RomCon III

Yes, I'm still talking about RomCon...

And still talking about the signing portion of Saturday. So here's that photo with the marvelous Julia Quinn (and me, still looking like a dork). Next time I pose for photos with fabulous successful authors, I'll bring candlelight and have the pics retouched before posting them anywhere...oh, and wear all black! And stand further away from the camera than the fabulous author!

So. I've heard this signing was rather unusual in that the books were over in one section all together (alphabetically, so yeah, guess whose books mine were near?), where readers had to purchase them and then come in to the area in the photo where we all sat with our names in front of us on the tables. Normally--at other conferences--books are stacked in front of the author's feet under their table, and the readers get them signed right there. As a new author, I think it was nice having the readers browse through all the books, because it maybe gave mine some exposure. On the other hand, maybe if I'd had mine near me, some people would've looked at them while standing in Julia's or Carly's lines... The bookstore had other things for sale, too, besides the books -- some cute earrings and purses and-- get this--chain mail tankinis. No, I'm not making that up! Nor do I understand why a chainmail tankini... but hey. I'm getting old. One thing I'll say about my Borders experience (I had to go buy a new Carly book after breakfast because the one I packed from home was, like, so old and the cover had a bend in it and I just felt wrong about presenting it, so I got Lucky Streak, which was I thought had been voted Best Long Contemporary romance at RomCon, but apparently that was Lucky Break--1st in the trilogy-- so yes, Amanda, heave your big ole sigh because once again I started a trilogy with book #2. LOL). At checkout, the very friendly and helpful crew gave everyone a nifty Chico Bag -- you know, the shopping bags which fold up all into themselves and have a neat little carribeaner to attach to your purse or manbag? Yeah. One of those. The Original style, in froggy green, with a logo from MyBookstoreandMore.com which I'd never heard of before but apparently did themselves proud by providing the neato shopping bags. On further investigation, this retailer appears to be rather new and they have ZERO books from Lyrical Press!! which much be remedied, like, yesterday. But in any case, I totally love the Chico bag and will be watching for the retailer to grow.

I met several nice booksellers during the signing, from all over the country, and even one really neat lady from Australia who has a bookstore. And she knew Lyrical Press!!! Have I mentioned I love booksellers and librarians? (partly cause I'd love to be one. They hold rather envious jobs, in my estimation.)

Some ingenious readers brought their (very spiffy) RomCon program book around and had everyone sign it. This is an especially nice option for ebook fans. One fan had a literal sheaf of sticker pages, all the same ("Author Signed" gold seals), and she had Julia sign like 2 pages of them (probably 30 or so stickers) which she was going to take home an adhere to all her Julia books. Another neat lady had a whole tote full of stuff. She was making a scrapbook of her RomCon experience. So in addition to having authors sign their books, she also had them sign a 12 X 12 scrapbook sheet, which she was going to fill with bookmarks and the photos she took of them all. Talk about being organized! I believe she was somewhat local, but had a room upstairs anyway for all her goods, because she kept going out and swapping stuff from her wheeled tote.

Readers coming in got slips of paper for some type of lottery. Not sure who put this on, but it was nice. And Deb Werksman took around a big orange RomCon goodie bag (empty) for us all to sign, which she was giving away somewhere. By the way, my family thought the orange goodie bags were quite ugly, but I'll say they are quite strong! I hauled a pile of books around in mine and it held up. Harlequin provided those, I believe. At least, their name was all over it... and Samhain was all over the name badge lanyards. Definitely lots of advertising opportunities for subsequent years.

Tomorrow I'll wrap this up...

Autumn Piper
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