Some things I observed about vendor tabling from my first and second book fairs:
Location! First fair, I happened to be the very first table when you walked into the room. Second one? I was literally the last table in the maze of the building and was constantly telling people peering past me down the 124 year old hallway that I was the last one and they could turn around. Did it impact my sales? It definitely impacted foot traffic. But I didn't get to pick the spot either time.
Some people have really cool book display shelves! Idk where they get them, and I don't have the means to haul around several plastic totes of display supplies so it has to be collapsible, but they were very eye-catching. (on top of that, verticality instead of having everything at the same level).
Printed QR code links. For both the online store and payment in person. I had all mine digital and it worked fine, plus a QR link to my website on my business cards (I burned through half my supply yesterday). But! Next time I'll have payment and store lookup as accessible as possible.
Book formatting! I had a teenager come up to me and start flipping through my book incredibly excited by the font size and the off-white paper because they had a disability. It's 11pt (they keep finding tiny print), always in Georgia, my beloved serif font. Another table had textbook-white pages printed either in Calibri or Arial (sans-serif) with size 14-ish children's-book font and it was incredibly distracting. If you didn't know: Sans-serif is generally for digital text, like this font right here, and serif (the little feet and hats on letters) is for print. Makes it easier to read in either medium.
There was no difference in sales between me, who quietly let people peruse and only pitched my books if they gave me the signal, vs vendors who threw the whole kitchen sink immediately and wouldn't let people read in peace.
I got zero sense of competition between the five tables all grouped together in the lonely corner. Theoretically, yes, if someone only has $20 to spend, we are all competing for that $20, but everyone was so nice! I collected so many business cards/bookmarks.
My candy bowl was popular with children. And my roommate/assistant spent the whole time making pipecleaner flowers as giveaways, and those were also popular. But not as popular as some table downstairs in the high-traffic area attaching little plastic sprigs to their business cards, that everyone was wearing like antennae in their hair.
Cover. Art. Half my sales came from people who literally walked up to my table, looked at Eternal Night's cover, and said "how much?" The con sponsor book store bought five copies off me for resale and the lady coordinating it could not emphasize my vibrant cover enough to her coworker to justify the risk of investing in my work. The table next to me, in the nicest way, was selling adult gay sports romance (very popular rn) with cover art of characters that looked 15-16. I picked up their book expecting teenagers, and then I read "coworkers" in the summary and it totally threw me off. They sold more buttons, stickers, and mystery bags than books. The table 3 down selling a middle grade adventure with thematically appropriate art sold the same amount as me. Causation/coincidence, idk. But I did notice.
A lot of low-res posters. Passed a table with your standard poster size version of their book cover, and I could have seen the pixelated mess on the other end of the hallway. It would behoove anyone to do just a little research into the image quality settings of their prints before spending money on them. If you have the money to blow on a giant poster, you have the time to make sure it looks good.
Having a card reader would have been nice, but it only impacted one guy who insisted on not using cash, Venmo, Zelle, or CashApp, who took a business card instead to buy the ebook. Given the operating costs of card readers, and how infrequently I do this, I don't think it's a worthy investment for people just starting out.
"Free with purchase" made people incredibly happy. I had bookmarks for sale, but free if they bought a copy, and despite my sign laying this all out, every single time, I got a happy "oooo" when I told someone they get a free bookmark now.
Dollar General/Dollar Tree/Dollar Store saved our butts when we needed last minute replacements that we forgot at home four hours away. I picked up two little glass flower vases for 1.25 each to hold my various pride flags. Also I was, once again, the only table I could see with visible pride flags. There were a *ton* of queer people walking the fair.
I will be investing in a proper tablecloth, probably gold because it matches my cover fonts/contrasts a lot of my blue stuff, and not a disposable party one, which was all I could justify at the time. It looks more professional, mostly because less wrinkles. I did see a table with a branded burlap tablecloth, or at least that narrow decorative bit that goes down the center strip. I want one of those.
A "hello" goes a long way when people get nervous coming up to your table.
