The Las Vegas Book Festival is Saturday, the 17th. I love selling books in person,
even if it is the statistically least efficient way to make money. If you are a civilian attending for the first time, here are a few things you want to know about the dynamics at play.
Selling books face-to-face is a fascinating anthropological experiment disguised as a commercial transaction. You sit behind a table draped in black cloth, flanked by vertical displays of your paper-children, whether those are historical thrillers, Crusades epics, or urban fantasy and you wait for the human tide to roll in.
You quickly learn that a book festival operates on entirely different physics than the internet. Online, a reader discovers your book via a targeted ad or a search algorithm in the quiet comfort of their home and can buy with the push of a button. By the time they remember they bought it, it’s at their doorstep.
At a live festival, you have roughly three to five seconds of eye contact as someone drifts past your booth. That is your entire window to transition from a needy stranger standing awkwardly behind a stack of paperbacks to an engaging human being.
It is wonderfully humbling. You will have deeply philosophical conversations with strangers about the nuances of the French Foreign Legion or the mechanics of modern urban fantasy, and then the very next person will pick up a book, squint at the cover as if it might go off in their hand, and mutter, “Oh, I thought this was a map booth,” before briskly speed-walking away.
When you stop by a local author’s table—whether it is at a massive downtown literary festival, a bustling weekend farmers market, or a local library showcase—remember that there is a real, live human being sitting behind those stack of books who spent a couple of years staring at a blinking cursor praying for inspiration and hoping they make Twenty Bucks a book.
If you’re thinking of going to any book event, here are some tips. As they said in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” it’s not so much code as it is guidelines.
You have no obligation to buy the book, but please don’t be rude. People ignore a greeting or walk by like they’re afraid to get caught in the tractor-beam and sucked in. Just be nice. Smile. We don’t bite. Except hockey romance authors. I don’t trust them. Neither should you.
Not all books are your cup of tea, and that’s alright. I always ask people what they like to read before going on about my books. Maybe they’re more likely to enjoy Johnny and friends instead of history. Maybe they think Urban Fantasy is dumb. I don’t take it personally. We all have things we like and stuff that’s not for us. Hey, I’m an old, cis-het, white guy and I write like it. I’m probably not the audience for your sapphic manga-inspired space opera. We can still get along.
You’re overwhelmed with all the books around you and how many can you buy? You have a budget, or you don’t have anything to carry them in. Don’t feel bad. At my table you can get a bookmark with the code to my Amazon page and buy them later ( in multiple formats.) Buy a book and I’ll give you a bag to carry it in. At least you can support an author by signing up for their newsletter, so you can be noodged a month from now.
See you on Saturday. Stop by Booth #2 and remember if there’s a way to take your money, (cash, Venmo, Paypal, credit card) we can get that book into your hands.
