Back to School
My weekend event was just up the road from East Ridge, Tennessee, in Tunnel Hill, Georgia. I set my table display on the porch of the Clisby Austin house where a long line formed to visit the .......
I returned to Tunnel Hill again this year in September, 2013, and had one of my best event sales. I sold 36 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday. That included one Bread Upon the Water and one Just for the Moment, I had hidden under the table. Three teenaged girls are planning to find Cracks in the Ice for their kindles. That doesn’t include the five books I had to throw away after I backed over a carton of books with my car! Luckily most of the books in the carton were still in their six-pack wraps. I came away with three school visits in the future and a new museum home for Avery.
Tunnel Hill, GA, is really an interesting place with an abandoned train tunnel you can walk through on the rails of the Great Locomotive Chase.
I need to reorder more bookmarks. Every book has its own bookmark. I order them from the printer in town and have holes drilled where I loop ribbons through. If I sign a book for siblings, I put in a bookmark for each of them. Families really like that. The ribbon spools are 47 cents at Wal-Mart. I can tie 50 bookmarks for 47 cents. The appreciative smiles of the customers are worth more than that. Every book I sign has a bookmark and a business card stuck in the front to continue the marketing process long after we all go home.
I’ve sent letters and emails to several schools in every area where I’ll be visiting for reenactments for the rest of the year offering free visits for the opportunity to share the books with the kids. I will average only one response in each city. Usually it will be a parochial school. They still teach in traditional ways and are delighted to have an outside resource. Rarely does a public school respond. But, it’s September and I’m ready to keep trying.