This weekend started a new era of my writing career. One with actual readers. No, really, this weekend was the Independent Authors Book Expo, my first in person event where I talked about my books and my writing. It was a bit much for me, given my general introverted personality. But I managed to sell a few copies of my books and get a few other people interested in them. There were several that left my booth with words of buying my books later. Whether they meant it or not, whether they actually buy the books or not, it meant the world to me that people would be interested.
Despite my (limited) success this weekend, or perhaps even because of it, I learned a lot of what I could have done better. For one, the M&M "human bait" didn't work out that well. The only person who ate any of it was me, and I ate a lot of it. Next time, going with Hershey's Kisses, the individually wrapped ones. More waste, but less waist. Also, more water, caffeine, and an actual breakfast.
While I loved having my full collection of books there, showing those that came by just how many I've written and not limiting the books available for selling, I'm going to have another display to the side that focuses on two to four books. My neighbors had a more limited collection, and they seemed to do better because of it. Well... they also did better because they're more charismatic, friendlier, and maybe were a bit more aggressive in their sales. There's a reason why I only lasted 6 weeks in insurance sales... Yea, not for me. But I think with the second, smaller setup, I can at least better push people in a certain direction.
Another item that popped up was the possibility of doing more Pride related events. As many of my books are LGBT inclusive, there's more of a market for that sort of thing there. Honestly, while being bisexual myself, I've never been to Pride. Not for any reason beyond just my general anti-social nature. But it will be interesting to do it more for my books. I'd probably get more out of it if I had a purpose for going beyond just going.
And then, there's more outreach to my readers. As those of you that follow me on twitter know, I will often post on there about my writing. And about a lot of other stuff that is less writing related. But I figured a monthly newsletter wouldn't be too much for me to deal with. And blogging can always be good. Thus this first post. I'll be running four categories of postings in here, targeting the four roles I've had to take on with respect to my writing.
Now if only I can figure out how to get the blogs into the newsletter, I can kill eight birds with one stone.
Anyway, this is The Event Desk, signing off.
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