Carl Lennertz, v-p of independent retailing at HarperCollins and master blogger, speaks for many of us when he says:
A quick closing note on the past round of fall regional shows. In a
word: Wonderful! In another: Exhausting! And yes: Totally worth every
shipping label, badge request, lost author and paper cut.
Seriously, I want to thank all the booksellers who came and
participated, from talking books with us to talking book biz with their
fellow booksellers. Also, a big thank you to the regional execs and
their boards, who changed and tweaked each show's schedule to make it
so productive, especially on the bookseller-author interaction front. I
think we had 75 authors across the nine shows, and all felt they really
connected with many of you.
One last thing: Mike Perry won the MBA Bookseller Award for Nonfiction for Truck: A Love Story,
and though he couldn't make it due to a previous writers' conference
commitment elsewhere, Susan went along with my crazy idea to have Mike
tape an acceptance speech to be played at the banquet. Mike was
grateful for the chance to express his gratitude and the video is now
up at youtube.
So,
if you have a sane, peaceful seven minutes before the holiday madness
kicks in, get a cup of coffee, take a relaxing breath and enjoy Mike's
soothing voice and his humorous chicken hypnotizing, truck pushing and
bookseller-thanking video. As he says, thank you.