Craft Fair Season

I spent last weekend at a craft fair. I don't 'do' craft fairs. I have found in the past that the costs involved often exceed the profits realized especially if you factor in the time spent. This time a persuasive argument was made. At a small table nestled between several potters and the on-site cafe my 76 year old author of a children's chapter book on cats charmed the crowd. Sales were well beyond my expectations and hers.

9 Lives by Lenore Hellum contains nine stories as dreamed by the resident white cat Pookie. Based on the cats she has owned, Lenore was able to let her imagination run and take their lives to places they never imagined in real life. The idea for the book came from a painting by Charlotte Campbell of a white cat on a magic carpet. The book is full of humour and insights not usually found in a children's book and thus we found adults buying the book with no intention of giving it to anyone but themselves.

In fact, we had several buyers who had the book dedicated to sons and daughters in their 40's as well as a number of people who had the book dedicated to their cats.

Would I do it again? If the conditions were as favourable as these, you bet!

A New Vision of Tourism

Larry Portzline, the creator of bookstore tourism is on the road again. He has recently set up a National Council of Bookstore Tourism with the aim of taking the concept much further.

He has lead over a dozen tours of book lovers to a number of U.S. cities to visit bookstores in the last year. Now his vision includes creating partnerships with appropriate groups including bookstores, libraries, educators, publishers, the travel industry, cultural tourism organizations and economic development groups. He sees the future of this venture encompassing education as well as cultural heritage.

His personal dream is to take a month long bus trip to bookstores across America bringing along authors for bookstore events. ... Route 66 meet Route 2006.

Who'd Have Thought It?

When bookstores start making the news for events other than author signings and closures then they know they have arrived.

I recently read about a bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina that was robbed during a cookbook signing. Thankfully, the thief was discreet enough to quietly hand the cashier a note so that customers had no idea of the theft as it was occurring.

Then there was the bookstore in Anchorage, Alaska that had a Subaru station wagon crash through its window and land in the travel section. Now there are many ways to get the hottest travel book but driving to the shelf in your local bookstore is not recommended.

Perhaps there are drive-thru bookstores somewhere but I don't know of any.

Books by the Billion

3BillionBooks, Inc. has announced that it will be the first company to globally develop a low cost [under $100,000 US], totally automated book machine, which can produce 15 - 20 library quality paperback books per hour, on-site, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention.

Now if they partner with the companies that have book vending machines on the streets of Paris they could corner the book publishing and distribution market. If that happens, as a publisher, I will be virtually redundant. Back to writing the great Canadian novel!.

The Year of the Veteran

As a storm rages outside my window I change my mind about going to my local Cenotaph and opt for watching the national ceremony on T.V.

Today I want to let veterans know that the sacrifice of their youth and that of their friends and colleagues was not in vain. Some years ago my life was indelibly marked by a trip to the WWI battlefields of Ypres, Paschendale and Vimy Ridge; of visits to WWII scenes of conflict in Normandy and Arnheim to name but a few.

As a Canadian born after WWII, I do not really know the nightmare that is war. I only know that I never want it to become my reality.


Prelude: The Troops

Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.

Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through the storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines vollying doom for doom.

O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON - WWI poet and soldier

The Season of Prizes

This is the season of book prizes. Every week there are new announcements acknowledging the work of writers around the world. While winning a prize certainly brings monetary rewards and increased book sales I suspect that most authors are more moved by the confirmation that their writing has value to society and that they have communicated their message well.

Subjects for exploration in books also have seasons. So it was with some pleasure that I note David Bergen's win of the Giller Prize for excellence in Canadian fiction. His book The Time in Between looks at the life of a Vietnam veteran in the time after the war. The Vietnam war and particularly its aftermath is an area of our culture that we haven't spoken much about and perhaps now is the season.

Where Has Your Pen Been?

This may be a question that some writers will be asking themselves in 2006. Margaret Atwood will be launching her new invention the LongPen, produced by Unotchit at the London International Book Fair in March 2006.

The idea behind the LongPen is that an author on tour will be able to sign books in one country and through a video feed and a machine be able to produce their signature and accompanying message for a book buyer halfway around the world. Author tours could then be reduced to larger centres only with video feeds to surrounding regions or countries. More book buyers will get author signed copies.

I know how draining an author tour can be and how much the time away from writing can affect the creative process but I also can't help but wonder if an author will have very much less contact with their audience. For me meeting someone who loved my book is part of what sustains me as an author. Ah, the dilemma of modern technology. As a writer, how do you feel about the invention of the LongPen?

Who Buys Books and Why

Twenty-five percent of people responding to a recent survey confirmed that the last book they read was one recommended by a friend. This percentage rises to over 33% among people under 35. Seven percent were influenced entirely by cover design but that's another discussion.

This is a further confirmation that together with reading another book by a favourite author, word of mouth is one of the strongest forces propelling book sales today.

So go for it - tell a friend, tell your mother, tell a librarian or tell a minister [either kind] and see how far the ripples from your book recommendation take it. You have the power~!