A Tale Of Two Book Events

Well, it was a bit of an uneven day, to say the least.

The signing event for No Kid of Ours is Failing at Math (How Parents Can Help) at my old office went well, both in terms of sales and the joy of seeing old friends. I'd estimated to Vicki ahead of time a range of how many copies I expected to sell there, and we hit that mark.

The evening's activity, on the other hand, was very nearly a complete bust. We didn't sell a single book at the school bazaar, nor would I say we ever really got very close to making a sale. Keeping it from being a complete waste of time and money were the following bits of learning:

• demographics matter - the school was in a much poorer part of town than we live in, and unfortunately that translated to parents who were not only less likely to give up $20 for a chance to help their kids with Math but also unlikely to consider the prospect of reading a book to be anything less than a chore
• bookstores might work for us - talking to another self-publishing author there (of children's books) provided some good info for what we have to look forward to in getting our book onto store shelves
• our promotional material needs some work - watching how people responded to what we'd put on our signs helped me re-think what sorts of things should be on them in order to catch someone's attention

I think, for future bazaars, we'll be a little better prepared than we were today. I'm just glad I didn't carry more than one box of books into the school (we had 4 boxes of them in the trunk!).

To any former workmates of mine who stopped by to see us this afternoon: thank you! It was the bright spot of my day, as you can see.