Woof.

I'm still reeling from PLA, without a doubt our best conference to date. We sold a record number of books and shirts, were beseiged by fans, had a good signing at Baker & Taylor, and may have even found a distributor (subject to negotiations, more on this later). Because this was a home-town crowd, Gene (who, in case you didn't know, writes under a pen name) effectively "came out" to his coworkers - he's still not publicly revealing his secret identity but if you recognized him then now you know. Please don't spread it around unnecessarily.

What worked so well? A bunch of things, methinks:

• Baker & Taylor's physical and electronic mailings on our behalf worked wonders. Attendees came to the show curious about us - and many left with books in hand.
• Having a booth instead of a small-press table meant that even with a pretty bad position we were still on everyone's default traversal of the room.
• Having two books instead of one and our killer WWDD t-shirt meant we often got three sales for every one customer.
• Our strip is meant for the general public but in the end it's about public librarians and this was a conference for public librarians. If you walked by our booth, chances are good you would find our strip personally amusing.
• My friend Derek, who helped us out on just a few day's notice, magically brought passers-by to our booth.

It was so good we re-upped for PLA 2006 in Boston, and got a much better booth location - a corner right in the middle of the first floor on a major thoroughfare.

Whether or not you bought something, if you were one of the many who stopped by to say Hi we really appreciate it. As I've said many times before, but it's true, contact with our fans is what keeps us going.