Booked Launches with Paddles & Pages
From May 29 to August 26 I’ve been using every spare moment to bring to life a community for book lovers who love traveling. I want to offer bookish experiences that are off the beaten track. You can bring a good book anywhere, not just your couch or the local coffee shop. I like to think of Booked as a travel club with a book problem.
HOW BOOKED HATCHED IN MY BRAIN
The origin story, told simply, is that a friend reached out asking me if I wanted to join her on a trip to Scotland. Her friend had found a literal castle to rent on Airbnb, and was getting some friends together to go and read for a couple of days. Obviously, I was interested. Unfortunately, the room was taken before I could commit.
Later that night, I was telling my boyfriend how fun it sounded. He was all, “You would spend 3K to go to Scotland just to read?”
To which I said, “Absolutely. You don’t understand ~girls~”
And then it kind of hit me. If it was a “hell yeah” for me, it was probably a “hell yeah” for a lot of other people!
There are three things I know I can do: plan a damn good vacation, run an event, and sit around reading and talking about books with friends.
So if I couldn’t go to Scotland on this girls trip, the only solution was to plan my own version! Little did I know, this train of thought was about to absolutely take over my summer.
As I tend to do, I just dove in. I realized I didn’t need a castle in another country to start. I just needed a place to gather people around books. By June 1st, I had put down a deposit for an Airbnb in the Hudson River Valley. By June 2, I had my logo. It was a, “can’t eat, can’t sleep, over the fence, World Series kinda thing” (name that movie)!
Eventually, when the adrenaline faded, I realized I probably had to start a little smaller-scale than a 5 day retreat to get some experience under my belt. So I started dreaming up some closer to home events to launch Booked.
Once I saw the “Namastation” floating outside of Manhattan Kayak Co., I could not get the image of a group of girls floating, reading, chatting and watching the sunset on the Hudson out of my head.
I love New York City, but if I still lived on Long Island, I would definitely be spending nights floating and reading with a fun bev and I was obsessed with the idea that for one night, I could bring that dreamy experience to a group of NYC book-lovers.
And last night, it happened! Booked was launched. Booked was born.
The water was gently lapping at my board, the sky was turning golden all around me, and suddenly this idea that had lived only in my head was happening in front of me.
Myself and 7 other fabulous ladies replaced the AI image facsimile with the real deal.
To be honest, at first I was embarrassed that half of the ticket-buyers were people I already knew. But how else do people get started with their big ideas other than the love, support, and sometimes $ of their friends and family? I think this is a totally normal part of starting something new.
I had two friends there who I have known since elementary school.
A friend that I made in my adult life in NYC.
A friend that I lived with for years and, as NYC goes, haven’t seen since the day we moved out!
And I got to make 3 new friends, too!
Having people there that represented every chapter (I had to) of my life so far was so beautiful and made the night so perfect.
A BEHIND THE SCENES LOOK AT MY FIRST EVENT
I thought I would give a bit of a peek behind the curtain on Booked’s first event!
DAY OF DECISIONS
I did a test run at the boathouse on Friday, and the system to attach our paddleboards to the floating dock was not as seamless as I wanted it to be. In fact, it wasn’t at all seamless. There was no process, no plan. So the day of the event, my friend and I were stopping in stores in search of carabiners. I wanted people to be able to paddle up to the dock and easily clip themselves onto the metal rings at each cutout. It was an unplanned expense ($40 worth of carabiners) but it was by far the most important thing I did. Thank you Morgan, for MacGyver-ing the webbing and the carabiners and for jumping on the dock and hooking everybody up!
My original plan was to play music while we floated, but once I got out there, the sound of the water was too beautiful to interrupt, so I pulled an audible and we just took in the sounds of the sea.
FAVORITE MOMENTS
The whole time I was planning this event, I was a little insecure that my AI-generated poster image for the event was selling something I couldn’t deliver. The night was a bit of a blur for me, but when the sun started to set, I let out a little sigh of relief as the sky turned golden. When my boyfriend sent me the photos he took, I couldn’t believe it. It felt really fitting that the real thing was even better than what AI had imagined.
I created “Connection” cards for everyone to swap book recs and contact information after the event, and it made me so happy when everyone participated and filled them out and handed them out to each other. Book cards > business cards.
LOOKING AHEAD
As everyone knows, a lil sparkly bev can really make any experience better. And it was no exception here. In the future, I would love to get the fun-bev portion of the evening sponsored by a local company making some fun NA options!
Next time, I would love to expand on our floating reading night by following up with a dockside dinner under the stars!
I COME WITH RECEIPTS
And now for the real peek behind the curtain. Did I make any money?
Mmm, not really.
It’s become obvious very quickly that making these types of events profitable (especially in Manhattan) comes with pretty high ticket prices. I’m trying to balance fair ticket prices with adequately “paying” myself for the time and energy put into planning and running things. And most importantly, delivering a product that stays true to what I want Booked to be. Unique experiences, quality touches and attention to the little details.
8x Paddleboard Rentals $ 254.40
Tip to boathouse employee $ 40.00
Rental for me to practice the event $ 13.00
Marketing on Instagram $ 50.00
Transaction Fees taken out from tickets sold on my website $ 29.76
Dry Bags $ 172.82
Carabiners $ 35.81
Beverages $ 15.00
Cardstock $ 15.00
Total Costs $ 585.79
Plus, I was lucky here in not having to pay any type of “location” fee for use of the space itself, which is rare! Still, at the end of the day, I had $46.21 more in my pocket!
Despite not having a scalable business model (lol - journalism school graduate!) I would consider the night a success. I got my feet wet (literally) running an event of this kind and most importantly, it lit me up inside. It made me feel energized and excited. I didn’t walk away thinking, “that was a whole lot of work for nothing!” I walked away thinking, “When can we do this again?!” “What else can I plan?”
It made me start dreaming bigger! This was the first page of a story I’m finally feeling brave enough to write!
