The title of this post is a misnomer. I’m not actually at the New England Independent Bookselling Association (NEIBA) Fall Conference right now in Providence, Rhode Island. I’m at home with a sick dog who got a nasty staph infection. I feel like I’m at the show, though, because Elizabeth is texting me with ideas she’s learning.
If I had been at the Conference yesterday I would have attended the day of education and I would have gone to Large-Scale Author Events: How to Book Them and How to Handle Them.  Elizabeth wrote to tell me that publicists love it when big events get lots of local press. Ironically, I was working at home on press releases when I got this. One thing she mentioned was sending copies of the book authors are promoting to the feature editors at the papers. It never occurred to me to do that before, but what a great and simple idea.  It’s also a great way to distinguish yourself from the sea of emails the newspaper must receive.

The next text was Elizabeth inquiring about whether or not we rented our credit machine. We don’t, and that’s good. She was attending The Fine Art of Accepting Credit and Debit Cards with Michael Barnard. I must say I caught this session at Winter Institute last year, and Michael is amazing. He makes the fine print of our monthly merchant statements decipherable. Michael works at Rakestraw Books in California and he really just wants all stores to stop losing money by not being smart about their acceptance of debit and credit cards. There are hidden fees everywhere. Elizabeth said there are a lot of things she wants to go over with me as the best procedures for taking a credit card or a debit have already changed since Winter Institute in January.

I didn’t hear last night about the Children’s Dinner featuring Jon J Muth, Jennifer Donnelly and Jerry Pinkney. I got a very funny video from Elizabeth’s table of several folks saying Hello to me. Very nice, and it seemed that a great time was had by all. If I could have gotten the photo to load, you would have seen the lovely table decorations done by Carol Chittenden, of Eight Cousins, Falmouth, Mass., also known as the Martha Stewart of NECBA, decorated the tables. Suffice to say, everything looked festive, fun and just slightly bookish– in other words, perfect for the dinner.
Expect a full report from Elizabeth on Monday or Tuesday.