Part 1 of Going for a Guinness Record can be found here

I promised an update on our attempt to set a
Guinness World Record selling Romance Paperbacks.
This was a case where the peripheral benefits
were far better than the direct benefits. The day
of the sale we sold 587 paperback romances out of
the 8,144 volumes we had. A good day, but not up
to our expectations. Since the day of the sale,
we’ve sold an additional 2 thousand books with
the income going to charity. However, because of
the sale we also gained lots of publicity (three
TV stories, two newspaper stories, multiple radio
stations mentioned our efforts), more than 100
new people signed up for our mailing list, we
sold more than double our usual sales of other
books and many folks came in for the first time
that day who have since returned.
We’re on the last legs of direct sales (5 for
$1) and are contacting other bookstores to see if
anyone is interested in ‘lots’.
In an ironic sidenote…The Guinness folks
require that permission is given before their
name is used in any record setting attempt. Then
the application is further evaluated in light of
the thousands of requests they receive. Finally,
the planned event is approved or disapproved as
an official record. We had permission to use the
name Guinness in our attempt, but in the end our
application for a record was rejected. Was the
event a success? I think it accomplished our
major goals which were to 1) sell as many romance
books as possible 2) increase our exposure 3)
increase our traffic 4) build our mailing list 5)
sell other books.
Will we do something like this again? Probably,
although we will modify our expectations in light
of this experience.

Jessica L. Lloyd-Rogers
co-owner/business manager
Colette’s: Good Food + Hungry Minds
3229 Broadway, Suites H & I
North Bend, OR 97459
541-751-1475
fax: 541-751-1475
www.goodfoodhungryminds.com