A Potpourri of Thoughts
Contest: Drawing for Beyond Blood by Carol Pepper
Congratulations go to the winner…
Shirley Nienkark!
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Back to ConCarolinas…as expected, we lost money but we learned a few things to put us in a better position next year. Most notably, there’s not much point in selling books for the majority of the attending authors because most of them sell their own books at hall tables. I had emailed many of them offering to handle sales on a consignment basis (this was before I found out how prevalent the self-selling would be) and two said they wanted us to do so. We exchanged all the necessary information and Annie kept space open on our tables for them but neither ever bothered to show up or even to answer an email I sent Friday evening (at the con) asking if they still wanted us to do it.
The other thing we learned is that heavy discounting is needed, much more so than at any other venue we do. That means we’ll need to be really selective on what we take as far as books are concerned and perhaps have more of the really inexpensive sidelines, like bumper stickers (which sold like hot cakes). Do I sound crass and mercantile? Well, yes, but selling books is our business, folks, and we have to find a way to do it profitably. So, we’ll keep finetuning the game plan.
Besides, cons are fun and we’ll always want to be part of them when it
makes sense and sometimes when it sort of doesn’t 
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Annie and I are in St. Augustine for a few days, shopping for an apartment for her to move into in late July or early August. As expected, it’s hot as all get out, but not much different from back home. Richmond sits in a bowl that traps ungodly humidity in the summertime and I never realized just how bad it was until 40-odd years ago when my now-ex-husband was in the Air Force and we lived in northern Louisiana with Laura, my older daughter, then a little bitty thing. Northern Louisiana is a weather cesspool in the summer but it really surprised me to find that it wasn’t any worse than Richmond. It’s a good thing I thrive on hot, sticky air and that Annie inherited that gene ’cause she’ll need it down here.
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June 9, 2010
Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller
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