Canterbury Booksellers Creates a Model Event

Last month, Canterbury Booksellers in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted Al Franken for a sold-out event at the 1,800-seat Orpheum Theater, a recently renovated movie house. Studs Terkel, who introduced Franken to the crowd, then went to the store following the event for his own very successful book signing and reading. Canterbury Booksellers, which hosts over 100 events a year, sees this super-sized event as a model for a regular series of more grand-scale readings.

The bookstore had previously hosted a few events featuring big-name authors such as Billy Collins and Garrison Keillor, both of whom drew crowds of more than 1,000, but the store was unable to get on Franken's tour schedule. Good fortune came Canterbury's way, however, when Franken was scheduled to attend the National Conference on Media Reform, which was held in Madison on November 7 - 9.

Ten days before Franken's appearance in Madison, a publicist from Dutton, publisher of Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, called the store offering the opportunity to host a reading. The staff at Canterbury Booksellers jumped at the offer and waged an immediate, frantic media blitz.

Canterbury Booksellers -- Madison, Wisconsin

Store manager Soren Schoff explained, "We faxed press releases to every media outlet, made calls. We took out an ad in the alternative weekly and had front-page coverage in both local papers. A couple of local TV stations mentioned the event and the owner [Trudy Barash] also mentioned it on a public radio book program." The result was 1,600 seats reserved prior to the event with the remaining 200 seats sold at the door. Tickets were $10, or $8 for students and seniors. Anyone who bought a copy of Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them from Canterbury prior to the event got a free ticket.

When Terkel, an old friend of one of the organizers of the media conference, John Nicholls, signed on to participate at the Franken event and agreed to appear at Canterbury Booksellers, the store had only two days to prepare. The announcement of Terkel's reading was made at the Orpheum Theater, and approximately 200 people caravanned en masse to the bookstore.

Schoff said with such short notice, he was nervous about the logistics of the event and filling the venue. To help with the planning, he called Changing Hand's event coordinator Cindy Dach in Tempe, Arizona, for a little advice. Franken had recently read at a Changing Hand's event, and Schoff said Dach's comments about how they managed the reading were very helpful. "It gave me a lot more confidence," said Schoff.

Schoff would love to have Canterbury Booksellers host more large readings. "Ideally, we'd like to do this three or four times a year, but I think to fill 1,800 seats we'd have to get the top-selling authors," he said. "The local population would love it if we could get authors such as Dan Brown. I'm sure we could fill the theater." --Karen Schechner