A Week in Photographs and Learning How to Pronounce Authors' Last Names, From Beaulieu (bowl-yer) to Orringer (hard g)

Here are some photos from a few of this week's events.  Bradley Beaulieu  had one of those cool stands with a blow up of his cover from The Winds of Khalakovo.  As a professional bookseller, this would come in handy.  Have I made one yet?  No.

This was a great crowd, partly because Mr. Beaulieu was gracious enough to make us the launch event, though I did recognize some regulars from our science fiction book club.  If you are a local author wanting to do an event at Bowell when your book is published (or when you publish your book), you might make a note of that. 

I found Beaulieu's use of Russian history and iconography to shape his world very interesting.  I learned in the Fantasy Book Critic blog that this is rather unusual.  Robert has some negative things to say, but I can tell he's a tough critic and he does say at the end that this is one of the better fantasy debuts of 2011.

Gary Vaynerchuk was a great evening.  He's a terrific speaker and seems to have boundless energy, considering he had already done a presentation and a tweet up and a meeting at 800ceoread before heading to the bookstore. 

I was intrigued that the author had the same co-writer for the two books, Crush It and The Thank You Economy.  The first book definitely had more of a manic edge, was a bit more confrontational, and talked more about his New York Jets obsession.  The new book is a bit softer, and definitely seemed more targeted to corporate buyers than individuals.   Though there is still definitely advice on how small businesses should think big, the focus is more on how large businesses should think small.

We still haven't done our tweeting and the crowd made me realize we need to start pushing ebooks; I think you can now harness Google editions from our site.  I've signed all the paperwork, but I haven't done any testing yet.

Wednesday was Blue Balliett day and with two school visits and another to the Shorewood Public Library, it was quite a full day. We hoped to get in a visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum, especially with its Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit (one of Balliett's novels is The Wright 3, after all), but alas, they close at 5 on Wednesdays.  We did park outside and peek in the windows.

I forgot my camera, but Tiffany at the Library was able to take some shots, and we have a nice one of Balliett signing copies of The Danger Box.

 And yesterday was a day with Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge.  By now you've figured out that I only have two good angles for photographs when we have a big crowd.  Close from the side and further back straight on.  We wound up hosting two nice events, one at the JCC and another at the store.  I may have gone on a bit too long with my book club talk (I wanted to keep to 15 minutes but I went a bit over 20) and I still feel that while we are giving out hundreds of our brochures, I don't think I'm yet at the point where I'm getting too many book clubs to come in with help to pick titles.  I did see some representatives though, though I would say most of the folks there were out to see Orringer. 

One of the sad things about events, is that when you do a great big window as we did for Orringer, you have to dismantle it before the author gets there.  We do always keep one of our smaller display windows up until the author arrives.  But if she or one of her friends do happen to find this blog, she'll see that it was really there.

The word-of-mouth on The Invisible Bridge continues to be wonderful and I'm hoping that her attendees (well over 100 in two events) were galvanized to keep the buzz going on the book.  And thanks to Bill Young, who not only takes around authors, but spots first editions.  I swapped out my fourth printing copy for a first that he spotted among our hardcovers. All the other copies we had were eighth printing.  That's a nice amount of printings!

What's Going on This Week? Vaynerchuk, Balliett, Orringer, and a Poetry Vending Machine. Just Writing it Makes Me Tired.

We've got another exciting week of stuff to share.  Tonight (April 25), Liam Callanan and I are taking our show on the road.  Callanan is the featured speaker at the Friends of the Lake Geneva Public Library meeting at 6 pm, discussing his two novels, All Saints and The Cloud Atlas. The library is located at 918 West Main Street in (surprise!) Lake Geneva.  For more info, call (262) 249-5299 or visit their website.

Feeling musical?  Our pal Stephanie Jacob stopped by, reminding us that the last Prometheus trio concert is tonight and tomorrow (April 25 and 26) at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.  Starting time is 7:30.  The program includes:

Schumann: Fantasy Pieces, Op. 88

Beethoven: "Kakadu" Variations, Op. 121a

Boulanger: D'un soir triste

Ravel: TrioLalo: Trio No. 3 in A Minor.

More on their Facebook page. 

I've already written at length about Gary Vaynerchuk's appearance for The Thank You Economy.  My aha moment?  "Oh, I'm supposed to follow the people who follow me on Twitter or we can't DM (direct message) each other."  The event is Tuesday, April 26, 7 pm, at Boswell.  Register here.  And there's also a tweetup at Lakefront Brewery in the afternoon.  More on the 800ceoread website.

It's not too late see Amy Stewart, author of Flower Confidential, Wicked Plants, and the new Wicked Bugs, at the Boerner Botanical Gardens.  Tickets are $25, $20 for friends.  More on their Facebook page. And you can now get a signed copy of either of the "wicked" books from us.  Just request when you order. 

If you are in the Chicago area, Stewart will be at Anderson's Naperville store tonight (April 25, 7 pm).  Here's more info.

Stewart stopped by the store to sign stock Yes, she's going from Milwaukee to Chicago and back to Milwaukee.  We chatted about her books, and wherever it was she had her last Schwartz event.  By process of elimination, it was either Mequon or Brookfield. Stewart, as you know, co-owns the gorgeous Eureka Books, an antiquarian bookstore (mixed with some new books too) in downtown Eureka. Here's the website--don't you want to go there right now?

After a full day of school events, we'll be cohosting Blue Balliett, author of The Wright 3 and Chasing Vermeer, at the Shorewood Public Library (3920 North Murray) at 4 pm.  The author will be talking about her new novel, The Danger Box, which involves a young boy in Michigan who comes into possession of the lost notebook of a famous scientist.  More on the Milwaukee Moms website.  And don't forget--4 pm!

Love poetry?  Well we're hosting Verse Wisconsin and the Jawbreaker Poetry Project on Thursday, April 28, at 7 pm.  Come see the Verse-o-matic, where the poetry is even tastier than the sweet treats they are packaged with in the poetry vending machine.  This event includes a reading by Brenda Cardenas and is located at Boswell. More info at Poetry Jumps off the Shelf.

On Friday April 29, we've got two events with Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge. First up is at the JCC, 6255 North Santa Monica, at Noon.  Food is available.  For more info, contact Jody Hirsh or visit the Planit Jewish website.  Get it?

Then at 7 pm, Orringer is our featured speaker in conjunction with my semi-annual book club recommendation talk.  Hey, I need to finish the brochure.  This event is at Boswell. I'm sure you won't be surprised that The Invisible Bridge is one of my recommendations.

What? No event on Saturday?  I've got to talk to our scheduler.  More on our event calendar.  Alas, just got word that Christopher Howard had to cancel.  No worries!  We already had another event waiting in the wings.  Should have it updated by tomorrow.

Blog Stats, Why Australia?, Expert Business Advice Possibly Coming Soon!

Here’s an interesting tidbit, some blog stats for 2010. I have no idea if this is considered good (I suspect it's not great for blogs in general, but decent for bookstores), but we had 36,000 hits to the blog, with about 15,000 absolutely unique visitors. About half of those hits were to the general blog site. However, we also get people linking to specific posts.

Here were the top Boswell and Books posts:
557 hits, Breaking my Rule About Waiting…on Day for Night

550 hits, Listen to the Mockingjay

502 hits, I Receive Official Consumer Product Survey…on A Reliable Wife

348 hits, A Mini Milwaukee Tour of Happy Days, with an assortment of book mentions

348 hits, Books that Sell Themselves…on Murder on the Eiffel Tower and The Power of Kindness

It seems there are two ways to get a lot of hits. The first is to get picked up in an industry roundup, which is responsible for the success of number one and five. The second is to write about a topic that people are searching for. In some cases, like number two, that is the book. Though the Mockingjay piece is short, it shows the picture of the free tattoos, which seemed to grab people.

In the case of three and four, as much as I'd like to say I'm the definitive source for all things about A Reliable Wife, it's actually the Official Consumer Products Survey that folks are looking for. Interestingly enough, since that post (which was actually posted two days before we opened), I've never gotten another survey.

Similarly, my recounting of my trip with my friends Michael and Scot to the prominent Milwaukee-area locations that reference Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley comes from folks searching for Happy Days, and is not proof that there is a cult following for Captain Fredom. Or it could be Scot rereading the blog post in his free time, remembering his best trip ever.

Both these blog posts are from 2009. Conspicuously absent is the top clicked blog post of 2009, Schwartz Bookshops to close. Here's a little bit of geographic distribution. From within the United States, here are the top state clicks:

1. Wisconsin (the lion's share)

2. New York

3. California

4. Illinois

5. Minnesota

That's good, as the first duty of this blog is to connect with Boswell customers. And the other states account for the the four other states that have a substantial amount of publishing folk we deal with, both publishers and reps. I also know that just like I read a lot of bookseller blogs, booksellers read mine.

Here are top 5 countries for hits in 2010:
1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. India

I have no idea, except needless to say, countries that speak a lot of English are involved. Now of course the reason Brisbane is the top Australian spot is our pal Denise, who visited last summer with my sister Merrill. Denise recently sent me this great note about Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and how she almost didn't read it because the jacket didn't speak to her, but then she did and loved it. Here's the Australian jacket. Simonson was at Next Chapter last night. If you want a signed copy, they probably have one for you.

So that's it for blog stats. I don't know if I'll ever get to the level of Gary Vaynerchuk, the author of Crush It, who used social networking to increase his customer base dramatically. Keep posted, because I'm hoping to get some more advice from the master--there's discussion about booking the wine master/business guru for an event for his new book, The Thank You Economy. And maybe also in the midst of buying a cheap video camera. Tomorrow I'll let you know how our first outing went with our new projector.