by john | Aug 8, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Promos/Giveaways
A lot of people have asked me how I can find the courage to promote my work without feeling like an asshole. Well, I can’t tell you how to do that, because I can’t help how you feel. I can’t even tell you how to promote your books without other people thinking you’re an asshole, because I can’t help how they feel, either. No matter how often I ask my cat to build one for me, I don’t yet have a functioning Public Opinion Control Ray Gun.
And I should never, ever be trusted with such technology. With great power, comes great potential for hilarity, and I think I would do lots of funny shit with that, but not very much good.
But I digress.
So there are two kinds of writers – the kind who promote their shit, and the kind that don’t make any money. You decide which one you want to be, and behave accordingly.
That is, of course, a vast oversimplification. But let’s take a look at some ways that you can promote your book without being an asshole.
1) Promote to your mailing list – I might have mentioned before on this blog that mailing lists are pretty damned important. These are people who already want to read your shit, and are inclined to give you money for the privilege. Let them. Take their money. They want you to have it. Do not be ashamed of taking their money. Instead, think of what a favor you are doing these poor people who have too much cash, and need some way to spend it. Be a giver. Give them the warm fuzzy feeling of spending money with you.
Some people post to their mailing list every week. I think that’s a little too often. Some people post to their mailing list only when they have a new release. That’s probably not often enough, unless you release a book every single month. I think you should probably communicate with your mailing list at least once a month.
“But what do I say?” “I don’t have anything to say!” “I’m booooooring!”
Well, you’re probably right. But if you are, then what are you saying on Facebook all the damn time? Are you going to a convention next month? Newsletter. Are you releasing the audiobook of the book you released two months ago? Newsletter. Did you just sign a contract for four books? Newsletter.
The point is that you can come up with something relevant to your writing career once a month, unless you just aren’t writing anything, aren’t releasing anything, and aren’t doing anything to promote yourself. If that’s the case, then you’re not a writer, you’re someone who talks about wanting to be a writer, and that’s not who I’m talking to here. I’m writing these posts for people who actually want to sell books. If you want to talk about being a writer, or want to writer for the love of it, that’s fine. But you’re not the audience for these posts. You should read my serialized fiction every Monday and buy all my other shit.
So yeah, you need to send out a newsletter at least once a month. Some folks like to send out serialized fiction once a month in their newsletter. This is a great idea and it gives you potential readers a reason to sign up and stick around. I personally don’t do it, but I’m serializing two novels right now, so I think I give away enough writing. The first one is on this site every Monday, and the other is on my Patreon.
So by sending out newsletters, you are communicating with people who have already said they want to hear from you, thus – you are not an asshole.
2) Post to your Author FB Page – You do have one, right? If you have at least one book out, you need to have a presence on Facebook. If you use Facebook at all. Don’t do it if you hate Facebook, but if you have any use for FB, you need to have an author page.
Then you need to write shit on there. Frequently. Like, all the fucking time.
This is just like a newsletter. The people who like your FB author page want to hear about your work. If they don’t, they won’t follow the page. I feel like you should promote each thing you have out in the world once per day on your author page. Got an ebook? 1 Post. Got a newsletter? Another post. Blog? Another post. Audiobook? Another post. Before you know it, you can have a dozen things that you’re promoting on your Author page.
Don’t get all shy and awkward about posting there, because 1) the people who like this page are still predisposed to give you money, and it’s rude to turn them down, and 2) FB throttles your feed so much that only 10-20% of your friends and followers see the things you post. So it’s entirely possible that if you have eight posts on your FB wall, any given person who likes your work may only see two of them. So while you think you’re blasting the universe with a million bits of spam, they think you’re super-restrained and only post a couple times a day,
It’s okay, I won’t tell them.
3) Post things with cute pictures – When Natania Barron got print copies of her new novella, she posted an adorable picture of herself holding them. People love that shit. They love seeing you get excited about shit. So post pictures. Take your new book on a tour of the country, and post with it at landmarks. Or ask your FB tribe to send in pics of them holding your book in various places, and share those pics. Images are awesome on the internet, and funny pictures are even awesomer. That’s why I use the pic of the grinning chimp for all these posts. That, and it’s not a terrible likeness. 🙂
4) Post in threads where people ask for people to post what they’re working on – A bunch of folks will make posts like “Tell me about your new release.” DO IT. FFS, they’re asking you. They’re begging you to provide content and engagement with their page, and they’re offering promotion in exchange. Take them up on their kind offer.
Same for blog posts. Remember, I offer a guest blog spot every Friday for people to send me stuff about their new books. Just write up a post around 500-1,000 words on where the idea for your book came from, and send it along with buy links and a cover image. You’re reading this, so obviously somebody sees this site, right? Take advantage of the opportunities that people offer you. Because if you provide them content, they will link you, and give you a shout out, and make sure generally your guest post is at least somewhat promoted, because they want you to see value in it for you as well as for them.
