Hey! I'm M.E. Harker -- pronounced like Emi Harker!
Call me Harker 👋 she/her
I'm a Sci-Fi & Fantasy Author.
I have a lot of other odd jobs. (Graphic Designer, Medical Worker, Cat Wrangler. You know, the usual! 🤣) I also draw sometimes.
You can check out my debut novel, Just One Command, here:
Author Website: https://www.meharker.com
Other Socials: | BSky | Instagram | Facebook | GoodReads |
-> Also check out this Review Video for the book!!
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🌟 Current Status 🌟
Mostly offline. Just a bit too busy right now!
-> Slower Posting - Will still leave ❤︎s!
-> Working on IRL things, my jobs, and next manuscript!
Art Commissions are Closed.
I don't work as an illustrator right now.
Silly Reblogs and Cats:
Find them on my alt @harker-asides
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Some Useful Tags:
#my art : original illustrations by moi
#just one command : posts about the novel!
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I'm also occasionally lurking in communities ✨ I'm not online a ton, so forgive me if I'm slow to reply!
This is a semi-professional account (I admit, I post some silliness!) But there's certain blogs/content/questions I can't respond to ❤️ Thanks for understanding!
Will Sometimes Follow: All-Ages-Friendly Blogs focused on creating original content. (And occasionally blogs I find very funny!)
Will Not Follow: blogs that are mostly personal-life posts, blogs of minors, or blogs that contain mature, controversial, or dark content.
I have a full interaction list if you click on the "Keep Reading" line. Thanks!
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General Interaction Policy
Mostly, I keep things wholesome & positive!
I don't send or accept DMs ✍️ but feel free to comment in a reply!
For legal reasons I cannot accept, read, or respond to unsolicited book pitches or unsolicited book ideas. If you have a book idea just bursting out of you, I encourage you to give a shot writing it yourself! You might be surprised!
Any requests for donations or otherwise scam behavior will be ignored & blocked! Even if sent with good intentions, I can't verify these things over the internet.
I will always be kind & supportive to those under the age of 21, but generally will not interact too much and will not Follow (because I am older than 21 🤣 and want you to be able to comfortably hang out with your friends & other teens!)
To protect my personal peace, I do not interact with posts or tumblrs that are highly polit𝗂cal, controversial, mental-health related, or otherwise tough-topic discussions. Even if I agree with the sentiment.
Generally no NSFW. I don't mind occasional cursing or dark themes. And hey, I don't judge. But it isn't what I'm here for 😂
Instant Blocks or DNI: Untitled Blogs with No Bio. Spam Blogs. Blogs that are primarily AI generated images, videos, or text. Donation requests. Harassment; Hostility. Polit𝗂cal-only or Rant-only blogs. Any mentally unhealthy material (TW/SI) that could cause harm, even if unintentional.
Surprisingly a LOT of people showed up looking to just buy books which was awesome to see. Some customers were going booth to booth, like: "Hello. I am collecting all the books. Please give me your finest book, thank you."
More of my thoughts on the event (for fellow authors) below the "Keep Reading" line!
This was my first Author-Focused book booth event. I've had booths before as an artist/craftsman, but not as an author.
Since I've only got one book released, I figured I'd bring some additional things to sell to make my booth look more lively.
I brought some of my jewelry from my eternally-on-hiatus Etsy shop. Also a few fun gift items, kinda like the gift shop section of Barnes & Noble. And then some mugs and pins I designed and heat-pressed myself. (Collectively, I'll call these "Gifty" items going forward.)
So what sold the best? What sold the worst?
Due to the fact that this event was directly advertised as a BOOK FESTIVAL with author signings...
...my books sold the best! Which I was NOT expecting.
Generally at festivals / conventions / local-booth events, books are one of the HARDEST things to sell. (People are usually at a fair to get food and small little souvenirs. Not books.)
But due to this being a Book Festival, a LOT of the people were there JUST for books and nothing else.
In general, people who came to my booth either:
* Bought a cute gift item and didn't look at the books, OR
* Bought a book and didn't look at anything else.
I barely got any cross-sales. People were either there for Books, or for Gifty things, but not both.
Not sure if this behavior was exclusive to this event, but it was interesting to see.
Of my non-book items: Pins and Bookmarks sold the best. These were one of the cheapest items at my booth, and they were very bookish-themed. People seemed to buy ones that had sayings or drawings that related to them the most. More generic stuff didn't sell as well.
