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Hello! WOW - what a festival! You all helped make it AMAZING! I'm going to keep this short and sweet because Cardyn and I are still recovering, but I wanted to get these things out to you so you'd have an update before the weekend.  FEEDBACK Below is a link to the feedback form. It's long. You can just fill out the parts you want, but as we are still new to the book fest game, your answers will help shape the future. Maybe take the survey when you have about 20 minutes free to do so. 2025 INTEREST If you are interested in being among the first to be notified before we go live with 2025 registration please fill out the interest form. We expect to be accepting registration in the spring of 2024. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEemMZ-jaY6zZSdp22mfcXDsNqImbyfV3e_KpOeTx3AP58uQ/viewform BOOKSTORE UPDATE Having 100+ participating authors this year who are mostly self-pubbed, indie or through Amazon combined with the complicated ordering criteria for Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores like Curmudgeon Books when stocking books that aren’t from the big major publishers created a bit of an administrative bottleneck. Sincerest apologies for underestimating how much more time was needed to make this element of TWWBF go smoothly. The good news is that B & N and Curmudgeon Books still plan to create displays of books by TWWBF authors and to keep them up later into the winter holiday shopping season. B & N’s is currently a work in progress using books by TWWBF authors that were already in-stock to get started. Is my book in the store? Here's how to check for B & N: Go to barnesandnoble.com, search for your book by title or author, then under "Pick Up In Store" click the "Check Availability at Nearby Stores" and change the distance to 5mi, enter 20715 zip code, which will yield the Bowie Town Center store as the only result. Green check marks next to "in stock in store" and "available for pick up in store" mean it's there; red check marks mean it's not. A reminder that the store has complete control over this and their decision is final. Also, please be patient. This year's list of authors was significantly longer than previous years and has shown that we need a much longer lead time on ordering. On the plus side, books that make the bookstore criteria will be on display deeper into the winter holiday gift-buying season than in previous years. And you can always encourage your fans to order books at the Bowie Town Center B & N in-person or online year-round, which still helps you as the author, the store and TWWBF. Details are less defined right now for Curmudgeon Books, but here are the links for their store website and for bookshop.org: https://curmudgeonbooks.com/ https://bookshop.org/shop/curmudgeonbooks IMAGES BELOW FROM THE B&N DISPLAY IN BOWIE
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Hello Lovely TWWBF Community! I wanted to pause all of this frantic work to get everything in place to say thank you to all of you for your time and energy you've put into this event. We have at least doubled in growth since 2019 - and during two pandemic years! We pivoted! We twisted into pretzels! We figured it out as best we could under super weird circumstances!
As an event organizer I have two serious fears - that people will leave disappointed in the event, and that somebody will show up and say they registered for a table and I've never heard of them! I realize that last one is very unlikely, but it's kind of like the dream where you missed a test you didn't know about and now you won't graduate. SAME VIBE. But the first fear is a lot more realistic because we ARE STILL a newish event that is not genre-specific. I've done a lot of event research and it seems that two strong elements that help determine a sell-out event:
Each year we learn more and continue to evolve and improve. We still have big ideas for this event we plan to slowly implement. We're glad you're here to be a part of our history. Please BE SURE to take photos, and videos, post on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok - talk about the event and show your tables off. Get photos for future posts to help market yourself at other events. This event will give you a lot of material for social media - which is important whether we like it or not! That being said - we expect this new venue for Saturday's event to be great and keep us out of any weather and have plenty of parking. There's a bar for chatting after the event and meeting other authors if you like. There's going to be good energy surrounding this event, and we're so glad you're a part of it. Thank you and all my best - Heather Brooks |
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