There’s a few ways to promote without looking like an asshole. Some of these are easy, some are less so. They all take a certain amount of getting out of your own head to do. But they all pay dividends. So get your ass to writing, and send me a post for Evolution!
by john | Aug 1, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Promos/Giveaways
So, we all know that reviews are critical to a book’s success. The more reviews a book gets, the more action there is on the book’s Amazon Page, and the higher it appears in Amazon’s mysterious “search algorithms.” The rumor is that 20 reviews is a benchmark, and that after 20 reviews, the book gets a bump in discoverability in the Amazon search engine. The rumor continues that you get another bump at 50, and another bump at 100. I have no idea if this is true, because I don’t program search engines for Amazon’s site, and the people that do aren’t talking. So anything anyone says (unless they can specifically tell you “I worked for Amazon and know this to be true”) is pure speculation. And even if they worked there, if they left more than six months ago, it’s probably speculation.
But anyway, reviews are important to a book’s success, regardless of whether or not they affect the ranking in the Amazon’s searches. Reviews from consumers are more and more how people make decisions in purchasing items. With so many things out there, and so little time to fuck around with figuring out what the best fit for you will be, user reviews of everything from washing machines to books are critical. Word of mouth is still the best way to sell a book, period.
So how do you get reviews? Especially if you’re self-publishing or working with a small press, it can be tough. Your marketing budget may be small or non-existent, and you may not have enough name recognition to get people excited to read your book when it first comes out. So what are you going to do?
1) Build an engaged and excited fan base – This isn’t easy, and it isn’t quick. But it is the best way to get a bunch of reviews on your books. You need to find your fans, and you need to tell them how important reviews are. Eric Asher has released two awesome novellas for Falstaff Books this year. He’s writing a spinoff series to my Bubba the Monster Hunter books, featuring a Monster Hunter based in Missouri named Mason Dixon. The books are great, and you should totally buy them. The first book, Mason Dixon – Monster Hunter, has 45 reviews after an April 21 release. By comparison, my book that released in February, Calling All Angels, has 16 reviews. Eric kicks my ass in soliciting reviews. Eric also has about triple the number of people on his newsletter list that I do, and has worked very diligently in building his email list and his street team over the past few years.
The Past Few Years. I wasn’t joking – it takes that long to do it right. Eric does it right. He promotes other people, does newsletter swaps with people, and builds his list. Sometimes these newsletter swaps result in a bunch of people getting free ebooks and then instantly dropping off the list. That’s fine, because out of every ten people that sign up, you’re probably only going to get one superfan, and that’s if you’re lucky. And those superfans are who you convert to your street team, and your ARC team, and you engage with them. A lot.
How do you engage with your fan base? You talk to them. You don’t just send out a newsletter when you have a new book. You send out a minimum of one per month. I’m building up to twice a month, but I’m also terrible about staying organized, so I end up doing them whenever I or Falstaff has new releases. That’s been a lot lately. A LOT. But you have to stop thinking of a newsletter as spam. This is something they have signed up to receive. Something you have probably given them a free book to lure them into your lair. They may have signed up for your list because they bought your ebook. They WANT to hear from you. So talk to them.
In addition to newsletters, you can blog. You know, that thing that I’m doing here. This series of blog posts was originally created in my role as Publisher of Falstaff Books (yes, we are open for submissions. Yes, the guidelines are on the website), but it’s open to anyone. So this is another way that I’m talking to potential fans. I try to post a minimum of twice a week here. On Mondays, I put up a chapter of a book that I’m serializing, called Amazing Grace. I do these posts on Tuesday. On Friday, I have an underutilized marketing opportunity for other writers to write a blog post about where their idea came from and promote their book. Not many people take advantage of this opportunity. But you can start a blog. Yes, it feels like screaming into the void at first, but that’s okay. Your writing is screaming into the void, until someone reads it. So anything that points someone to your books is a good thing.
Have a Facebook author page. Have a Facebook Group for your fans. ENGAGE with people. Emily Dickinson died without selling anything, because she was a recluse. If you’re a recluse, you might, too.
2) Blog tours – There are a bunch of services that will send your book out on blog tours, where you can write on a shitload of book blogs for a month and hopefully get some traction. This worked great in 2011-2012. I don’t think it’s worth a flying shit now. Save your money.
3) Solicit Book Bloggers – This is still very good. But you have to pick the real book bloggers, and preferably book bloggers that will cross-post their reviews on Amazon, BN, Goodreads, Apple, somewhere. But you really want Amazon.
4) Solicit reviewers – Look at the reviews that other books in your genre have gotten. See if any of the reviewers have “Vine Voice” by their name. These are the top reviewers on Amazon, and they review a shitload of stuff. You can click on their name and hit them up, ask them if they’d like a copy of your book to review. Frequently, they’ll say yes. After all, they already are in the habit of reviewing a shitload of stuff.
