{"id":873,"date":"2010-05-10T07:35:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T11:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=873"},"modified":"2010-05-10T07:35:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T11:35:40","slug":"when-events-are-lacking-an-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=873","title":{"rendered":"Where’s the Crowd?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I blogged about Cynthia Lord coming for a store visit on Friday for her new picture book Hot Rod Hamster<\/em>. She was well prepared. We were well prepared. The event was advertised heavily via email (we have a 1,600-person email list), through the schools\u2019 lists, on our website, on an event flyer posted all over the store and available for customers to take with them, listed in all the local paper\u2019s calendar listings and parenting calendars, really — I could go on.
\nWe were expecting between 30-45 people at this event, based on the excitement of our customers about the book — we sold half our stock before the event even happened! — and about having a NEWBERY HONOR AUTHOR in our town. Everyone meant to come. I do not normally like to talk about under-attended events, but it happens to all us. It seems three things were working against us: (1) Friday afternoon is not a great day for a younger child event, (2) Mighty Mites sports had tournaments, and (3) several birthday parties reared their cupcaked heads.
\nAuthors, I know, must feel horrible when an event is underattended. I know I do, and I resist the urge to apologize every minute about where the kids are. But it\u2019s a fact of life that sometimes even the best advertised events will have less than a stellar turnout.
\nThe upside to smaller events is trifold. The audience has a very personal experience and the kids who were there were delighted — calling out sounds and choosing their vehicles and engine parts and flags. They clearly loved the book already.
\nElizabeth and I got to really to talk to Cynthia Lord, who is one of the nicest people I\u2019ve ever met. She even brought clothes for my cousin\u2019s child who lost everything in the Nashville flooding last week. Her presentation was informative and fun. And her choice of projecting the book on a screen, rather than holding it, is genius and\"\"<\/a> it worked beautifully.
\nWe love having authors visit the store. One of the things that\u2019s always fun is giving them a gift of thanks afterward. It\u2019s a rare thing when we find a gift — okay, Elizabeth found this one — that\u2019s so absolutely perfect for the author we make her open it in fro\"\"<\/a>nt of us.
\nIt\u2019s hard to see, but here she is holding her brand new Critter Cruiser, a car for hamster to roll around the house in.
\nAnd lastly, the signed copies of Hot Rod Hamster<\/em> and Rules<\/em> have already been selling quite well. \u00a0It\u2019s easy to despair when a great,
\nfun event isn\u2019t as well attended as you\u2019d like it to be, but booksellers need to remember that events last far beyond the actual presentation. Signed books will sell until there aren\u2019t any left. Right after events, we leave a big display on the front table of signed books from our recent events.
\nEvery day I hear customers say, \u201cOh, that event was last week?\u201d\u00a0 They realize they missed the event, and they buy the book.
\nWe had a first during the event, because Children\u2019s Literature New England was up the road, Peter Sis came to the event. It\u2019s not every day that I\u2019ve had an event where Peter Sis was in the audience. For a brief moment I felt my store was in a far larger city where this wouldn\u2019t be such a wonderful shock.
\nCynthia has already blogged about the event and I’m including a link<\/a> to it so\u00a0\u00a0 folks can see two sides of the the same event.
\nAnd the great thing about this event is,\u00a0 Cynthia and I have already made plans for her to come do an event with us when her book, Touch Blue<\/em>, comes out in the fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I blogged about Cynthia Lord coming for a store visit on Friday for her new picture book Hot Rod Hamster. She was well prepared. We were well prepared. The event was advertised heavily via email (we have a 1,600-person email list), through the schools’ lists, on our website, on an event flyer posted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}