Palin book signing brings crowds, exposure to Sandpoint

POSTED: 17:46 MST Friday, December 11, 2009
by Zach Hagadone

It was a small book sellers dream come true: The most talked-about author in the country would be swooping in for an exclusive singing.

It turned out Sarah Palin – a Sandpoint native whose family moved to Alaska shortly after her birth in 1964 – would be making a last-minute stop in her old hometown as part of her tour promoting “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

As Sandpoint’s largest seller of new books, Vanderford’s Books & Office Products had exclusive rights to sell the only tomes that the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate would sign at her event, scheduled for Dec. 10.

“We didn’t know about the event until a week ago, on Tuesday,” said Tom Vanderford, who owns the store with his wife, Marcia. “We had initially brought in about 200 books of Palin’s just because we had felt we’d sell that many. Of course, as soon as we heard about the event here we ordered 2,000 from HarperCollins.”

But the short timeframe meant things moved fast and furious. For one thing, the store on Cedar Street would be far too small to accommodate the crowds, so Sandpoint Business & Events Center owners Lynda and Brad Scott, who had worked with Palin’s parents to bring her to town, offered their venue for free.

That left Vanderford’s fielding phone calls and organizing down to the level of providing portable toilets for the hundreds who eventually showed up. To make matters even tenser, the books didn’t arrive until the day before the event.

“Today my stress level is very low, but up until last night I was afraid I’d have a stroke,” Vanderford said on Dec. 11. “But in the end it came off real well.”

With the temperature hovering near 12 degrees, as many as 750 people came from all over the region to the events center – a stately three-story brick landmark that served as Sandpoint High School for the better part of a century.

According to Kathy Adruzak, events manager at the center, traffic was steady for about three hours.

“It was one constant stream,” she said. “Everybody was so excited to just be here. This was where she was born. Her father [Chuck Heath] graduated from Sandpoint High School and taught in this building. To come back to your birthplace, that’s pretty significant.”

Vanderford said the signing was a “complete success.” The book store sold 1,050 of the 2,000 copies it ordered, “and that’s about as many as you can sell in about two days.”

“December’s always a very good time of year for us – it’s a time when we can hopefully make enough money to pay our bills through the spring,” he said. “It definitely gave us an economic boost, but probably not as much as people would think, given the costs of putting on the event.”

Vanderford said those costs are being added up now, and will include freight charges for returning unsold books. Another, less quantifiable cost came from the publisher’s rules dictating that Palin would only sign copies purchased at Vanderford’s.

“We had people coming in saying they’d never buy from us again, basically ‘I hate your guts.’ But everybody at the event thanked us, everybody was in a happy mood,” he said. “It made up for it, for sure.”

Andruzak said because the events center was offered free of charge, the biggest economic benefit was exposure.

“It definitely was a boost for the bookstore – for them to sell over 1,000 books, especially in this trying time,” she said. “As far as any other money coming into town, I don’t know if we gained anything from that.”

Still, she added, “I would welcome any event like that. I think it’s great for our community, it’s great for the economy, plus the visibility of our building.”

Vanderford said he too would welcome another high-profile signing, though perhaps with some additional lead time.

“I don’t expect these to come along very often – maybe once in a decade. So yeah, I’d do it again, but next time with a little more warning,” he said.

As for advice to other booksellers crossing their fingers that a big name author will just drop in: “Be careful what you wish for."