As announced in my previous question, I have applied for permission to set up a stall on the 23rd of April (World Book Day) in Barcelona. Today (2 days in advance) I start hitching there with my rucksack full of recently printed books. ("Not Now, Daddy!" in a Catalan/English/Spanish edition and a German/French/Italian one; a book of poems; and 100 copies each of 3 languages of a b/w 4pp. comic to be coloured by the reader).
I will only know WHEN I arrive at the council offices in Barcelona (tomorrow, I HOPE!) whether my application has been successful. If not, and since in Catalunya this will be "the day of the book and the rose", I will find some university students who are selling roses and use my undeniable charm to ask if I can set up a folding table next to them and pretend that we're all together, taking crass advantage of THEIR permission.
Yesterday I discovered (quite by chance) that - like the UK - Castelló de la Plana (my nearest city) holds its book fair DISPLACED! (In its case, it'll be a week [or is it 10 days?] long, starting on the 29th or 30th of April). Don't ask me why, but I ain't complainin'!
I HAD debated whether to go to the big city (Barcelona) for the 23rd or stay local. Now I find that I can do both. There'll be a stall for books from SMALL publishers, so I don't even have to be there... but I've applied to be included in the roster for book signing AND have offered a clowns performance with some new friends just met yesterday. Hopefully, I'll be able to do both on the Sunday, 3rd of May. (One of my potential clowns is a nurse in "real" life, and isn't on duty that day, others are shopkeepers who'll also be free on Sunday.)
Anybody in the Valencia area want to show up? I'll even make a fool of you! (I mean a clown: you can easily learn your part in 15minutes.) But only if you want.
Life's looking UP!!!
Jimmy, you've got to talk! You didn't engage with the German people; you could have made a sale there. The books won't sell themselves. Did you explain what you are hoping the books will achieve? The multi-lingual nature of your work? You speak a lot of languages - you could have called out in each of them.
Many parents are just not book savvy - they are even afraid of them. (I wonder what the word for book phobia is?) You caught the interest of the kids, but their parents were too busy chatting to care. Got to be a salesman these days.
Anyway, here's to Castelló.
(By the way - I don't like clowns. I have a deep and long-lasting distrust of them. They worry me. Sorry!)
Correction: paragraph 6, lines 1+2, "To the half-dozen adults who showed any interest in it" SHOULD read "To the half-dozen adults who showed any interest in my children's book" (not - as it grammatically followed in the original - the stall). [NOBODY showed the least interest in the book of poetry.]
Some of you will be asking: "WHY does Jimmy write 'Looking forward to Castelló...' after that disaster???"
Well, I actually enjoyed today. Add to that the facts that
a) in Castelló (as opposed to today), I won't be manning a stall single-handedly;
b) the stall is being organised by experienced professionals who will use certain channels unknown to me to announce which authors will be signing their books when;
c) I get to take part in a clown "circus".
My book-signing is on Saturday, 2nd May, the clown show the next day. I'm waiting to hear at what time for each.
Dear Lorraine,
I got the permission for Barcelona (even though I applied a month or 2 past the deadline), after some amazing luck hitchhiking from Castellón. I hitched with over 110 (paperback) books [85 copies of tri-lingual "Not Now, Daddy!" + 30 copies of a book of poetry] and 150 4-page comics in b/w (for the reader, whether adult or child, to colour themselves), which I put an outlandish price of 1€ on, so that I could offer it as a free gift for anybody who bought the 10€ book.
Today was the book fair. This is Saint George's Day (el dia de Sant Jordi - the patron saint of Catalunya), when it's traf¡ditional to give your partner either a book or a rose.
I was quite flabbergasted to observe how 90% of the passers-by didn't even LOOK at the book stalls. (Quite a lot were carrying roses, so that they'd "done their duty" as far as tradition goes.)
SIX people walked past several book stalls as if they weren't there, stopped 3m in front of mine... in order to take a photo of Jacint Verdaguer (THE famous Catalan poet of the 19th C.) on top of his high column (on the other side of the roundabout from me). I was wondering if they had the foggiest who it was. For all I know, they thought it was some roman emperor, but hey, he must be important to have such a high column!
Even more disturbing is the probability that they knew perfectly well who it was. Perhaps this is another Catalan custom: to take a photo of Verdaguer on his column on St. Jordi's day... without paying a blind bit of notice to today's writers and poets, who were sitting and breathing just 3m away from them.
I set up my stall at 11a.m., took it down at 8p.m. To the half-dozen adults who showed any interest in it, I said that they were free to leaf through it. Only ONE did so... and she bought it for her grandchild. She got a free comic as well. She was my only customer in the whole day. (I also gave away 4 comics.)
I was waiting for 5p.m., when schools let out, hoping for more luck with children and their parents. I DID have more luck with the children... but not with their parents. It one case, 3 boys, all in my target age-range, showed interest in the book and were talking about it, while their several parents were chatting 5m away. When they'd finished chatting, they gathered their children and set off, WITHOUT GIVING ONE GLANCE AT THE STALL THAT HAD SO INTERESTED THEIR CHILDREN.
In another case, two boys were looking at the book. I thought that I'd heard their mother say something in German. And certainly the boys were stationed more in front of the German/French/Italian edition than the Catalan/English/Spanish one, while their mother was elsewise engaged. When she came over to stand behind them, she stood there for a full minute without making eye contact with me... or with my books.
You see, Paul, I'm NOT pushy. If I were, I would have said [in German]: "Did I hear you speaking German? Do you realise that this children's book that your sons are looking at is in German? And is aimed at their age-range?"
But I don't like putting people on the spot...
Despite what I've written - which might have given people the opposite impression - I was NOT invisible. I saw parents pointing me out to their children (from a safe distance), saying something to them which I couldn't hear but could well imagine to be a variation of "Look at that strange man with the bright orange beard!"
At a relatively early stage, I put up a sign reading [in Catalan]: "Books cost money. (So do comics.) Hugs don't." Then [in English]: "Free hugs here." I got ONE hug all day. That was from a man in a group who were all pointing at the sign and commenting among themselves. Most of them moved on to the next stall (selling handcrafted "jewellery"), but 2 men hung back, and one of them looked a bit hesitant. So I stood up and made a 2-armed "come on" gesture, which would have been more embarrassing for him to turn down than to accept. That, Paul, is the extent of my "pushiness".
Quite a lot of young women (mostly in groups of 3) laughed at me today. Whether they were just plainly laughing at my orange beard and hair, or at the ridiculous concept of hugging somebody who looked like me (or maybe at the very concept of hugging ANY total stranger), I really can't say.
I got a lot of friendlier / more interested looks and stares - even the occasional wave - from really small children, which is always a buzz.
And several people [mostly young adults] showed interest in my Alice competiyion and took away prepared snippets of paper with the URLs (http://la-granota.com/comp.htm and http://la-granota.com/fiesta.htm) printed on them. But what's the use of publishing another book if nobody reads books anymore.
If I were in this for the money, I think that today might have persuaded me to give up.
But luckily I'm not and it didn't.
Looking forward to Castelló...