Magical Day at CBA

Well, no weigh in Wednesday this week, becuse my dear friend and I were attending the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association) Convention in Denver all day Wednesday...and what a day it was! The CBA show is the number one trade show for the Christian book, music and gift market. Christian retailers come from all over the world to buy for their stores. The exhibitors are all the biggest as well a many smaller names in Christian publishing, music and gifts. We were like kids in a candy store. My friend is an author, and we went first to the book side of the exhibit hall. It was such a blast to be there as "Industry Professionals" (that's what our badges said). We could just look and look and look. We had numerous wonderful conversations with representatives from a host of great publishers. And I was able to give out quite a few copies of my portfolio on CD - check out these little guys that I made up for the show. They are little business card CDs called Neato HandiCD from Fellowes. The kit had software for printing labels so I made up a label with my logo and contact info, and put together a .pdf portfolio of several of my best pieces along with an MS Word cover letter with my bio and burned those onto the mini-disc. I got a lot of great reactions from these. Hopefully what's inside the disc will get equally great reactions - at least they might be just a bit more apt to look. One of the highlights of the whole day was getting to meet Beth Moore. She's an internationally known and loved Bible teacher and speaker, and a personal hero of mine. She gave us each a big hug, and we got to tell her that we led a large women's ministry (200+) that featured her video Bible studies. It was so great to meet her - she is so genuine!!

We later moved over to the gift side of the exhibit hall, and I was able to pass my portfolio cards out to several more folks. The last gal I talked to was the president of her gift/card company and she took the CD and asked if I had anything I could show her right then - luckily I had thrown a small version of my printed portfolio in my bag, and we were able to have a portfolio review right then and there. I think/hope it went well - we'll see. But what a great opportunity!

We ended the day with a concert/worship service/teaching from Michael W. Smith and Max Lucado! It doesn't get any better than that! SO, it was a great day at CBA. The convention is supposed to be in Denver again next year, so I'll be there agian for sure.