I had the privilege of assisting at the Mandeville Press booth at this year’s Los Angeles Times Book Festival, April 28-29, 2001. It was an enriching experience, and a lot of fun. The Festival is held on the beautiful UCLA campus in Westwood in Los Angeles. It is one of the largest book events in the country, part picnic, part block party, with lots of families touring the world of books. It features authors signing their works, cooking demonstrations, live entertainment, lots of food and libations, and hundreds of booths showcasing books on every conceivable topic.
Randy Richard, Mark Harradine and I arrived early (early for us — 7:30 a.m.), to set up. It was cold (cold for L.A. — around 60*), and overcast. We unloaded and when we went to install our high-tech expanding visual display, we found that it wouldn’t fit under the roof cables in the tent, so we needed to go in a different direction. No problem for seasoned initiates.

Soon, we had brainstormed a brilliant re-think of the booth layout, and all systems were go. In no time, the booth was looking great, with lots of space for folks to come in and schmooze, and great shelves packed with John-Roger and John Morton books angled attractively toward the passers-by. Ofelia Mancera came to the rescue when she showed up with extra tablecloths and velvet fabric in radiant “Traveler Purple” for the back wall of the tent. We finished the space with large blow-up posters of the latest Mandeville Press book covers, which looked great and really drew people in.

In the course of the two days we gave away over 2,000 Mandeville Press “Forgive” bookmarks to the passing crowds, and invited folks into the booth to receive over 1,500 free copies of Awakening into the Light, Journey of a Soul, Consciousness of a Soul, The Path to Mastership and other books now being re-formatted and re-printed. Out in front of the booth, on the right, the “Buck a Book” table sold over 600 books from warehouse overstock.

As the “Buck a Book” table was drawing attention, a precious thing started happening there. One of the books on that table was the small, lavender-covered The Spiritual Promise, and almost every little girl who came by wanted a copy of it! They were drawn to it! It was “Mom, can I have this?” and “Ooh, I like this one!” It was so neat to see these kids buying the Traveler’s books. A lot of people were also attracted to The Way Out Book, which I heartily recommend as one of my favorites.

The other table out front featured the latest Mandeville Press releases at a 20% festival discount, including J-R’s new Loving Each Day for Moms and Dads, and John’s The Blessings Already Are. We sold over 40 new titles over the course of the two-day festival.

Throughout the two days, the booth was manned with enthusiastic Movement volunteers, working together in joy and gratitude. While the schedule provided 3-4 booth assistants per shift, on Saturday the staff stayed overtime and we averaged 5 volunteers throughout the day. And on Sunday, it was even busier. Festival go-ers were sending their friends to the Mandeville booth; and the crowd, overflowing the booth and filling the sidewalk, was drawing people over from all directions.

By 2:00 PM, it was clear that the 6 volunteers present were not enough, including Doug Kierulf who arrived as an attendee and stayed to spend 6 hours in the booth. We were swamped. Then, thank goodness, Olga Schmal and Kim Guisinger arrived for their shift. Now we were ready for expansion.

It turned out that the company in the booth next to Mandeville Press did not return for the second day so the booth was empty. Because our mini-bookstore was so full of people browsing and buying, Olga and Kim went into the booth adjacent to do some support tasks, unwrapping bundles of give-away bookmarks and unwrapping shrink-wrapped $1 books. Before long, Olga and Kim were giving away bookmarks, selling their freshly unwrapped books and were as busy as Booth #1. Marvelous! Randy stocked their table with MSIA information, flyers, a complete array of $1 books and a pile of free books as well. For the remainder of the day, both booths were packed. We finished the festival with two fully staffed, heavily trafficked booths and were still selling 30 minutes after the official closing time. What a day! What a festival!

If you get the chance to volunteer as a representative of Mandeville Press or MSIA, do it–it is a blessing on so many levels. It’s such a joy to work in the Light, and to support and participate in such expansion.

And from one of the volunteer at the booths:

I just wanted to thank you for the privilege of serving Mandeville Press today at the book fair. I was there for about 4 hours and it was great to be a part of sharing the traveler’s teachings in the world.
Guess what…little girls LOVE LOVE LOVE The Spiritual Promise book….I mean they LOVE it…..the second favorite kids book was…..that’s right….The Spiritual Family….incredible.
The overwhelming 1st choice for $1 book:….Inner Worlds of Meditation….I presented it as a Primer to Meditation….a veritable menu of choices on ways to start their practice. I was surprised at how many people went for The Way Out Book. I was also surprised that in Southern California, the land of money and more money, how the Wealth & Higher Consciousness book did not go as fast as the other books that were more blatantly based on Spirituality.
Here’s the next thing I noticed. Based on how busy we were at the booth, I thought there MUST be hordes and hordes and hordes of people….but not so…there were a disproportionate number of people at our booth……when I walked around I saw that we had double, even triple the number of people at our booth at any given time.
Enough of the pragmatic stuff. The energy of the booth was sweet and inviting. I was proud of every book that was there and I felt privileged to be able to represent any one of them.

God bless us all,
Rachelle Zazzu

Thanks to all our volunteers who made this day such a success!

Lawrence Caminite

Alexandra Roberts

Kimberly Gilmore

Anita Grossfield

Robert Peake

Rachelle Zazzu

Eli Davidson

Olga Schmal

Kim Guisinger

Elizabeth Loggins

Connie Stomper