This book provides a comprehensive guide to becoming a vendor at anime, comic, and sci-fi conventions.
Lewis likes to call herself a “vendorpreneur” who has carved out a very successful niche: selling products at conventions that appeal to pop-culture enthusiasts. In an instructive debut book supplemented with color photographs, Lewis painstakingly details a selling process to help the novice vendor establish a business, avoid pitfalls, and follow in her footsteps. The author begins with five “cardinal rules,” an overview of basic strategies concerning customer psychology, merchandise acquisition and selection, and pricing. Part 2 comprises the bulk of the book; here, Lewis offers a “Business Battle Plan Blueprint” that walks through every step, in sequence, a vendor needs to take to prepare for and attend a convention. Each phase, positioned as an “assignment,” includes simple step-by-step instructions, augmented when necessary by illustrative examples from websites as well as photographs. Phases include conducting online research, finding unique items on Japanese sites, investigating wholesalers, and crafting a merchandise plan. This portion of the book is sure to be of great value to the beginner and could help even experienced vendors improve their game plans. In Part 3, Lewis wraps up with a useful overview of convention registration requirements and logistics. She also uses photographs of her own booth to illustrate stall setup and merchandise placement. Throughout, Lewis sprinkles “Sensei tips,” short pearls of wisdom based on her experiences, as well as “Oops alerts,” which highlight “regrettable new-vendor decisions that led to disastrous sales results.” At the end of this entertaining book, the author appends a listing of “trusted suppliers” that should save the reader considerable research time. Lewis writes with an enthusiasm for her subject in a style that is breezy, informal, and a joy to read. Her merchandising expertise and knowledge of the subject matter shine through as she delivers on the promise of the volume’s subtitle: “An insider’s guide for new anime vendors.”
Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9964536-0-8
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Anime Vendor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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