Aug 10th was the annual authors’ market at the Wakefield Farmer’s Market. A few people asked, as usual, wow, is this every week? Sadly know, but gladly no, because sometimes it’s a feature of glassworks, or woodworking, ceramics, or community services, such as death duelas, or forest replanting, or kids crafts.
It was perfectly sunny and cool so it made for great amount of foot traffic. It was the usual suspects for authors with a few new additions. Brian Doyle, Catherine Joyce, Gatineau Valley Historical Society, Georgia Krekoski (youth author [new]), Grant Karcich, [new], Jean R. Razafindambo [new], Krista Cooke, Nadine Doolittle, névé dumas [who I did not chance to see, again.], Nicole Caputo [kids author], Paul Hetzler, Pearl Pirie, Phil Jenkins, Ruth Tabacnik [with the beads and things sewn for charity] and Sean Silcoff.
Some photos here are thanks to the kind sharing of Helene Giroux. The first two are my own.
The author Georgia Katz-Rosene is 12. She home-printed her novels, put them into signatures, bound them, hand-coloured the covers, and sold out of all 4 titles. (With a takehome of over $200. And without a typo, bad margin, poorly placed page number anywhere unlike some professional presses I’ve seen.) [Correction, in an interview article with her in The Lowdown by Phil Jenkins notes she sold out 44 books at $10 each.] Winner of the show, and her novela, The Jasmine Goats, was very good, hooking with suspense at the end of each chapter, poking at the 4th wall, building characters and scenes. Watch out for her books.
It was windy at day’s start so I gathered rocks to hold things down. As a young buyer commented, “I know it’s your books I am supposed to pay attention to, but your rocks are distracting.” I got a decent amount of sales, $75 or so, plus they gave us tickets for free drink or snack so that ups it to something like $85 for the morning.
It’s good to get a chance to talk with writers, compare notes on printing, research, distribution, pitches, news, whether the writers had other booths or were from those walking around with big ole produce baskets and newborns.
Under a month until the next one. Thurs. Sept 19, 4pm-7pm, Meredith Centre, 23 Cecil Road, Chelsea. Book tables, readings, Fiction, Non-fiction, kids lit and poetry.