Blog No. 282
Last weekend I had the pleasure of being invited to the first Windsor Small Press Book Fair. It was in a church hall over a coffee shop, and while the cold and rain keep the crowds down, there were enough folks there to make the day profitable. A great help was the low cost of the table. Not only did it mean that only a couple of books needed to be sold to break even (the key breaking point for any event) but it opened the fair to a bunch of new authors and publishers. Sometimes when events are not well attended, the day seems to go on forever. Having someone to talk to on those days is key. For this Book Fair, there were so many writers and publishers I knew (and some I hadn’t seen in a long time) that I was surrounded by people to catch up with, swap books, and talk shop. The customers were icing on the cake. All in all, it was a good start to the monster list of events going on.
The next event is on Saturday (already, I know)! I’ll be at Indigo in Tecumseh selling All These Crooked Streets with Christian and Ed from 1 – 4pm. That’s all three authors in one place. What a chance to buy the book and get all the signatures you need in a single trip! I can’t recommend that course of action enough. The only book available will be All These crooked Streets, though. When we do signings at book stores, the book generally has to be in their system, and so far, only Streets is sold there. Therefore, that’s all you can get. That doesn’t mean we can’t do some parking lot sales if you really need to get one of the other books and can’t wait. I’ll probably have at least a couple copies of No Light Tomorrow and I’d be surprised if Christian and Ed don’t bring some of their books along too.
The Indigo signing isn’t fancy or exciting. It’s nice to know I can get a professional type signing in a national chain, but in two weeks I’ll be in London for my Third Shock Stock. I’m going to save talking about that for next week, but it’s on the horizon and I’m excited. For now, it’s all about a normal Saturday afternoon at a book store in Tecumseh, bothering anyone who comes close enough to the table to hear my rantings. The three of us have actually sold a lot more of Streets than I had initially thought. So far we’ve ordered 250 copies and between store sales, mine and Christian’s events stales, and the books Ed sold on vacation, we have less than a hundred left. The slow start was due to the repeated printing issues, but now that they are coming in clean, it’s been smooth sailing. With all the events still to come, we should have a lot more sales by the summer.
Now. I’ve saved talking about The Thinking Machine for the end of the post because I kept putting it at the top and I figure that anyone interested would make it to the bottom anyway. All my final revisions are in and the books have been ordered. That’s not to say that there won’t be any issues with the books when they arrive. There is a fair chance that the size I went with means a good number of the books will have loose pages no matter what I do. I hope not, but I’m trying to curtail my expectations. There may be other issues, but with Shock Stock in nine days, there won’t be any time to get replacements. If they are misprints, I’ll have to see what I con do to salvage them, because the weekend event it too big to totally miss for sales, and being a guest, it’s nice to have two new books on the table instead of just the one. That is, if I even get them in time.
Ben Van Dongen 