The green light to access our premises only came on Christmas Eve so we had just 3 weeks to make this project happen. The systems are in place, so it isn’t that hard to swing into action. It does need member commitment but with Covid travel relaxed many were away. Thank you to the 20 members who found time to volunteer for the various tasks. We also had another 12 volunteers from outside the club – a most important group.
 
This year we made $5590 gross. Our expenses are expected to come in at about $430, so
NET PROFIT:  $5160 (interestingly $572 or 11% is from gold coin door entrance!) Treasurer Mal will confirm the exact figure once final expenses are known.
This is about half of what we made last year. Takings are down because:
  • We opened for 3 days, not 4
  • Pricing was down. We sold bags lots for $10. No “premium” books this year
  • There was no significant presale by a private buyer – last year $850
We also had a secondary objective this year and that was to significantly lower our book stock. We took no donations from previous major “suppliers” but did accept small quantities from the public. The latter amounted to nearly 30 cartons on day 1 of set up!
 
I have a developed a theory that despite large book sales in the last 2 years we have probably been accepting more donations than we actually sold. The storage container was bursting. We only took about ¾’s of our stock to this year’s fair.
 
We very successfully managed to sort through our stock and identify books that are starting to reappear year after year. Joe from Winchelsea Lions Club took away some damaged and unsaleable books for recycling.
 
There are sufficient books in the container to fully run next year’s Book Fair. We need to run one in 2023 simply to get rid of these books otherwise the club has a significant disposal problem.
I strongly recommend that book donations are once more kept to a minimum – we need good quality children’s books!
Running the Book Fair is not that hard, and at $5000 profit, still very worthwhile. It is a great hands-on project that brings our club together and even entices around a dozen volunteers to help. But we are very reliant on outside factors:
  • We do not have premises for 2023
  • We rely on St Luke’s church to lend us tables
  • We rely on West Geelong Rotary to lend as the book dividers.
We need all 3 of these to run our Book Fair.
Neil Henderson - Book Fair Coordinator
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