Sunday, November 20, 2005

Day one




Some photos of the booth before we began selling. Needless to say, the stacks are much lower now than they were yesterday.

The book exhibits opened at 8:30 and, as usual, Peter Gentry was our first customer. Jim West and Joe Cathey were probably second. Nice to be able to put a face to names.

After the hectic pace of the setup, today seemed a bit more relaxed. Not to say we weren't busy, we certainly were. But, the Carta banner got printed and put up, you can see it in the previous post. I only was late to one of my appointments, and he was trying to find me to reschedule, so that worked out well.

Since it is becoming general knowledge anyway, I will "officially" announce that Eisenbrauns has signed a distribution agreement with Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, which is why you saw Eisenbrauns employees manning their booth yesterday. Next year we will be in the same booth. But, what that means is that V&R books will be more easily obtained here in the North American market. We are excited about the opportunity to make their titles available to you--especially the Goettingen LXX (my philological biases are showing).

Last night I attended the reception/paper for/by Michael Fox. We just published his festschrift, Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients and there was a reception. Michael's paper was delightful, he talked about the "subjective" side of his "objective" books. His best quote, talking about Qohelet whom he said must have been bi-polar: "It's a good thing there wasn't lithium, or my bibliography would be a good deal shorter." Afterwards it was a nice chance to put faces to names. I find that my BookNews e-mail has made me notorious.

As the Fox reception was winding down around 10:30, that gave me a chance to put in an appearance at the Eerdmans reception. They have one of the nicest and its a good chance to see people that I miss at the booth. Ended up talking until after midnight with Roy from Accordance and Dr. Instone-Brewer about digitizing texts and related issues.

I will only be able to post about once a day, since Internet access is limited to the free wireless areas and during the day I am running in 60 directions. Today is the booksigning for Sacred Bridge, be sure to drop by and have Anson and Steven sign your copy.

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