Today Kerry Hammond tells us all about her book swap party and even reveals how she did it.
Mystery Playground provides it’s readers with book ideas,
author information, craft projects, and even television updates. But wait,
there’s more. The May 13, 2013 post
provided me with a must have party idea. The Kepler’s Mystery Book Swap event
sounded like so much fun, that I decided to have a similar party in my home
this past week.
There were nine of us in attendance, and each person was
instructed to bring a new or gently used (hardcover or paperback) book from the
mystery genre. Not just a book they found on their shelf, but one that they
would recommend to their friends as a great read.
I had three tables set up for people to sit and pitch
their book, and each table had three people for each pitch session. The logistics
of moving people from table to table to allow for each one to pitch their book
to each person at the party was a bit of a math dilemma my friend Sharon and me
(Sharon graciously came early to help). I would also not recommend that you
start drinking Death by Chocolate Martinis before trying to crack the
algorithm. It all worked out in the end,
and we rotated 4-5 times with only a few duplicates.
I provided three things to each guest to help them with
their book selections:
1) I bought pencils at the Library of Congress gift
shop. Each had a quote by Thomas Jefferson and said “I cannot live without
books.”
2) I also gave each person eight library cards,
purchased on Amazon. That way they could write down the author and book title
for each book (the 9th being their own) and any notes they wanted to
make.
3)
I also found library card pockets on Amazon for
the guests to keep their notecards together.
Here are some of my shopping resources:
Once the pitches were over, we all convened in the living
room and proceeded with our white elephant-like swapping. I had written numbers 1-9 randomly on the
library card pockets, and drew numbers from a hat to decide the order we would
choose. We allowed each book to be
stolen a maximum of three times.
The most stolen book was Joyland by Stephen King, it hit the three steal limit and was
retired. Another popular choice was Dead Sleep by Greg Isles. Two of the
books (“A” is for Alibi by Sue
Grafton and Scent of Fear by Tom
Adair) were signed copies, I thought that was a nice added incentive. Kryss, who brought the Sue Grafton book, came
to the Tattered Cover booksigning with me to meet the author.
I provided lots of door prizes. Each person received two
hardcover mystery novels ribboned in crime scene tape, and a surprise paperback
(these were wrapped). I drew two numbers
from the hat and gave away a Vera Bradley quilted paperback book cover and a
$25 gift certificate to Amazon.
We had lots of appetizers and drinks, including Blood Red
Wine, Death by Chocolate Martinis, and Killer Cosmos. The night was a great
success and I plan to make it an annual event.
Kerry Hammond |
This sounds like a blast. I wish I lived closer.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like an awesome party.What fun!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete