Life affords many opportunities to learn from your mistakes and we certainly learned some valuable lessons on the 14th about organizing a book sale. Taken as a whole, the sale was fairly successful ( at least on a personal level I did better than break-even), almost against all odds.
To begin with, the weather was bad for a sale: heavy rain and windy—like most of this lovely Spring in the Ottawa Valley—killing much potential walk-in traffic. Next, the venue double-booked us with a class of Vets with Parkinson’s disease (lovely people), which made our start time over an hour late—frustrating a large number of first-in-line book lovers (whom I apologize to profusely). Finally, our bartender arrived very late and left early—putting the final lie to the “beer & a bratwurst” portion of the program.
Mistakes were made.
However, I had a great time, and I hope the other participants who joined us enjoyed themselves as well. I met some very nice people from the Ottawa chapter of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, who had a display of wonderful hand-pressed and hand-bound books and art books and papercraft. I would highly reccomend checking out their show in June:
The Future of the Book: The 2011 CBBAG Book Arts Show and Sale
hosted by the CBBAG Ottawa Valley Chapter
Saturday, 11 June 2011, from 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.
Library and Archives Canada
395 Wellington St., Ottawa, Ontario
I also had a nice chat with Mr. Nigel Beale and would recommend you check out his latest endeavour The Literary Tourist. Nigel has purchased the The Book Hunter Press and has been developing an excellent online component to the printed guides. I wish him great success in this very worthwhile project.
So, will Richard and I actually make this thing an annual event as advertised? Stay tuned…
…but don’t expect any more talk of brats…
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Luckily I grabbed a (great) burger at Dominion-Chalmers before heading over to the Legion… so don’t give up on the brats so easy.
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