Susan and Krista designed us a stellar booth this year. Blue ocean backdrop, beach chairs, beach mats, sand buckets, and a “Gone to the Beach” sign replaced old fabrics, shipping trunks and baskets. Yes, the focus of the booth was Sand in My Bra and man the response has been GREAT. Despite the fact that our booth is in a bad location toward the back of the building, we are still getting traffic and everyone loves the title. It would’ve been fun to have kept a tally of what we got more compliments on, the title or the cover. Maybe I’ll do that Saturday.
Of all the nice compliments and enthusiastic interest we are getting from booksellers and random people that want to sell it in this Venice beachfront gift store in Florida, or review it in a newsletter for midlife women, the best news I heard was from a bookseller for Walden’s at Dulles airport in D.C. He said that they have three stores in the airport and that they have been selling 20 copies of Sand, per store, per week. That’s 60 books a week. To give you some perspective that’s better than what most stores sell of all TT titles in a month.
Other good news for Travelers’ Tales was that they won a Foreword Magazine bronze award for The Spiritual Gifts of Travel in the spirituality category, and an honorable mention for TT Turkey in travel essay. Wenda O’Reilly won a silver award for her game, Van Gogh and Friends.
Saturday I’ll be signing and giving away free books in the autographing area from 11:45 – 12:45 or for however long 150 books last. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of a line there is. We flyered the ladies rooms with book covers about the signing. And we know it works because the one flyer we put up in the men’s bathroom had someone we knew coming over to Larry to tell him about it.