Fitting BiblioExpeditions In

BiblioExpeditions is my seventh business launch. Strangely, several of the previous ones currently are operating too, with varying levels of ongoing control by me. Most of my time goes into my current job, the shop at Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which I moved to Amherst to put together back in September of 2002. (www.picturebookart.org/shop) I spend a bit of time and some money maintaining the sales rate of my book, "Rebel Bookseller", by running a Google Adwords campaign and keeping a website for it (www.rebelbookseller.com). I'm pretty passive with helping Sander Hicks run the Brooklyn coffeeshop/performance-space/bookstore Vox Pop (www.voxpopnet.net) -- although we're hoping to land investment to open some other Vox Pop outlets, and, I'll get much more active in running the company when that happens.

Most amazingly for me, the Year-2000 startup, PovertyFighters, is still operating. Last Fall, I gave the website away to the Brandeis University students who have for five years been supervising the annual Oxfam Collegiate Click-Drive (which is hosted on PovertyFighters). The Brandeis students completely reprogrammed the site, and moved it onto the college's servers. And there it is, seven years after the website was founded, still raising money for very poor women in Asia, Africa and Latin America to open small businesses. A few days ago, another click-drive got going -- it runs until late March. Go there, register any college to participate, and start clicking on behalf of that college: see if your college can be the one whose students generate the most funds! (www.povertyfighters.com)

Which brings me to the new business. BiblioExpeditions is the sort of company that should be able to grow and change and be very flexible. It can be busy seasonally, or regionally -- and it can shut down for the Winter in the North, or for the Summer in the collegetowns. I should be able to operate it alongside my other activity.

Part of its flexibility will be related to its web-presence. As with the other companies, it will be visible and functional in large part because it is always live on the internet. I want to generate a lot of stories from these bookstore tours, to make photos, record podcasts and videos -- so that each tour becomes a sort of marketing tool for use in selling the next one.

I think that this time, also, instead of relying exclusively on a Google Adwords campaign (though I'll use one of those too), I'm going to utilize the more pro-active web-based email marketing mechanism that the American Booksellers Association has been promoting to its membership: a company called Constant Contact. Here's a story from their website about a Tour Operator who uses this system.

Regular email newsletters promoting upcoming tours will -- if they're newsy and entertaining -- be a more efficient way of selling these tickets than just using publicity campaigns or putting brochures in partner bookstores. I think.