Of my non-book items: Jewelry sold the worst. Which was surprising. Usually at craft fairs, my jewelry sells really well. I got quite a few people looking at it and saying they were cute, but no sales.
The jewelry still brought people over to my booth, however. The shiny jewelry made people stop and look, so it was still effective as advertising...but next time, I'll just go for a big sign or something. Jewelry is a LOT harder to make than a big sign xD
What would I change for next time?
My booth happened to be between two other authors.
They both made a LOT more book sales than me.
One of them was a Romance author with 14 books written, the other was a Detective Murder Mystery author with about 8 books written.
Because they had more books (sometimes multi-part series!) and they only sold books (no extra item types) people were more inclined to buy multiple books from them.
As an author, aiming for that kind of sale model (More books, ONLY books) would be a good for future Book Festivals.
For myself, since I only have one book released, I think having multiple types of items at my booth was helpful!
...But I do feel like it took away from my book sales slightly. Some people walked up and asked: "Oh wait, you're an author too? I thought you were just a vendor."
That said: if this wasn't explicitly a Book Festival, I'd still totally want to have the extra Gifty Items.
At craft fairs, conventions, or other multi-purpose events...books are really hard to sell! So I wouldn't change my approach for those events.
But for events that are solely book festivals featuring authors, I'd bring less Gifty stuff and focus more on the books themselves.
Handling Credit Cards
I set up a way to accept Card payments using a card-swiper with a phone app. This has worked fairly well in the past.
But a TON of people wanted to do "Tap to Pay" or "Apple Pay" which I wasn't prepared for.
My app couldn't process those things. Thankfully, in most cases people had a back-up physical card I could swipe...but I did have to turn down one sale where the gentleman only had Apple Pay.
(Admittedly, who goes to a local craft fest with only Apple Pay and no other alternative payment methods?? Maybe this was just an unusual thing, or maybe he forgot his wallet.)
Cash sales were nice, but people only really got out cash for low price items (usually my tiny Gift items that were less than $10.)
Everyone bought books with a Card. So if you do a festival, you NEED a Card payment system, or people will walk away.
Also small note:
Ask "Cash or Card?" when asking for payment. Don't say "Cash or Credit" -- this confuses people xD (phrase is a holdover from one of my previous jobs. Writing this to remind myself to stop saying it.)
Other Miscellaneous Things
Having $1 bills and $5 bills is really important for giving change.
Wind WILL try to blow down your whole display. Bring heavy-duty tape and weigh everything down excessively if your event is outdoors.
Sunscreen is vital.
Practice your "1 minute" book pitch for when people come up and ask "So tell me what your book is about." Keep it short and sweet: they mainly want to know GENRE, the singlemost MAIN CHARACTER, and the basic PREMISE / VIBE.
You don't have to tell people you're an indie author or with a smaller press. None of the customers even cared. I assumed the authors next to me were traditionally published based on their booth and displays. I found out they were self-published later when talking to them.
Be chill and roll with it when people come up and say things like: "Oh, I only read Dystopian Sci-Fi. Sorry." and then walk away. Honestly I was glad when they didn't buy my book. If they don't like my genre, they might leave a bad review or hate the story by default! So I always smiled and was genuinely like, "Hey, no worries, thanks for stopping by!" and that approach worked out great.
I brought some Free Audiobook codes to give out, but only handed out one or two. Would skip for next time.
I also brought Freebies to give out with each book sale. (I had bookmarks, keychains, and jewelry themed off my book. If you bought a book, you got to pick one of these items to take for free!) But honestly? The Freebie thing just confused people. They were done buying their book and ready to walk away, and here I am like "Wait take a bonus!" I'd skip this next time.
Pre-signing the books was good for consistency, but it took away the fun of signing live. Next time: I'd still pre-sign them, but leave room to put the date and ask if I can write a custom message.
Bring smoothies or food you can drink (like soup in a thermos.) Otherwise, it's really hard to find time to both Eat and look Professional (unless you have someone else who can watch the booth for a minute while you take a lunch break.)
Find the bathroom location before the event starts. Same with parking or other vital event locations.
The secret to selling more books? Write more books, lol. I need to work on this xD
If you read this far: hey, hope some of the tips help you!
Mainly, I wanted to type this out now while it was fresh on my mind, so I can look at it later when I have another event.
I'm going to have an author booth next Saturday, and I'm kind of still in disbelief. What is my name doing on the event website?? How did that get there? 😂
I got in last minute. There are many other bigger-name authors at this event, so my application wasn't accepted at first. But I ended up getting a spot from the wait list!
