Books for Sale! Anybody?

As I sat at the library author event this afternoon, I suddenly had a strong sense of deja-vu. Several years ago, I had been part of a series of author appearances through the branches of the Free Library of Philadelphia. I remember lugging a big box of my books into the tiny South Philly branch to which I had been assigned. I set up shop and waited. And waited. About 20 minutes in, an older gentleman approached the table. “Hi! Thanks for stopping by!!” I chirped hopefully. “Just looking for the bathroom,” he responded, and sulked off when I revealed I didn’t know where it was, as I too was a stranger in these parts. When the torment finally ended, I lugged my completely intact box of books back to my car, and I vowed: Never again!

Here we are, again.

Check it out--book, bookmarks, business cards-but they only had eyes for the candy

 It was a beautiful big suburban library, and everyone was perfectly nice. But there were two problems: they had allowed 60 of us (60!) to peddle our wares at the same time—and they apparently did little to publicize the event. For hours, the library patrons passed by our tables steadily, arms full of library books to check out, pretty dis-inclined to actually pay a bunch of local authors for their words. Maybe there was some action elsewhere (the children’s book writers attracted a bit of interest), but things were pretty snooze-worthy over in my neck of the woods. They had grouped all of us “inspirational” types in one area, and it was instantly clear that “inspirational” covers a lot of ground. There were spiritual poets aplenty. My table mate had three books he had written on the end times and the predictions of Nostradamus. My little books of humorous essays seemed quite out of place in such heavy company. 

From 1-3 PM we authors mostly just roamed around checking out each other’s books…I didn’t see much cash changing hands. The most action I got was at the bowl of Hershey kisses I had set out to entice buyers. I got pretty annoyed by all the random chocolate chompers raiding my stash, and felt like slapping some hands and saying “Candy is free…WITH PURCHASE!!”

Major credit cards accepted--wait, where's everybody going?

 I had plenty of time to think during my long, silent drive home, just me and my 32 books in the car (and they weren’t talking). Conclusions: Everyone on the planet has written a book. Large scale author events tend to involve such zero-sum transactions as “I’ll buy your book if you buy mine.” I need to focus on the way I actually do sell large numbers of my books—speaking gigs—and remember that I could spend a Saturday afternoon marketing myself as a speaker to church and other groups—or I could spend it rubbing elbows (literally) with scores of other bestseller wannabes, in a venue where none of us stands out.

Oh well, at least, thanks to my book box, I got a good arm workout in today. Looking on the bright side!