Good Times at the Book Festival
March 11 and 12 found Jen, Shirlei, and I at the spectacular event known as the Tucson Festival of Books. A sea of about 500 tents were set up on the University of Arizona campus mall and upwards of 130,000 people came for part or all of the two days. This is the 3rd largest literary festival in the U.S. behind the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in second place and the Library of Congress National Book Festival in first place. Almost every U.S. state, as well as some foreign countries, were represented in Tucson. And because the Tucson festival is so huge it attracts some of the biggest names in the industry. There were books of every genre for sale, a food court with a variety of favorites for the whole family, activities for children, panel discussions by well-known and lesser known authors, and our destination…Booth #243 (our tent) where we proudly displayed Memoirs of a Delicious Life alongside other authors with their books in tow.
Fabulous volunteers were there to help and answer any of our questions. Since this was a new experience for us, we did have a few and they made the whole process very easy. My amazing husband stayed with us the whole time, standing in the aisle between rows of tents, handing out our bookmarks, and inviting people to step over to our booth to hear about our unique short-story cookbook. We received many compliments on the concept of our book along with the great recipes offered and the beautiful photography.
Our first sale happened almost immediately after we set up our display. A father and his son stopped at our table while his wife and daughter were browsing other tents. The boy saw a photo of our Frozen Strawberry Pie (see our post on October 12, 2016) that we had on display. He told his dad he would like to make that recipe. His dad readily agreed it looked delicious and we had our first sale.
At the end of the day we were very pleased with the success of our book sales, especially since 350 authors are historically represented, each with their own books to sell. But the very best part was all the lovely and interesting people we met and the excitement of being recognized as first-time, published authors. Oh, and…people loved our book!
We sincerely thank all those who bought our book and look forward to many more visiting our blog.
