The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is over for another year. It has been held at UCLA campus for 15 or 16 years. This year, we went to USC. The most common small talk topic throughout the two-day event was with regard to the new venue. \u201cHow do you like it?\u201d \u201cAre you selling books here?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s your opinion of the event this year?\u201d<\/p>\n
And there were a variety of responses: \u201cIt\u2019s more spread out.\u201d \u201cI keep getting lost.\u201d \u201cIt seems to be a different crowd.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m selling more books.\u201d I\u2019m selling fewer.\u201d \u201cI love it!\u201d \u201cI hate it!\u201d Everyone had an opinion.<\/p>\n
It seems that the event was more well-attended than those in the past. Attendance usually hits around 140,000. We heard that nearly 100,000 people came through the gates on Saturday alone.<\/p>\n
As most of you know, I am the executive director of SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) and we had two booths. We accommodated 7 of our members who came to sell their books from the booth and each of them had a different experience. Some sold books, some did not. All of them told me that they learned a lot about book marketing and promotion, book festivals, how to engage customers, SPAWN and they all had a great time networking with other members and talking to potential customers about their books.<\/p>\n
We handed out around 450 SPAWN catalogs and signed up about 200 people who are interested in receiving the free SPAWN e-newsletter. Our former executive director and I talked to well over 100 people about their book projects and about the benefits of joining SPAWN. My voice is nearly gone today.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re currently in the process of tallying up our members\u2019 book sales, but it appears it is around 75 books. Two members sold none. So the average is probably around 15 books each.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been super busy this morning unpacking, counting my money, charging credit cards (one was declined, darn it), welcoming new SPAWN members (we had 3 sign up this weekend), etc. I still have to go through the mountain of business cards I collected and note what action I want to take with each one. And I have to sign around 200 people up for the SPAWN newsletter.<\/p>\n
If you would like to start receiving SPAWNews, go to http:\/\/www.spawn.org\/subscribe.htm<\/a> You will receive an email from us. Be sure to click and confirm. You will receive our newsletter in your email box every first of each month.<\/p>\n Let me know if you have questions: PLFry620@yahoo.com<\/p>\n Are you planning to attend a book festival with your books this year? You might be interested in reading my article, \u201cHow to Work a Book Festival So It Works For You.\u201d http:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/articles\/promo_bookFestival.htm<\/a> <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.matilijapress.com<\/a> The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is over for another year. It has been held at UCLA campus for 15 or 16 years. This year, we went to USC. The most common small talk topic throughout the two-day event was with regard to the new venue. \u201cHow do you like it?\u201d \u201cAre you selling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n http:\/\/www.patriciafry.com<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"