I'm frantically setting up an author booth right now. Definitely not frantic. Nope. Totally chill. Got this.
Okay 🤣 all jokes aside.
For my author & writer moots: Below the "keep reading" line, I share a few things that helped me in finding / applying to Book Events!
for fellow authors now:
this is by no means a "how-to" guide, but rather just some things I think that helped!
Looking outside my own area. I follow local event guides for medium-to-big cities within a 10 hour drive of where I live. This event will be a long drive for me, but I was okay with that because there's no events like this in my immediate area!
(All the ones nearby me are in the wrong genre. Murder Mystery is really popular here for some reason 😂)
Applying Early. I found out about this event last year. This gave me ample time to apply this year! Most events open their applications six months before the event. (So put a 6-month ahead reminder in your calendar!)
Finding Newer Events. (If possible!) This event is only in its 2nd time around! That means it's newer, and not as many authors were aware of it! It also means less people will be attending the event too, but that's fine for me!
Embrace the Waitlist. I wasn't their first-pick author 🤣 So okay. I had to embrace that I didn't get accepted. But rather than walk away from the event, I decided to join the waitlist, and did end up getting a spot.
Really working on making my Website / Socials professional looking. Although I don't have a ton of followers, I spend a LOT of time trying to make my author social media posts look legit. I think that really helped my chances, because Social Media Links were one of the few things on the application form!
Double Check that the Event is Real and you have the dates right. Okay, this one I'm just adding for safety, especially if you apply to events outside your area. Always double-check the event website, make sure you can attend on the dates of the event. See if they have a Facebook (even if you don't use Facebook) and look for posts / comments about people who attended this event previously.
Also look for the contact info of the person/business hosting the event. You should be able to find their email, phone, and business address. Run these through a quick internet search, just to make sure the business is legit! (If you can't find this info anywhere, don't apply to the event. Skip and move on to the next one!)
Don't pay too much. If the fee to have a booth is stupidly high or above your budget, it's probably not the right fit anyway.
Okay, those are my random thoughts. As stated earlier, this isn't really a how-to guide. A lot of getting into events or finding things in publishing is just luck and persistence. (Which of course, frustrates me endlessly, as luck cannot be quantified…but persist I shall!)
diseases and infections exist. You may not want them overtaking your adventure plot, but having your MC trudge through sewer water right after getting their chest cut open is NOT a good idea.
broken bones take 4 to 6+ months to heal. genuinely.
there's no safe way to "knock someone out" in our reality. (Hitting someone on the neck or using knock-out gas always comes with a real chance of killing the person. You'd never want to try this on your friends.) Good news: you're writing fantasy. Use magic!!
horseback riding hurts.
horses were never intended to carry 2 riders or even 1 heavy rider, and can break their backs doing so.
over long distances, horses speed things up a little bit, but not that much. they can gallop, but they tire quickly, so on a multi-day journey they don't make the trip that much faster on average. The main benefits for bringing horses: (1) they can pull heavy goods, and (2) they allow people not to walk on their feet the whole way.
to get places fast, there was a Horse Relay system. You'd trade your horse out at the next city when the horse got tired, so you could keep galloping. This requires a network of horse stables though, and infrastructure to run (ie: you will only find it in established Kingdoms that are doing well enough to fund it.) This system was usually (1) expensive, or (2) used/maintained exclusively by the kingdom's army. A dashing rogue on the run from the King will NOT have access to this relay service...but the King's messengers will.
hmm I think somewhere in there I got distracted writing about horses. whoops.
anyway for more historical distance calculations for your fantasy novel, I present: ORBIS. A website that helps you calculate historically accurate travel time between distances, whether walking on foot, by horse, or by horse relay. and even considering things like season.
Behind the scenes on some of my Book Bonus Jewelry ✨
Most of these have gone out to beta readers and reviewers already!
I think I've posted some of these here before(?) but this shows some of the process.
(Midnight "helps" me make these 🐈 by uh, knocking just about every piece to the floor at least once.)
I've got some posts queued up for the next week, leading up to Just One Command's last sale for the year on Saturday! :D
Most are video posts, since I'm cross-posting to Insta / Bsky / Facebook. I hope you won't mind! 🙏
I definitely still have some official artwork planned for Just One Command, so there'll still be a few more JOC posts ;) but I'm going to start transitioning soon to newer series as I work on manuscript(s).
...I just gotta figure out which manuscript to work on first 🤣 (the true challenge)
