We spent last weekend at the Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville, FL. This was the second time I was there, and the first time for my hubby.
We drove up Friday afternoon, arriving just around supper
time. We unloaded our car (except for the books we’d brought) to our hotel
room, and then went to the hotel bar to have supper. The hotel also had a
restaurant, but after seeing the prices at the bar, the restaurant was probably
too pricey for our budget. At about 7 pm, we went down to the conference center
for the meet & greet reception. We talked with several other authors, and
ran into Joe Haldeman and his wife, Gay, which made hubby happy. But before too
long, hubby either got uncomfortable or tired, so we went back to our room,
watched a little tv, and went to bed.
Check in for the festival started at 8 AM on Saturday. Our
tables were supposed to be set up and ready to go by 10 AM. I wasn’t worried
about getting there right at 8, because I knew it wouldn’t take very long to
set up our table. Hubby must have been tired, because he didn’t get up until 8,
and he was worried about missing out on the breakfast that the festival was
providing for the authors. So we went down and found our table, then I sent him
off to have breakfast while I unloaded the books from our car. I wasn’t worried
about breakfast, because I’d had a couple pop tarts with my morning pills.
After I brought in our books, I unloaded the 3 boxes and
began to set up the table. Hubby arrived in the middle of that, so we were all
done by 9:30, ready for the crowds of customers to come in.
At noon, I sent hubby to the buffet being supplied by the
festival. When he got back, he sat at the table and I went to get some lunch.
Lunch consisted of build-your-own tacos, churros and key lime pie. When I got
back to the table, I could tell Hubby was tired, so I sent him to our room to
rest. He came back a couple hours later, feeling a little better.
Throughout the day, we talked to various people. One
children’s author told me where he got his books printed for a lot less than
anyplace I had found. Of course, getting them printed is only half the battle;
then you need a distributor to get them into the book stores. He was
negotiating with a distributor.
Another author told me how to indicate the reader was going
into a flashback. One of our books has multiple flashbacks, which at least one
reader found confusing. Now I can fix that problem.
Another author gave me information on two cover artists
he’s worked with and recommended. He also gave me some information on
potentially getting our books in his wife’s bookstore.
And then a potential customer stopped by, and we started
talking about book covers. I always thought the book cover should be an
indication of what you would find inside the book, which should make it fairly
unique. She agreed but had gone to a publishing seminar a few months ago where
everybody was saying, “No, you want the book cover to look like every other
book in your genre.” In any case, she had nice things to say about our book
covers.
And then, at the very end, the President of the
organization that hosted the festival came to us and said, “I sold 2 books, how
did you do?” We told her we hadn’t actually sold any books, but we did hand out
lots of coupons to get our eBooks at a discount. At least one person came by
and picked up one of each coupon, while her mother picked up one. We ran the
gamut of coupon dispersal; some took several while others took only one.
In the days before the festival, I had repacked our books,
trying to get it down from 5 boxes to 4. I actually got them down to 3. But,
when it came time to pack them all up again, I didn’t have room for the two
coupon holders. I had to put them in with my laptop and hope they didn’t get
squashed and broken. (They didn’t.)
We took the books back to the car, had supper in the bar,
and went back to our room for the night. Hubby doesn’t seem to think that
selling our books face to face is the way to sell our books, but he doesn’t
want me to ‘waste’ my time studying marketing, either. But I’m not ready to
give up.
Believe it or not, I had fun. I also had a disadvantage. We
were located near one of the entrances, which was good. But sitting right next
to me, even closer to the entrance, was a very out-going author who greeted
every potential customer with, “What do you like to read?” Which is what I
usually say. And then, depending on what they said, he would regale
them with some variation of his elevator pitch for his series of 5 books. I
felt a little silly asking the same question as him, and so I fumbled several times,
looking for something to engage their interest. Also, he had dragon stickers he
was giving away, and I only had boring coupons.
I’m still processing what I can learn from this experience.
I’ve often thought of having things to give away, but I’ve never gotten around
to doing it. Maybe it’s time I do that. Among other things. Then if the person
next to me is asking, “What do you like to read?”, I can fall back to “Would
you like a free sticker/trading card/temporary tattoo?”
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