The day was absolutely gorgeous. Sunlight streamed down from blue skies and the air remained cool from the breeze that blew through the campus. We could not have asked for better weather to join several thousand visitors and exhibitors on the UCLA campus today, to celebrate the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Denny and I arrived just shortly after the opening of the festival and Denny was completely awestruck with the number of people who were already there. We first wanted to get the lay of the land and determined that we should first find the booth in which I would later be conducting a signing and then find those essential items, such as food (Denny) and bathrooms (me).
I participated in the event with the AuthorsDen.com online literary community. AuthorsDen.com is an online community of authors where registered authors can post their books, publish articles, update people on events that they will be participating in, etc. AuthorsDen.com garners the traffic of over one million readers per month and provide the authors with additional exposure and web presence. I have personally found that the more content I have on AuthorsDen.com, the more people click through to either other articles or to my external links that I scatter judiciously through all of my content, such as to my website, blog, and traveling book site, as well as to the locations to purchase Misfit McCabe. AuthorsDen.com has just decided to start becoming involved with events, and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is their first venture. Matt and Jackie Miller were very welcoming to all of the authors, and I can’t thank Jenny enough for all of her assistance throughout the day. The tent was one of the larger ones, and we were located directly across from the culinary stage, and right by one of the food courts (which solved Denny’s issue of where we would find something to eat.)
My signing time went very well. I had steady traffic throughout my time and spoke to quite a few people, handed out lots of bookmarks, and even sold a couple of books. If tomorrow goes as well, I will be quite satisfied with the weekend. I brought along not only copies of Misfit McCabe in the original cover, but I had a few books printed with potential new covers to see what people seemed to be drawn to. So far the results are not conclusive, but there is still tomorrow. Interestingly enough, younger children and boys in my target age group were drawn to the original cover and grabbed the marketing materials I had on hand with the original cover picture. Starting with my target age girls and all adults were drawn to the new covers.
I had a nice chat with Chareline Sanders, who is currently taking some business classes, and she purchased a signed copy of Misfit McCabe in one of the new covers. She will be sharing not only my book, but the marketing materials, including a poster, as well with her instructor, so I am quite excited by that. I will go into some of the marketing things I have seen at the festival as well as posting some pictures that help to illustrate the sheer volume of people attending this event. I will just say, the children’s book area was nuts!! As it is now late, and I am worn out, it’s time to call it a night so I can wake up fresh in the morning and start the process all over again.
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LK Gardner-Griffie
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I’ve never been to a book fair but from your descriptive blog almost felt I was there with you at the LA Times Book Festival. Looks like it was a good day and I hope Sunday went as well. The pics are great, and I like the new covers for MisFit McCabe. What will you do about that – as you said the children were attracted to the original cover but teens and adults went for the new covers, which makes sense to me. What a difficult choice.
For the decisions on the cover for the re-release of Misfit McCabe along with Nowhere Feels Like Home, I’m going to see what the reaction is at the San Diego Children’s Book Festival. The choices are narrowing down, but still no clear winner.
Great pics! I think you have enough covers there for a whole series. They look awesome on the table. Oh, and I love your tee shirt!! You should definitely use that as your author pic.
I was thinking the same thing on the covers (depending on how many books the series stretches to). I think the t-shirts came out great, but am thinking about a slight redesign for the front – we’ll see.