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Twin Cities Book Fest
Oct. 16th, 2011 05:45 pmI've got that totally overwhelmed, too much going on feeling tonight so this is part of getting organized. Friday night, I got home late from work and had to prep for the Book Fest so I didn't get much else done. The Book Fest ran all day Saturday and had many high points and only a few low points. Among the highs, I got to sit next to author C.M. Harris all day. This was most excellent since we could spell each other and are both familiar with each other's works and get along well enough to talk a lot during slow times. Lots of folks stopped by to say hi, and often, to buy books. I handed out postcards for the ebooks, donated a copy of A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories to the Quatrefoil Library (the Twin Cities GLBTQ Library and resource center, gave people flyers for the reading I'll be doing on Nov. 12 with author Michael Merriam at True Colors Bookstore and signed people up for my mailing list which I'm updating (please let me know if you'd like to be on it - at this point, it will be special announcements only). I sold 10 books (almost all A Day at the Inn, plus one copy of Hellebore and 1 copy of Haunted Hearths) at the Fest, which I'm told was a good day and plugged the ebook versions, so hopefully there will be a few more sales there. I also chatted a bit with author Beth Solheim and her friend who were sitting on the other side of me and found them quite delightful.
We were in a good spot and the check-in process went well. I was glad I brought a smaller cooler for lunch as Michele was disappointed in her onsite quest for sandwiches. Fortunately, I packed extra so we were able to soldier on. I had a couple of weird encounters with people stopping by, but nothing too traumatic. I didn't really get much time to roam the room which was unfortunate, though I said hi to the folks at the Tales of the Unanticipated table and to bookseller David Christiansen. I got snubbed by the director of the Minnesota Mystery Awards..er, Book Awards (they've gone 100% mystery in the popular fiction category for nearly a decade now), though she stopped to talk to Michele briefly. Neither of us could fail to notice that she didn't ask either of us to submit our newly published books, which just confirmed my general sense of warm fuzzies on the Award's priorities. Apart from that, the crowds dropped off like a rock in the afternoon and even though event organizers had told us that we had to be set up until 5PM, the college announced at 4:50PM that we had to be out of the building in 10 minutes. Hopefully they get that resolved for next year.
Overall, it was a decent event, though a bit pricey given actual sales. I'm more inclined to attribute the latter to the economy; the organizers (Rain Taxi Review) worked hard pulling it together and got an interesting range of organizations and authors and so forth. I will give it another whirl next year, hopefully as a panelist and we'll see how things go.
We were in a good spot and the check-in process went well. I was glad I brought a smaller cooler for lunch as Michele was disappointed in her onsite quest for sandwiches. Fortunately, I packed extra so we were able to soldier on. I had a couple of weird encounters with people stopping by, but nothing too traumatic. I didn't really get much time to roam the room which was unfortunate, though I said hi to the folks at the Tales of the Unanticipated table and to bookseller David Christiansen. I got snubbed by the director of the Minnesota Mystery Awards..er, Book Awards (they've gone 100% mystery in the popular fiction category for nearly a decade now), though she stopped to talk to Michele briefly. Neither of us could fail to notice that she didn't ask either of us to submit our newly published books, which just confirmed my general sense of warm fuzzies on the Award's priorities. Apart from that, the crowds dropped off like a rock in the afternoon and even though event organizers had told us that we had to be set up until 5PM, the college announced at 4:50PM that we had to be out of the building in 10 minutes. Hopefully they get that resolved for next year.
Overall, it was a decent event, though a bit pricey given actual sales. I'm more inclined to attribute the latter to the economy; the organizers (Rain Taxi Review) worked hard pulling it together and got an interesting range of organizations and authors and so forth. I will give it another whirl next year, hopefully as a panelist and we'll see how things go.