Just have a few minutes this morning.
THE CONVENTION:
The convention is held at South Towne Convention Center in Sandy, Utah. It goes from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday; from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, with an LDSBA member business meeting at 9:00 on Friday morning and a fun banquet with awards and entertainment on Thursday night.
THE BOOTHS:
We are encouraged to decorate our booths to fit the convention theme. Most do. It’s fun to see everyone’s take on it all. Here are a few descriptions. I will try to get pictures later, but I’ve been so busy that I’ve been forgetting.
Deseret Book Booth
Deseret Book has the biggest booth. It takes up 16 booth spaces, plus one aisle. To help you get an idea, a booth space is 10×10′. That means they had over 1600 square feet. That’s bigger than my house! I didn’t have a long time to browse their booth, just did a quick pass through. They go very classy with black walls and silver and glass displays and leather couches and chairs for people (read that, “buyers”) to lounge in.
The outsides of their booths curve around on each corner to make a little alcove. This is where their authors sit to do their book signings. You can always tell when they have a big name in there doing a signing, because it goes dead on the rest of the floor.
They had Kenneth Cope (I think it was) and John Bytheway signing at the same time and it was dead from about 1:00 to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. I had two new authors doing a signing at that time. No one came to see them. It was dissappointing, but I had warned them ahead of time that it can happen. Since we don’t have access to any of the other vendors’ signing schedules, we make our own and hope for the best. But the authors didn’t feel too bad about it. They were so overwhelmed with the experience. And they had a good time chatting with us and visiting other booths to just look at all the stuff. They were really good sports.
The rest of the day we were really busy.
Oops. Just looked at the clock. Got to go. More later.
Thanks for filling us in on all the LDSBA excitement. I’d dare say most of your readers, published or not, will never have the opportunity to attend. (I have several books on the market but I’m not a big-name author so I doubt my publisher will ever invite me.) It’s fun to read your take on it and imagine what it’s like to be there.
Let me add my thanks as well – I’m finding this stuff totally fascinating. I hope you get a chance to describe some other publishers’ booths. Or maybe even post some pictures. 😉