Four days after the fact, I am happy to report that our five-year anniversary reading at Bookplate was a resounding success.

I wish we had thought to take a picture of Tom Martin, Bookplate proprietor, who has been the friend and champion of Idiots’Books since our first few weeks in business. For those of you in the Chestertown know, here’s how Tom found us (and we found Tom). Local arts maven Carla Massoni gave a copy of our first book, Facial Features of French Explorers to local celebrity painter Marc Castelli who, in turn, showed it to Tom. Tom asked us if we’d like to sell our books in his store, we jumped up and down with joy, and the rest is history. We had our first appearance as Idiots’Books on December 3, 2006, and one day shy of five years later, we returned to share the excitement of still being here making books with some of the same folks who were there on day one.

Robbi finished our latest book, Build Your Own President at 2:46am Friday morning. We spent the day making 20 copies of it and printing out oversized prints of the candidate portraits to hang in the window of Bookplate.

How good a job is Robbi doing of hiding her profound exhaustion?

Here is the whole front window display: 10 candidates plus front and back cover.

The reading itself was a blast. As opposed to five years ago, when we had absolutely nothing to say, this time around, we had to limit ourselves to the highlights. It has been a full five years. And we had a lot of fun talking about it with our wonderful fans and supporters.

After the reading, Doug the Baker presented the much anticipated cake. In spite of having been up for 48-hours straight, he gave a little speech.

Doug explained that he had baked us a wedding cake, a style befitting of the anniversary theme.

Since we didn’t have a cake at our actual wedding, Robbi and I took advantage of the opportunity to do that four-hands-on-the-knife-and-hope-no one-gets injured wedding cake cutting thing.

I’m happy to report that the only casualty was my arteries.

Note: If you live in Chestertown and haven’t been to Against the Grain, you’re really missing out on the best of local cuisine. May I recommend the sun bun? Go in the morning when they’re still warm from the oven. Sit down before you take a bite. I dare you not to get a little misty.

Thank you, Doug the Baker for our magnificent cake. Thank you Tom for your generosity and tireless support. Thank you Carla and Marc for believing in us. Thanks to all of our subscribers for giving us an audience and keeping us afloat. Thanks Chestertown for being our home, and thanks all of you who live here for being our community.

Here’s to the next five years. Who knows what they’ll bring? Hopefully a lot more cake.