Saturday, April 21, 2007

First tickets sold

Last Sunday Jan Gardner wrote an article about BiblioExpeditions in the Boston Globe and over the past few days I've started getting response to this. Three people have signed up for the email newsletter (now I guess I will have to WRITE a newsletter) and two people actually bought tickets! One person bought 2 tickets for the Boston trip, and one person bought a ticket for Boston and a ticket for the June 2 trip to New York.

I've now come to the conclusion that I will need to create a jam-packed touring schedule for launch in the fall. I'll do the planning in the early summer, and start promoting a comprehensive schedule by August, and have several tours running in multiple directions every weekend, by September. I will probably focus on weekly trips in and out of New York, Boston and Amherst/Northampton.

The trick in differentiating various trips is developing those thematic elements I was wrestling with conceptually, a couple of months ago. Like: a children's bookstore tour that goes--

1)Depart Books of Wonder in New York on Saturday morning. (Alternate departure point on a similar trip: Bank Street Bookshop on the Upper West Side).
3) Arrive at Eric Carle Museum in Amherst at noon.
4) To Eight Cousins in Falmouth late afternoon.
5) Dinner and overnight in Falmouth.
6) To Martha's Vineyard for Sunday morning visiting the bookstores there (Riley's Reads, Bunch of Grapes), then leave Falmouth.
7) Arrive The Children's Bookshop in Brookline early afternoon.
8) Short hop to Curious George Goes To Wordsworth late afternoon.
8) Return to New York VERY late Sunday.

Hmmm -- maybe the trip has to start Friday to be done by Sunday night...

There are so many similar options. Makes my head spin.

Here's Jan's article:

You're either on the bus ...

With his new venture in the book world, entrepreneur Andrew Laties is betting on bus trips. Every day buses deliver dozens of customers to casinos in Connecticut. So why not hire buses to bring book lovers to the best bookstores in the Northeast? That's the idea behind BiblioExpeditions.

The inaugural bus trip leaves Amherst on May 6 to visit independent bookstores in Newton and Cambridge and to take in the Mayfair Readers Ramble, a traveling series of readings in Harvard Square. Tickets are $29. The next bus trip, on June 2, which also leaves from Amherst, will visit bookstores in Greenwich Village, N.Y. In the fall, Laties plans to offer a bus trip from Cambridge to BookMarks, a literary celebration at 10 museums in Western Massachusetts.

Needless to say, Laties, the author of "Rebel Bookseller," is bullish on his new business, though he's been bruised by the harsh realities of the marketplace. Over the years, he has founded four bookstores. One of the two survivors is the shop at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, in Amherst, which he now manages. The other -- Vox Pop, in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- is a coffeehouse and publishing company as well as a bookstore.

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