Tuesday, September 17, 2002
PNBA highlights:
Thursday
Avin Domnitz’s workshop on Bookstore Budgeting and Planning. The ABA has built a series of Excel spreadsheets for any bookstore to manage their finances, including tracking cash flow in order to secure a line of credit from the bank. Avin’s about the only person who can make 3 hours of accounting seem fun and valuable. He presents this session at various regional and BEA shows. Highly recommended to any booksellers.
Friday
My session on Bookstore Website Marketing was at nine, and everything for it went smoothly. No technical difficulties, a good turnout, and my voice didn’t crack once!!
The PNBA Holiday Book Catalog meeting was productive. I’m going to add the titles to all of the stores I work with. Good promotion for everyone, booksellers, publishers, and PNBA. Met a few more booksellers.
Friday afternoon I went back to the hotel and rested. It was definitely a luxury not to have to run a booth this year. When I worked for the ABA, I’d always have to set up the booth on Friday afternoon, or work it, or be somewhere. Never could I just take a nap. So I did this year, and it made the rest of the evening very easy to deal with.
The Celebration of Authors was a great way to learn about the books being signed later in the night. I enjoyed Playa Works by William Fox (essays on sense of place and sense of self in the open deserts of Nevada), Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling (see later buzz on this one).
After dinner we went to the Author signing at the top of the Holiday Inn, long lines for all the books, good to see, and even got a few of the ones I wanted!
Saturday
Attended the author Breakfast with Chuck Palahniuk, T.A. Barron, and Jill Fredston. Fredston showed slides of her book Rowing to Latitude, amazing photos of rowing the coasts of Alaska, Greenland, and Scandinavia. My favorite moments were from Palahniuk’s stories of his family. It really gave an added dimension to hear him talk about himself.
We checked out from the hotel this morning, so there was a lot of hurrying around after the breakfast ran long. Packing the car, settling the bill, trading car keys with my traveling partners, etc. etc.
At the show, I met with a lot of publishers to discuss what AnthemBooks.com is about and how we can work together. It was great to get down a routine of what to say. So much fun to meet kindred spirits who believe in the importance of independent bookstores. Particularly great people at Simon and Schuster, Tor/Forge, BookPeople, and Random House.
The biggest PNBA Award buzz talk was about The Blue Bear by Lynn Schooler for best nonfiction and Perma Red for fiction.
My favorite books from the show:
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
Perma Red by Debra Earling
White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike (classic Japanese manga)
Himalayan Dhaba by Craig Danner (Penguin had a big stack of these)
100 Demons by Lynda Barry
Saturday night’s Author Banquet was a great event. Children’s author Rosemary Wells, Cruddy author Lynda Barry, and Bill Gates (Senior). Lynda Barry gave a great talk about her writing process. It was the hardest I laughed through the whole weekend (which is saying a lot). Barry is just dynamic and read some GREAT stories about her Filipino grandmother scaring her mother with vampire tales at Halloween and another about the class clown of her high school.
The best moment of the night was seeing Bill Gates, Sr. take the stage after Barry. Here’s this stately gentleman approaching the podium to talk about the Estate Tax and he has to follow the woman who belted out a 70’s rock song and impersonated her grandmother's high pitched accent. Yikes. There was this eerie silence in the room as we all thought, “is he really going to try and talk about taxes now?!?” But he did, and he did it well. I applaud him for this night.
A great 2002 PNBA show.
