Book Selling In Person
Book Selling In Person
By Mary Pax
On June 15th and 16th, I participated in a street fair with some other local authors. I had never sold books in person before, so I had some investments to make. The biggest of which was books. I had ten copies of each title. On the marvelous internet I found a wire book rack for a reasonable cost, I had buttons and bookmarks printed, and the friend who makes my trailers made me robot boy. Here’s how my display looked:
Did I sell like gangbusters? No. None of us did. But that was OK. It didn’t cost much, $25 each, and we had a great time. In a very cramped space, I spent the weekend with some lovely authors. I know some of you are acquainted with Kai Strand via the interwebz. Well, we live in the same town and belong to the same Guild. We even used to maintain the Guild’s blog together. Anyway from left to write: Ginger Deringer, Ava Wilson, Karen Duvall, Ruth Colter, Kai Strand. moi, and Dorothy Bell.
Dorothy initiated the organization of the event, and did a fab job. We all passed out a lot of business cards and bookmarks and met a lot of folks. I sold four books, three to people I know. Here is where Facebook was effective. Most of the folks I knew who came to visit read my FB post and stopped by. Met lots of other writers, too. They grow in Oregon like tumbleweeds.
Here’s some other photos from the event:
Books are for the birds…
Oregon is weird, thus some dude out walking his alligator…
Tank attack!
Batman and Batman Jr.
What’d I learn? Don’t spend a lot of money to sell books in person. Share the table/booth expense with other writers. One, it saves you money. Two, it’s a lot less lonely. Three, you’ll have a lot more fun. Do you have any wisdom to add to this?
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Internet Selling
Nothing beats the power of the internet. My hanging out on Twitter led to notice by Book Bub. They gave me a mention on Monday, which resulted in 8,000 downloads in one day. Backworlds soared to #23 in Kindle overall, #1 in space opera, and #1 in space adventure. And I sold more books than ever at Amazon US, UK, paperback, and Kobo. I want more days like that! I want that to be my new norm. It was exhilarating!
Tuesday I had an email from Book Bub saying I’d been chosen for the freebie in hopes I’d choose to advertise with them in the future. Sure. 🙂 Thanks, Book Bub!
It may seem like pure luck and there is luck involved, but I’ve also put a lot of time into Twitter and I’m pretty sure that’s how they found me. Luck is… all those seemingly pointless hours finally paying off.
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Untethered Realms
Laura Eno is posting at UR this week: Lessons Yoda Has Taught Me About Writing Amazed you will be.
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PS, June’s Giveaway is Ending
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