First Book Selling Event at Tower Hill Artists and Authors Showcase
I attended my first real book selling event over the weekend on Friday and Saturday as part of a 100-year celebration at the school I attended as a kid. The event was an Artists and Authors Showcase hosted at Tower Hill School as one part of a big 100-year celebration.
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This was my first time taking my books with me on the road, setting up a booth and selling. As a writer who has been working on this for several years now, I honestly feel as if this was long overdue. Most authors I network with have done several even more high-profile events like this. But although I might be late to the game, I view this as a good opportunity to “get my foot wet” and learn the ropes before I dive into a real higher-profile, more sci-fi niche, event.
Because this was at an event for people affiliated with the PK-12th school, there was a hugely broad audience in attendance. That meant only a minority of the people were actually interested in science fiction to any degree. Obviously more niche sci-fi novel events would cater more heavily to my target demographic. Still, even with a hugely broad audience, I managed to sell a good deal of books.
To give you a sense of the folks there, on Friday I shared the table with a children’s author who writes non-fiction stories about lesser-known historical people. Also in attendance were biographers, western writers, poets, tech writers, romance writers and so forth… The good news was on Saturday, my table-mate was not there, so while I shared a table on Friday, I ended up getting the entire table to myself on Saturday.
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With all the inventory, posters, credit-card reading hardware and so forth, I knew I had to sell a minimum of 19 books in order to break even on my expenses (well, technically 18.5 books). Again, the audience was broad and not necessarily sci-fi people, so I ended up selling nine books, coming up about $100-ish short on my break-even costs.
Still, I don’t view that as a bad thing. Nine paperback book sales in two days is more than I normally see in most months (seeing as the majority of my sales are Kindle sales and therefore only get me < $2 per sale typically). And the extra leftover inventory is just product to sell again at another event in the future. So overall, I don’t view this as a loss by any means.
Now I know what I need to work on and improve on at these types of events. I found it excitingly informative and, more importantly, it was great to see my old school and some people I used to know. I had a wonderful two days and now I must look forward to my next event in the future.
Where will I go next?
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