36 book sales in one day!

Saturday the 16th of October, our local elementary school hosted their annual "yard sale". The community was invited to participate and of course to attend. The premise of the event is for a community of families would donate a small fee to the school and receive in return a space in the parking lot to sell whatever they wanted. Old junk, new junk, homemade goodies, freshly cooked goodies, if you want to sell it, you can. My wife Alisa has quite a following in our community for her gourmet caramel apples and some other goodies that she makes. This seemed like a good opportunity to also sell the AthertonCustoms catalog of publications to the people at the event. Since this was the first time attempting book sales in this environment, I had no expectations as to sales.
The community definitely attended. There were definitely less than in years past, but it was still well attended. In preparation for the event I brainstormed and left some comments in other forums about what some good ideas might be to help get noticed at an event like this. It turned out, that I did bring an airbrushed background of an underwater/sea life scene that helped to draw attention and set the mood for inside the booth. I brought a little ipod and speaker set to play some of my favorite Hawaiian music, because that is what I anticipated selling the most were my 2 hawaiian titles, and I did!
36 total sales for the day!
There were less than a handful of people who I spoke with that didn't end up buying one or both of the books. I know that if I had stock of "Lucky the Rubber Ducky" that I would have sold plenty of those too. It was very fun to hear and see the feedback from the community for Alisa's book "Sammy's Dentist Dilemma". I was able to build a nice little e-mail list for people interested in future titles, including Sammy.
On one table I had laid out my bookmarks and 6 different coloring sheets, 2 from each book title. I guess I should make some for "Lucky". The coloring sheets were a BIG hit, bookmarks not so much.
The photos were taken in between the busy spells, I had 2 and 3 people listening and interested almost the whole morning. It was really a lot of fun.
This is how it's done. In the "trenches" selling one book at a time, this is the only way to get a book out there. There is no magic marketing plan, the author/publisher must have a passionate drive for sharing his book with the buying public. Barnes and Noble, and Amazon are happy to trade money for a book, but the real selling of the book is the author's responsibility. Enough of my soap box, here are a few photos of the booth and event! I can't wait to try it again!

The booth set up

Jim at the table