04.09.07
A call for expert help
Does anybody out there reading this blog know anything about digital projectors? I need help deciding what to buy.
I’ve got two new books coming out in the next year, one this December and one in the spring of 2008. They will need a lot of promotion if they are to sell, and unfortunately I dwell at the lowly level of writers who have to assume all the responsibilities of pitching their books. If we don’t get out there to bookstores and libraries to do the job, nobody else will.
Last year I did a library book talk for A Venture into Murder using a library-supplied digital projector and PowerPoint to screen my pitch, embedded in photographs of Upper Peninsula scenes, as I spoke it. Between my remarks Debby, my wife, read from the novel. This worked out very well — we managed to reach everyone who attended the event despite my “deaf speech,” which can be hard for many people to understand. (And they bought quite a few books.)
Perhaps, also, bookstore and library audiences are ripe to be plucked in this way. Readers may be text-driven people, but eye candy very likely adds a novel (ahem!) dimension to the usual author’s talk. Naturally the backgrounds to my pitches include Lake Superior sunsets as well as photos of wolves and deer, geese and mergansers, shipwrecks and abandoned mines.
Still, most bookstores, even the big chain ones, don’t have projectors and screens, nor do many rural libraries. Hence I’ll have to buy my own equipment and hump it there.
This is where I’d like to ask your advice, if any of you have experience with these things.
Renting a projector and screen might be OK for a single event, but since most places charge $200 a day for such devices, the amount spent on four or five rentals would pay for new ones.
My budget is $1,000 — roughly $750-$800 for a projector, plus $125 or so for a good-sized tripod screen, and including tax.
I’ve been looking at budget portable business projectors by Epson, Optoma and Toshiba, all selling for $750 at the big-box stores.
Anyone?
