There was all kinds of good and goods to be had this round with local and regional writers or publishers and a few out-of-towners. Every year there’s a switch over of it seems about 1/3 of faces behind tables. The next one is towards the end of June 2013. But this year first…
Lydia Peever of Night Face a vampire fiction in second edition (as well as typicalcallydia, ottawa horror and HoraMorior) shared a table with Heather E Thomson with her chapbook Memoirs of a Bookshop Girl.
I missed making it over to some tables. It’s always complex when also manning a table. 8th House Publishing was there with a couple books. Sylvia Stojek Martin brought ebooks on CD and used books and vintage comics. room 302 was there with some older stock. Grunge Papers I just forgot to take a photo of. Sonia Saikaley was back but already featured her picture at the June small press fair. Some, like chrysalis zine and BuschekBooks I mentioned in the previous post.
Some people i pictured on the flyby like with Christina Maxwell with her Journeying Home and her fair neighbour the fortune teller who seemed to keep up a fairly regular stream of people.
Funny how some years have absolute dead times and crazy peaks but this time once it was 1 o’clock it seemed pretty steady all afternoon, even with people arriving near closing.
I don’t seem to have taken many pictures of the passing crowd this year. Some are stopped here at Ferno House, in from Toronto with his anthologies and chapbooks.
Patricia McCarthy with her Crimson Vampire series, part 5, all with an Ottawa setting. There tends to be a range of offerings at the fair from novels to paper art to Christian S Aluas with his Masterpiece Art School info and some images for sale.
Dwight Williams was also there with Words, Art, Comics, Portraiture and in other artistic flair, Jenn was there with Apt. 9‘s broadside and chapbooks. Pictured is Bardia Sinaee’s broadside. Hear an interview of Cameron and the other Apt. 9 folks here.
There was some cyberpunk at SkyRock Forest Arts Inc. Sun Falls Press had some graphic comics too.
The freebie table was loaded this year with issues of This, Broken Pencil, other magazines and books. Some are from people who couldn’t come and some are from people with tables.
Christine was making bows over the afternoon that went around the room, their strings swinging from books stacks people were buying. Conflict from Christine McNair is to the left. Sandra Ridley and Christine are reading in Perth this Saturday at the first edition reading series.
Even tiny zombies like to read, see? At the “Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies” table, I missed the caution tape in this shot.
Secret Selves won the bronze at the Independant Publisher Award for 2012. It’s a story of how the mental health lives of two children changed the mother. Her blog challenges the idea of choice when it comes to transgender and gay.
Jamie Johnson was also at the ottawa small press fair with her book and Hidden Lives: coming out on mental illness, an anthology (Brindle and Glass) of personal essays and the novel Jellicle Girl by Stevie Mikayne.
Here I am, with my traditional jar of pickles.
It was sort of a middling year for sales for me but my new were mostly $1 items and Where There’s Fire for $12. I made about $80 over the afternoon which, since it was just me would work out to minimum wage, assuming no inventory costs. To not haemorrhage money, it would have to be good sales to cover travel costs to another town, but then, part of it is not bottom line. Part of the benefit is seeing what’s new with other publishers, a chance to chat and catch up.
Wish I’d asked for a photo op since the two at this booth had matching t-shirts of “I write comics”. Here Nathan Bowler is putting up some of his Superanndom Comics.
The Ottawa Press Gang had a table with pretty items from various letterpress members like Greyweathers.
There are usually one or three booths of kids books too. This year: The Booger Ball book by Thomas Jardine and Josée Lindsay’s Superspark.
rob was there with with some he was the publisher of via above/ground or Chaudiere Books and his newest out “songs for little sleep,” from obvious epiphanies and Arc Magazine.
Twigs & Leaves and their press Broken Rules came in from Ste. Anne de Bellevue. (I’m in their CD of season 4’s chapbook/CD combo.)
Bywords had their Mecca of info and the pretty chapbooks that they make.
Last but not least, AngelHouse and Amanda Earl made poems.