Another Event Partnership, this Time with Cream City Foundation for Tracy Gary, at Boswell Book Company, Wednesday, May 27th, at 7 PM.

One of the secrets to operating a bookstore on a budget is to work with partners whose common goal is to reward their customers (and by this I could mean a business or a nonprofit) and gain new supporters.

It could be 88Nine's support of Greg Kot's Ripped event. They picked up his popular show Sound Opinions within the last year, and folks in Milwaukee might not realize that this public radio show is available.

It could be Outpost Natural Foods working with us on Terese Allen's events for The Flavors of Wisconsin. They are providing some samples for our event, and I'm thrilled. I am a big fan of Outposts's prepared foods (my favorites listed below) and have been greatly impressed by catering manager Avie's offerings. (I have known Avie since she was a recordseller at Radio Doctors, and I've promised her that a post on Radio Doctors is in the pipeline).

Or it could be an organization bringing an author in for a closed event that is hoping for another venue that might find another audience. We worked with Alverno College on Roya Hakakian's Persian poetry night and memoir reading.

Just as we opened, Kathy, one of our connecting types, hooked me up with Maria Cadenas, the executive director of the Cream City Foundation, an umbrella foundation that funnels money to LGBT organizations. I met with her and Colin at Cafe Nervosa downtown and they had an idea. They were bringing in Tracy Gary, author of Inspired Philanthropy, to meet with their donors, and also help train nonprofits. Would another event be of interest to our customers? How about Wednesday, May 27th, at 7 PM?

I think so. This a book about integrating your values into your legacy, a game plan that is would be of great interest for our customers, whether you are an individual who is deciding what to do with your money, or a nonprofit leading your donors to your organization's support. It's not a ridiculous thing to say that most nonprofits are always looking for funding sources.

Gary has a loyal fan in Suze Orman, who has written the book's foreward. To just offer a short tidbit of a quote from the author of many successful financial manuals and an award-winning show aired Saturday evenings on CNBC (I mostly watch the "Can I afford it?" segment and I was surprised that she allowed the 30-something woman living with her husband and parents to remodel her closet and didn't question her not kicking in rent, the way she usually does.) Anyway...

"This book will make sure you continue to breathe financially free for yourself and others for generations to come"
--Suze Orman

I guess this quote, out of context, doesn't really say much, but sometimes a show of support is the most important thing. Say the same thing in my defense for this rather rambling post.

An Update on How Things are Going--And this if Officially Grand Opening Week

Well, by grand opening, you should everything done, right? Not exactly. My mantra of "Every day is a little bit better" still holds true. Our books are beginning to come in through Jason, our accounting system is finally working such that Amie understands it (I'm hoping I'll be next) and we're beginning to get in our sidelines such as Moleskine journals, Galison boxed cards and stationery, and Melissa and Doug and Mudpuppy toys. Card orders from Madison Park and Artists to Watch are en route, as our stuffed animals from Kids Preferred.

Bev is particularly fond of the social notes line, boxed cards with a postcard-style enclosure. Shown is the popular Scandanavian Modern collection. We also have a matching journal and sticky notes. I was more of a fan of the dandelions, which are featured on our gardening table, next to our new whimsical wooden animal compasses, which are only $2.50.

Signage? Our permit for our banner is approved and I'm paying the fee on Monday morning. I expected to have a temporary banner up right away and a finished sign for our opening. Now it seems like the latter was for our opening and maybe the finished sign will be up for our one-year anniversary.

Customers are already talking about which sections they'd like to see bigger, and we're working on that. We've got more books coming in every area, but aside from kids, there's been a lot of talk about our mystery section, which probably calls for a second post. (Note: Anne's mystery group is reading John Dunning's Sign of the Book on May 19th). Also poetry, but that might have to do with the fact that our first three events were all poetry-oriented.

We know how important signage is, and we're trying to get that up; I'm not a fan of our signage typeface and wanted to change it; in the end, I decided there was a lot of money I could save by holding pat. It's a project for another year. (I'm not even positive what the typeface is: I should probably ask Barb at DTS images. I think the closest we came up with was Arial bold.

Our first bookmark is clever, but the design is effectively a bust. Sadly, I didn't really focus on this until after it was printed. We're going to chalk that up to a $35 lesson and redo it. For the next couple of days, you'll get a slightly pixilated version with a badly thought out border and dueling typefaces. I'm hoping Monday will be, not amazing, but improved.

If we play our cards right, we'll even have some tee shirts by the end of the week.

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Here's a nice piece in this week's Shepherd Express about the closing of Schwartz and the opening of the two new shops. It seemed more like an article for February, when the Schwartz closing was announced, and I'm sad that, despite being a week beforehand, there was nothing about my wonderful grand opening events, but it's still a nice cover story, and should probably remind folks not to take these new independent bookstores for granted.

Here's a piece about our upcoming events with Jane Hamilton, Anita Shreve, Elinor Lipman and Mameve Medwed. And don't forget Mequon's Next Chapter has Elizabeth Berg coming. Whatever you say about the state of newspapers, we are very lucky in Milwaukee that we have local book coverage in our paper. Please consider subscribing--I do and I can read them in my store for free! Oh, and if you do, it wouldn't hurt to say you subscribe because of the book coverage.

We took an order for Anita Shreve's Testimony from a fan in Virginia!

Here's an interesting article in the Journal Sentinel about Mary Nohl, the folk artist of Fox Point who left an amazing legacy. We're hosting the authors on June 4th.

And this great article about the new edition of The Flavor of Wisconsin has left us scrambling for books. Thanks to Terese Allen who made sure we had an event booked (on June 11th) before the article went to press.

It looks like I'm going to be on Kathleen Dunn for pledge week this Wednesday, May 6th. Dunn's show is on WHAD from 10-11 AM. Here's a link to info about the show, and it also has Nancy Pearl's recent booklist. Here are the show archives.

On Monday, May 4th at 7 PM, I'm leading my first in-store book club since 1996 in Mequon for the wonderful novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. Hope I'm not too rusty!

Am I Really Going to Give the Turnout for Every Event? Let's Stop Now Before One is Particularly Embarrassing.

1. We had 17 people last night for women's history icon Gerta Lerner. Not that we didn't have small events at Schwartz, but Schwartz did have more people for Lerner last time. I worried about having an event before May, as I didn't think we'd time to promote it properly. Guess what? I worry about the May events too. If you missed her, she's appearing again today at 3:30 PM at the UWM Bookstore at the student union on Kenwood Boulevard, just east of Maryland Avenue.

1a. That said, our first two events for Joshua Beckman and Roya Hakakian had 25-30 people apiece, certainly at our expectations. I credit the local involvement and thank the connected parties.

1b. Poetry Everywhere reception from 5-7 tonight, before the screening at the Downer Theater of new animated shorts. There are snacks, it's a shopping night too--designate your sales and we'll give 10% of the proceeds to Liam Callanan's project. After the screening, there's a reception at Cafe Hollander, and unlike us, they can serve alcohol. (Note: by reception, I am talking a cheese tray and some fruit.)

2. Thanks to several customers who suggested we put the phone number and address of the bookstore on the header of the Boswell and Books blog. It's great news, because that's the way these folks got information about the event. Done!

3. That said, our website has obviously been delayed while we figure out how to use Drupal (and just to answer that question, no I don't have money in our budget for you to program it for us.) My apologies.

4. In case you missed it, here's a great article on The Flavor of Wisconsin in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. We are hosting an event with Ms. Allen on June 11th at 7 PM, with food samples provided by Outpost Natural Foods. More to come.