10/5/09–Saturday's book festival was set up under an enormous tent–actually two tents, end to end.  It accommodated 50 6 ft. tables, each skirted by a knee-hiding skirt of black and covered in red plastic.  My table partner, Carol, has a beautiful cookbook and though it is not yet available, she displayed the cover and a few pages of the planned book in a prototype people could thumb through.  Her title is "The Secret Recipe" and the contents is recipes for everything from "soup to nuts." She had a sign-up sheet availabe for people to leave their names if they were interested in seeing the book when it is published next spring.  She collected about 50 signups!

In a "gimick" that made lots of people stop at our table, Carol set up on her end of the table a huge basket filled with cookies and cupcakes made from recipes in her book.  When we called out "free samples," people stopped who whould normally have continued past us.  That was good for my book sales as well as for her sign-ups as anyone who stopped looked at all our "wares."  At the top of the beautiful poster made for me by an artist friend I had clipped a sign: "$10 Each, Today Only."  Prominent in my display was a copy of the Chicken Soup For The Soul book, their latest release, What I Learned From The Cat.  As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I received 10 copies as part of my compensation for my article included in the book.  I took eight copies to the Book Festival, sold all eight, plus five copies of my three titles. Not too bad as such affairs are always questionable as the way to sell books.

By Sunday morning an e-mail message reported that 1500 people (how do they count?) attended and the date for next year's festival has been set..  Until tomorrow, Willma