Join me tomorrow evening (Tuesday the 4th) for a virtual talk at the Wendell Gilley Museum and Southwest Harbor Public Library! I’ll be sharing my book, Ornithography: An Illustrated Guide to Bird Lore & Mythology as part of their Reading with Wings program. The event is at 6pm eastern and is free to attend.🦉 If you’ll be joining us tomorrow, tell me if there’s any bird you want me to talk about!
VE Schwab Author Event for Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil 🌹
"Bury my bones in the Midnight Soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth." 🥀
I cannot begin to describe the thrilling joy of listening to VE Schwab talk about her writing process, morally gray characters, her love of villains, and of course, toxic lesbian vampires. This event was much too short; I could have spent hours listening to her. It's obvious she opened a vein for this one; despite being a story about vampires, this story is richly personal. A story about hunger, desire, feminine rage, and freedom. If you support women's wrongs, unreliable narrators, stories about longing and power struggles, and hypnoticly poetic prose, this one's for you. Bury Our Bones was my most anticipated read of the year and it did NOT disappoint. Hearing VE Schwab discuss it only added another layer to my love for this story. 🦇
Quotes From the Q&A 💬
[ Sorry for paraphrasing; by chance, my favorite lines weren't in the segments I recorded. ]
"[These are women who have been treated as prey their entire lives, and so when they become predators] is that monstrous or is that just recompense?"
"I don't prioritize romance" [because every other element in a story gets downgraded beside it].
"In order to write...authentically, you have to take off all of your armor."
"Only you can write the version of the story you will write."
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.
This past weekend on Valentine’s Day I went to my local library for an amazing author event for Gene Luen Yang This Eisner Award winning author was there to talk about his book Lunar New Year Love Story!
Lunar New Year Love Story is a graphic novel and rom-com about Valentina Tran, a girl who has one year to break her family’s curse of being unlucky in love before she has to give her heart away for good. It’s a great book about relationships, family dynamics, and fate!
This was one of the best author events I’ve ever been to and Gene was hilarious! He was great at telling the story of how he broke into comics and illustrating despite his parents wishes and how his college girlfriend broke his heart but later became his wife! It was cool to learn of the many other books he has worked on as either writer and/or illustrator and his dreams of wanting to write a Frog Man comic or X-Men Jubilee story one day!
Glad that I decided to attend the event and Gene’s author signature is definitely one of the most unique signatures I’ve ever gotten!
