1997 has been a year for book fairs as the Foundation increases its contacts in the book trade worldwide. The Foundation's display booths are attractive, appealing, and professional. In addition, they are lightweight and portable, making it easy to ship them, as we do, to book fairs all over the world.
LONDON. Chris and Tina Moseley, who run the Foundation's office in Britain, set up and manned a Foundation display booth at the International London Bookfair in March and made contacts with many booksellers.
BOGOTA. Tonia Baney and Bob Solone from the Foundation staff in Chicago, and Rosendo and Maria de Aguilera from the Greater New York URANTIA Association attended the 10th International Book Fair of Colombia, South America. This was the first time the Foundation displayed a booth in Colombia. The trip was a phenomenal success.
Over 1,000 books were sold at the fair. New distributors were acquired, and long-standing relationships with booksellers and distributors in Central and South America were solidified.
The Foundation's booth was crowded with visitors during the entire fair. Thanks to the many Colombian readers volunteering their time at the booth, we were able efficiently to serve and answer the questions of visitors. Hundreds of names were added to the Foundation's mailing list.
CHICAGO. The annual book industry gathering, BookExpo America, formerly known as the American Booksellers Association Convention and Trade Exhibit, was held in Chicago's McCormick Place Convention Center. Over 1500 exhibitors, representing publishers of every size and specialty, attended this book fair.
With copies of the book and information packets in hand, the Foundation staff and several dedicated volunteers made many valuable contacts with distributors, booksellers and international trade and publishing organizations.
LIBRARY BOOK FAIR - San Francisco. In June, the American Library Association held a conference / book fair in San Francisco. This was the first time the Foundation attended an American Library Association Conference. Our thanks to the volunteers who manned the booth.
We offered free books to libraries. All together 161 URANTIA Books and 124 Concordances were requested. While the majority of requesting libraries were from North America, contacts were also made from other nations including the University of the Philippines, the University of Singapore, the University of Santiago in Chile, the University of Guam, and the Republic of China.
AUSTRALIA: The Australian Book Fair was held on August 2 to 4 at Darling Harbor situated in the heart of Sydney. Unlike previous years, when the book fair was open to the public, this year's event was held exclusively for the book trade.
Many people in the trade stopped to visit and took brochures about the book. Representatives from two different electronic bookstores visited the booth. The URANTIA Book is now available from mainstream electronic bookstores on the Internet. Again, we thank the volunteers who helped us at the booth.
The Foundation also had display booths this year at book fairs in Madrid, Frankfurt, Moscow, and Miami. We are always interested in any help with the manning of booths for book fairs - especially in the non-English speaking countries. If you are interested in assisting with book fairs and speak other languages, please contact Steve Baney or Trevor Swadling at the Foundation office in Chicago.