Boswell on Location--Working the Conferences with Our New Sign, Plus Sarah Vowell is Sold Out!

It's the second day of the Green Energy Summit at the Frontier Airlines Center. It's fitting that I passed our new windmill this morning in Bay View, near the Coast Guard Station and the Naval/Marine reserve base. I think it's quite pretty, much nicer looking than electric or cell phone towers.

Today's the day the authors come--there's some discussion over just how many there are and which ones we are responsible for. I think part of the issue is that the conference hadn't used a bookstore previously, so it's possible that there was some doubling up. This is actually the second time we've had this happen in the Boswell era, but it I can also recall it happening with Schwartz. The author and their publisher asked us to sell the book, but the conference had asked another bookseller. My lesson? Don't forget to copy everyone involved on these things. Always request a publisher/author contact to send the confirmation.

Did I do this for our four conferences in March? Of course not.

What we did do is finally get a large remote sign for these shows. In the spirit of the Green Energy Summit, we reused an old stand that was leftover from the Schwartz days. Our expanded logo was designed (of course) by Deep Sea Studios (Tuc Krueger and Joe Lisberg) and we used Splat Digital Printing for the final product.

Our green energy library is available for browsing today. Tomorrow Jason heads to the UWM Spring Writers Festival in the evening (while we're readying for Sarah Vowell's sold-out event) and then I cover that conference on Saturday and Sunday. Then we load in for the Wisconsin Restaurant Show, which we have a booth at on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  When I said yes to these things, I wasn't quite aware they were all contiguous!

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It's true. Sarah Vowell's appearance for Unfamiliar Fishes in paperback (co-sponsored by Wisconsin Public Radio and Ono Kine Grindz) is sold out. Yesterday was the one-two punch that sent it over the top--a cover story leading to an interview in the arts section in the Shepherd Express, combined with a piece in the Journal Sentinel.  To sell out the day before the event is probably perfect. It gave everyone plenty of time to buy tickets, which have been on sale for well over a month.

Boswell will close to the general public at 6 pm tomorrow. And the ticket gets you a book (or $10 gift card) but not necessarily a seat. We have about 225  seats available--the rest is standing room. Don't worry, we have a pretty loud sound system.