Book Festival Fort Myers, FL

What a fun day! The weather was beautiful for this year's book festival, the event was well organized and I enjoyed the speakers. Tim Dorsey is signing one of his books in photo - he was on a small

panel of "Florida Men of Mystery". His books don't really interest me but he was an entertaining panelist. Bob Morris was my favorite on the panel but I haven't read anything by James O. Born, the other panelist.

The keynote speaker was Stuart Woods and I enjoyed him a lot - he was very humorous. He now has a three book per year contract and said he works only one hour per day. He said he doesn't use any assistant authors because he likes to keep all of the money himself!

Another panel was all about audio books. There were two readers, one producer and one author (Joe Hill) whose books had won an AUDIE for the audio performance. They talked a little business and did a little reading. Hill said that he thinks that the audio books enhance hard copy sales.

There were lots of authors signing and selling books, Books-A-Million was there selling featured authors books and more, there were a couple of used books dealers selling inside, and the Lee County library had many booths - for library cards, teaching how to download ebooks, selling book bags and reading to children, to mention a few.

If your community doesn't do something like this you might want to consider something like it. The attendees were from the very young to the very old and the promoters included not only book stores such as Books-A-Million but the local community grocery store (who handed out book bags with their logo to kids).

If you are looking for a good reason to get away from your weather next year, plan to come to Fort Myers, FL in March to attend the 10th annual book festival - as you can see, it is a pretty place to be in March. Madlyn