Northampton Book Fair

What a great weekend. We packed the Jeep the night before and left early on Friday (setup day), had a nice drive during one of the best weekend for leafpeeping up into the Berkshires and had the booth completely set up by evening. This is always nice as it allows for shopping and chatting during the “morning setup” the day of the show.

We then checked into our wildly seedy motel. The door “locked” with a repaired plate, but would not “catch” at the knob as it had clearly been kicked in at some point. One of the beds boxsprings was split at the edge seam and it had that nice “make certain you wear slippers” feel to it. To be fair, it was clean, extremely cheap and the roof did not leak. The moral of the story is, when you know you are attending a relatively well known/attended show, during leaf season, in the Berkshires, it is wise to secure a hotel room more than a week or so before the event *sigh*.

The fair was great. We had some very nice sales and made some even better buys for clients. We really look at our fairs as marketing/brand building exercises…and are thus pleased when we just break even on the show itself. That said, it is far nicer when you break even for a given show and the next show or two. At least as importantly (actually, more so), we meet some great dealers and private collectors and received some wonderful compliments about our booth, the ad in Fine Books and how well good our book descriptions are…all very nice and ego-sating.

Thanks to all who visited us and said nice things…double thanks to those who bought from us. It was really a wonderful weekend…Sunday was exceptional, too…see the next post for why.