Have you ever taken your book to a show? This might be a book festival or expo… I’m not crazy about book expos—they’re usually big and expensive to participate in. But I attend a lot of book festivals of all sizes and I generally recommend that most other authors use this mode of promotion, too.
Book festivals are generally held outdoors in spring and fall, however I’ve also attended indoor book fairs in all climates.
You’ll find book festivals in many cities throughout the U.S. I’ve attended huge ones and small ones in dozens of cities throughout California as well as in Tucson, Dallas, Atlanta and St. Louis. If you do an Internet search, you’ll probably find a book festival or book fair within 50 or 100 miles of your home town or a city you plan to visit. You might pay as little as $10 for a bare table set up on a blocked-off street or a thousand dollars for a table inside a canvas booth on the lovely grounds of a university. There might be as few as 15 “booths” or as many as 300. I did a book fair once inside where there were only five booksellers.
What do you do at a book festival? You set up a display of your books and maybe a poster to attract people from across the room. Some booksellers bring in flowers or a display of photos depicting some aspect of their book’s topic. You’ll also want to have something to give visitors to your booth—bookmarks depicting your book, a brochure describing all of your books and services, pens, buttons, candy… Give a tote bag with the purchase of a book. Have a puzzle or a paint-by-number project for visitors to participate in. You can be as elaborate or simplistic as you choose. Just think about what would attract people to your booth. What would draw their interest? You want to be noticed and you want to be visited.
The purpose of reserving a booth at a book festival is to sell books. And if you are personable, if you have a book people want, if you have a good sales pitch, you will sell books. But there’s another very important reason for taking your book to the show and that’s exposure. I’m going to talk about the value of exposure in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, purchase the Kindle, print or audio version of Talk Up Your Book, How to Sell Your Book Through Public Speaking, Interviews, Signings, Festivals, Conferences and More. $19.95 at Amazon and most other online and downtown bookstores. Or order it from me, Patricia Fry, the author http://www.matilijapress.com/TalkUpYourBook.html
A week from tomorrow, I’ll hit a blogging milestone—a big one. How many blog posts do you think I’ve written? Guess correctly and you’ll win a prize. All next week I’ll be giving away prizes. Either comment here with your guess or email me here: PLFry620@yahoo.com. The first 3 correct answers to today’s question will win a prize.
What am I giving away? Manuscript evaluations, books for authors and for pleasure, courses for authors…
If you live in or will be visiting the Southern California area during the week of April 12-13, 2014 and you’d like to sell your book from a booth at the huge Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, contact me. PLFry620@yahoo.com. SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) has two booths and we’re inviting members to sell books from our booth for $203 per day, a savings of about $300 per day, if you were to reserve a booth of your own.