How to prepare for a local book fair as an indie author
One of my goals for the year has been to attend more bookfairs as a vendor and, this past Saturday, I did two of them back-to-back!
I started the day setting up in Urbandale, Iowa at DemiCon for a 10 a.m. start time. Once things were set there and I showed a friend of mind how to run things, I took off for Des Moines, Iowa, where I had a booth from 11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m. during the Des Moines Book Festival!
Right after that, I went back to Urbandale to relieve my friend and be at the DemiCon booth until about 6 p.m.
I’ve done the Windsor Heights Book Fair before, but these two were both notably larger in terms of foot traffic. It was a great time where I got to say hello to friend and talk to interesting people about things I’ve written! (Shout out to Tadao Tomomatsu, one of the celebrity guests at DemiCon who checked out a bunch of the indie authors in the last 10 minutes of our booth time.)
I was wonderful of DSM Book Festival and DemiCon to host me and I’m hoping to find a way to do both again in the future!
However, when I was initially preparing for these events, though, I was struggling to find a good resource for what I—as a vendor—needed to bring to a book-ish event so as not to be underprepared.
This is based just off of my experience from this one weekend, but I wanted to share how I ended up preparing in case it helps anyone else looking to do a bookish event in a mid-sized, Midwestern metropolitan in the near future.
So, if you’re curious, here’s one indie author’s experience doing prep for two book fairs in one weekend!
How many books do you need to have written to be at a book fair?
Easy question first: How big should your catalogue of published books be when you attend one of these festivals?
Easy answer first: So long as you have at least one book published, you’re golden!
I think that even with one book (generally) you can talk about your novel to fans of that genre at a book fair. That said, when I first did the more modest Windsor Heights Book Fair a few years back, I only had a single title: Light Keeper Chronicle: The Unspoken Prophecy. Since that was a YA book, I don’t think I moved as many copies as I tend to when I’m also selling my newer book, The Wilderlands—which is an adult-aimed novel.
Point being, the broader the range of novels you have, the more something might appeal to someone. If the one book you have has wide appeal, fantastic! If it’s a little bit narrower, then it might be good to get at least one other book under your belt in a different category that you’re still interested in writing about that will attract the kind of readers attending the event you’re likely to be at.
For example, anytime I’m at an event where there’s a romance author present, it’s all but certain that author is going to pull at least half again as many customers as me.
I still think it’s worth dipping your toe in even if you’re not certain how many copies you’ll sell, it just might be better to skew on the lower side of things if your budget is tight.
How many copies of your books should you bring?
I think this will depend a lot on the kind of event you’re at.
As I mentioned, when I’m at these events, my adult focused book (The Wilderlands) sells more copies. This makes sense because the main people making buying decisions are, well, adults.
Adults will still buy Light Keeper Chronicle (the Middle Grade/YA book) but I think for every Light Keeper I sell, I typically sell at least 5 more copies of The Wilderlands. That said, if there is a younger reader who enjoys fantasy, they usually identify pretty quickly that Light Keeper is aimed at them and pick it up.
I figured DemiCon would be most adults and DSM Book Festival would be a mix, so I brought a balance of books that favored the adult novel, bringing 25 copies of The Wilderlands and 20 copies of Light Keeper Chronicle with me this weekend. Of those 35 total copies, I ended up selling 10 total books between the two events.
I sold 6 at the dedicated book fair and 4 at the con. I wasn’t on a panel for either event (which I imagine would have drummed up interest in sales). Only 1 copy of Light Keeper Chronicle ended up among the 10 books sold.
Also, it’s worth noting that, at the con, I essentially made all of my physical sales (a few people picked up the audiobook) in the final hour of the event.
Next time I do an event like this, I probably won’t fret about taking more than 10 copies of each respective title with me to the event. If it’s something where I’m mostly expecting adults, I’d probably only be sure to have about 5 copies of my YA novel on hand.
How much cash do you have to bring?
One big thing that I’d been trying to figure out when prepping for the events was, “How much cash do I have to bring as a vendor?”
I looked around a little bit and couldn’t find a good answer. Obvious my own conclusion is based on just what I experienced, but I wanted to share it
I expected that most of the purchases that I got would be by card, however, I figured that to an event like a con or a big book fair, there might be people more inclined toward cash.
I decided to bring $50 in cash. That was $10 in quarters, a single $10-bill, $20 worth of $5-bills, and ten $1-bills. In the future, I can’t imagine bringing more than that along with me. I only made one sale in cash and I didn’t need to do more than make change for a $20 when selling a $17.99 book.
So, that was one sale out of ten for the day. If I assume most events are going to top out at 10% of purchases being in cash, I think I’ll be in pretty good shape if I even just bring $10 or $20 in singles a fistful of coins to make change.
What am I going to do different next time?
One thing I’ve done in the past is bring books marks to these events. I just have two designs (one for each book) but both designs how a link to my website on them. Grabbing one allows people to pick up one if they’re interested in the book but maybe don’t feel like buying one right now. They’re sort of like slightly more functional business cards.
While I have had those in the past, I opted to skew on the side of bringing more books over spending some of my budget ordering book marks I wouldn’t see an immediate return on.
With events of this size, though, I think that if I can make it happen in the future, I will try to go out of my way to make room in the budget for giving out bookmarks.
The other big thing I think I’ll try to do is be on a panel if I’m able to. Both of the events I was at had various panels where people talked about their books or businesses and I hadn’t particularly tried to be on any of those. If I do manage to get to either of these events in future years, I’ll probably try a bit harder to be part of a panel. (And I actually do have a seat on one for the June Book Festival I’m scheduled for in Grand Rapids, Michigan.)
If you found this helpful, you can check out a few posts where I offer some Other Indie Author Advice:
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Light Keeper Chronicle: The Unspoken Prophecy is available for physical purchase from Schuler Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks.
The Wilderlands is available for physical purchase now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks. The audiobook is also out now on most major platforms.