My Booth at the Strawberry Festival
Here I am, displaying my books, Rotaida and the Runestone, Royal Spy, and Shereluck Ohmes and the Case of the Curried Cookbook, at the Vashon Island Strawberry Festival. last weekend. Suzanna Leigh took the picture.
The red-bordered books are her Atom's Monster. We sold enough books, rune necklaces (suspended from coat hanger at right) and Suzanna's runes, dragons and griffons on silk squares to more than pay for booth rental space and materials. Some vendors sold zilch, so we feel pretty lucky.
One of the best aspects of the booth was seeing so many old friends. Some dropped by to buy a book and chat, some just for a mini visit. The Chamber of Commerce gave us a splended location, a corner that caught breezes that hot, hot Saturday, and attracted foot traffic from two directions, next to the kids' playground. The kids especially loved having their photos taken as a knight or as Princess Rotaida. I'd painted the costumes on canvas that we hung at the back left and cut out face holes. Photogragher Suzanna charged $1 to cover the cost of mailing photos that couldn't be emailed.
We learned ways to improve our act. Next year we'll bring sheets to hang for walls and to drape the tables. We'll also keep a better tally of how many of each book or rune or silk square we sold, and hope to catch more names and addresses, in writing. The drawing for a set of runestones in pretty bag netted a lot of them, and we have names and addresses from a few checks that people wrote. We ran out of change-making ability late Sunday and had to ask, "Do you have anything smaller than that $20?"
Although we brought home dozens of unsold books, etc., considering the economy and how light all vendors' sales were compared to last year, we did okay and had a good time doing it. We may do more festivals next year.
See more photos on Suzanna's blog http:/chilrensplay.blogspot.com