The Bubble Burst

​This past weekend I attended the Irish Book and Music Celebration in Chicago at the Irish American Heritage Center for the third consecutive year.  In the previous two years I’ve sold out of books.  I have made presentations each year and one year even had the opportunity to participate on a panel with Frank Delaney.
I had a sense of foreboding prior to going but dismissed it as ridiculous and completely without basis when thinking about the previous two years.  I decided I wanted avoid going through Milwaukee because of road construction and the stress of driving in heavy traffic.  I researched a route and found one using Highway 12 that would cut many miles off the trip.
Big mistake.  I didn’t take into account the number of small towns to go through with stop lights.  In Lake Geneva I had to take a detour because the route took me right through the Saturday Farmers’ Market.  After two and a half hours of driving I was still in Wisconsin.  The event started at noon and I like to get there to set up by at least 11:30 am.  I also didn’t take into account heavy traffic driving into downtown Chicago on a Saturday morning.  The navigation system in the Subaru, whom we’ve named Ian, would announce – traffic jam ahead – and offer an alternate route.  I didn’t want an alternate route but Ian kept repeating the same message over and over again.
By some stroke of luck we did arrive by 11:30 after three and a half hours of driving.  I was set up ready to sell by noon.  I also had a classic, grade A, headache for the stressful trip.  At noon no patrons arrived.  There was only a trickle of people.  At about 2:00 a man stopped by and bought two books with very little persuasion.  He then stayed at the table and talked, stream of consciousness talk, for the next thirty minutes.  I finally had to excuse myself to the bathroom to get him to leave.  He just crossed the hall and smothered the author across from me, but he bought his book too.  The remainder of the afternoon I had only two sales.
I was scheduled to speak at 5:00 pm – the last of the day.  My presentation was sandwiched in between two movies, one that started at 4:30 and one that started at 5:30.  Two older ladies came into the room and asked if this is where the movie was being shown.  I told them to go to the second floor.  They said that was ashamed because they didn’t want to go upstairs.  The only person that came for my presentation was the man assigned to introduce me.  We left together after 15 minutes assured that no one was interested in hearing about ‘The History in Historical Fiction.’  We packed up my books and went out for a Chicago steak.
The next morning all my business cards and most of my book markers were gone off the table.  I took that as a good sign.  In previous years I’ve had customers both before and after Mass.  Soon after arriving and setting up my books a young man rushed up to my table and stared at my books.  “Are you interested in Irish history?”  I asked.  “I want both your books.  I saw the book marks last night and I came back this morning to buy your books.”  That’s a fine start to the day.  The hallway was empty of any possible buyers for several hours after that.  I had two more sales.  I packed it up at two o’clock, tired and discouraged.
On the drive home the Subaru navigator, Ian, routed us past O’Hare airport which is far west of where we needed to be on Interstate 94 driving north to Milwaukee.  At least he didn’t route us through Rockford.  I was exhausted with a sore back by the time we got home about six o’clock.
I knew sales were a bust but I had to check my records from 2015 to make a comparison.  Sales this year were 66% less than in 2015.  Damn, why did I check?  IBAM 2016 was a financial disaster.  My bubble finally burst.