC that’s been and gone. The tickets are available to purchase in January, and it seems like you’re waiting forever for July to come around, and when it does, BAM, it’s already over.

I feel like an opinion piece for YALC is so important, because people need to raise awareness of things that could be improved and the things that are doing well so that the organisers can improve on them next year.

 

Before I started writing this ‘review’ of YALC 2019, I gave my own review of last years YALC a read so that I could compare the two and see if the organisers of YALC took on all of the feedback that they received and changed some of the worse things.

To start things off, I think that it’s safe to say that there were so many amazing authors including fiction and non-fiction. I attended so many panels this year because loads of them were on topics that I was really interested in such as masculinity, being proud of your body, thrillers…

The variety of authors there were amazing and I was so glad to FINALLY meet V.E. Schwab, Derek Landy (my childhood fave), and Natasha Ngan.

 

The panels, workshops and the agents area were also filled with some amazing talks and activities. Last year I didn’t attend any of the workshops, but this year I attend the Blogger Tips workshops to support my blogger friends who were on the panels #proudmama.

For someone who has major anxiety and depression, it helped me SO MUCH to have a schedule planned out before I even got to London. To help me plan, YALC provided us with a floor plan, and also with a schedule as to what authors would be signing on what days, what panels were to take place, and also what workshops and publishing things were going to be taking place. On top of all of this, Lizzie (over at HuxTales) published a post with all the information on when ARC giveaways would be happening, and which stalls were going to be there. This was just the most amazing thing to have, to be honest. It meant that I could plan the panels and the author signing around the ARC drops, making sure that I had time to get to the giveaways that I wanted to attend.

 

 

But of course, there were things that weren’t really great… I’m sorry that the moaning had to come on so soon, but I could feel it building up.

The first think I’ll say is that I’m impressed that they listened to us all about the queues for the signings. This year, YALC introduced the virtual queue system where, in the morning, you would go to the VQ stand, and get a numbered ticket for the author that you wanted to see. The Showmasters would call out different slots of numbers for the queue, and if you’re number was called, you could start queuing.

For example, the queue would start with numbers 1-30, then it would go up in 10’s. I thought that this was a much more effective way of doing the signings. However, it was the VQ stand in the morning that was the slight problem. For the first couple of days, it was a shambles. Hords of people rushed to the stand and there was no system. But, on the Sunday, the Showmasters FINALLY realised that there had to be a system, so they started a snaking queue, and once you got to the VQ table, the tickets for the authors were organised in alphabetical order. So YALC? Definitely do this again next year.

 

 

I think that the way YALC organised them were so effective (like I said before, with the times already stated), and especially with the use of raffle tickets.

One of the things that annoyed me the most about YALC was the fact that the organisers didn’t think about people with disabilities at all. I have a back problem and on the Saturday, it was playing up so badly that I couldn’t stand for a long period of time. I went to the info point to ask if I could have a wheelchair and they said they didn’t know. After asking again, they said I couldn’t because I didn’t have an extra help band. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW that my back would play up 6 months in advance? So now I know for next year to apply for the extra help band.

I also noticed whilst I was queuing for signings the mistreatment of the people who DID have extra help bands. A handful of the Showmasters did a good job of making sure the people with extra help bands were moved to the front of queues, but there were others who didn’t respect the band at all. Which was disgusting.

 

 

Also… Where were the chairs? Where were the water coolers? As someone with a back problem, sitting on a hard floor to ‘chill’ is not good at all. I wouldn’t be able to get back up without help. When loads of people asked YALC organisers whether there would be seating in the chill-out zone, they said that there would be a few bean bags, or to bring your own camping chairs. No. This is not ok. When I go to conventions like this, I expect there to be seating. I expect there to be water coolers so that people can refill their bottles without spending money in Tesco or getting sarcastic responses and dirty looks from the people who work in the cafe inside of YALC convention when asked if they could refill the bottles.

If these things aren’t corrected for YALC next year, I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be going again.

I know this sounds like a really ranty post, but there were quite a few things that STILL hadn’t been fixed after all of the complaints from last year.

Yes, I know I moaned a lot, but hey, if we don’t moan and say which things need changing, then things WILL NEVER change. I did have a fun time though and I will definitely be going back next year (maybe for the last time if they don’t change anything?) because I love the independence it gives me and I love seeing all of my friends and meeting all the brilliant authors.

Did you go to YALC? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments or on my social media!

 

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