These last three are good, but the first one is the best. You have to get out there and chase down fans. Get them on a newsletter list, then make a separate list for your ARC (Advance Reader/Review Copy) team. Send them the book for free before it comes out, so they can review it. Once the book is out, send out another newsletter a couple weeks later reminding folks if they’ve bought the books and enjoyed it, to leave a review. You have to ask. You have to remind people. You have to get out there and solicit reviews. People will only review a book if they either love it or hate it, the 4-star reviews are the ones you have to go get.
I hope this helps. Leave questions in comments, and I’ll try to answer them. And if you want a shot at joining my ARC team, first you gotta subscribe to my newsletter. If you want to know about awesome books by a ton of other great authors, sign up for the Falstaff Books email newsletter, too! You’ll get free shit just for signing up.
by john | Jul 25, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books
This is a screen shot of my Hootsuite for a week.
So I’ve mentioned before that I hold an unpopular opinion about social media; that it’s okay to use certain forms of social media as a billboard, just blasting “Buy my shit” tweets out there. For me, that medium is Twitter. I don’t really look at Twitter. I don’t really have time to dig through the hundreds of people I follow to see if there’s anything interesting, and usually they’ve got their Twitter set up to cross-post to Facebook anyway, and I can be snarky in long form there. So I engage with people on Facebook, either on my personal page, my author page, the Falstaff Books page, or in my Facebook Author Group.
Yes, it was a pain in the ass to go back and turn all those into links. And yes, I totally stole the idea of having a Facebook group from Rick Gualtieri. If you haven’t read his Tome of Bill series, you should go buy the omnibus right now (yes, there is an affiliate link buried in this sentence).
But I mainly use Twitter as a billboard, and I use Hootsuite to make that happen. Some folks have asked how exactly I do that, and since I scheduled all my social media for the week today (I’m writing this on Sunday for a Tuesday pub date) I figured I’d just walk y’all through the process.
First I log into Hootsuite. I got the Hootsuite Pro account a long time ago, when it cost $5.99/month. It’s probably more than that now. It’s also worth it to me. The Pro account is what lets me schedule all these posts I’m going to talk to you about. So yeah, it’ll cost you a little money. And no, there is not an affiliate link in that sentence. I don’t have a code for HS.
Then I open my Word document with my pre-written tweets. I have 2-3 tweets written for each book I have out, and whenever I release something new, I write a new one. That way it’s not too much of a pain in the ass to keep on top of it. For example, I just set up the pre-order for Fireheart, so when I scheduled this week’s social media, I wrote a couple of tweets about teens, romance, and dragons. Mostly dragons. But I have a LOT of titles, so I have to prioritize what gets the social media love each week. I’ve guessed that most people spend the most time on Twitter and Facebook (and I have set up Hootsuite so it posts to 5 accounts all at once – my personal Twitter, the Falstaff Twitter, my personal FB, my author page, and the Falstaff FB page) during lunchtime, so the things that I want to push the most heavily I set to tweet from 11AM-2PM Eastern.
I have no metrics to back that up, it’s just when I remember fucking off the most back when I had a day job. But it makes sense. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person eating at my desk most days, so that’s when you feel less bad about trawling social media for interesting shit.
So this week I set up Fireheart posts for noon. That also means that I catch West Coast folks when they’re sitting down with their morning coffee and firing up the fuckoffery. So my newest releases go from 11-2, then I plop in tweets every hour on the hour from 9AM-6PM Eastern, Monday-Saturday. I don’t tweet on Sunday, because that’s the Lord’s day. Nah, I just figure fewer people will see it. I could probably cut Saturday without any ill effects, but I’d have to remember, and by now it’s habit. So I tweet about a John Hartness release ten times every day for six days.
Not all of these are book tweets. I also tweet for people to join my Patreon, sign up for my email list, sign up for my ARC team, and read this site or listen to my podcast. I also have started trying to do at least one tweet per day pimping other writers. I just have a list, and a bunch of people who I know are active on social media get some pimping every day. I rotate through people, and I try not to leave too many people out. But if I haven’t tweeted your name, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means I did a lot of drugs in the 90s and I can’t remember shit now.
But that’s what I do. I send out ten tweets per day. On average that’s 7-8 tweets about my books, and 2-3 tweets about other things (mailing lists or promoting other authors). That’s just my personal self-promo.
Then I move on to promoting the Falstaff stuff that we’ve published, and that list is getting looooooong. Every book we’ve published gets one tweet per day. The only exception is that if I’m tweeting about Book 2 of a series, I won’t also tweet Books 1&2. I may rotate through different books in the series, or I may just promote the most recent book, or the first one. It all depends on where we are in publishing/promotion cycle. Same deal there – new releases get the mid-day slots, then I plug in around them. This week, that was 16 tweets per day. So 26 messages per day, six days per week, smells like 162 social media messages going out to promote my stuff and the Falstaff stuff every week. All broadcast to five different social media networks, with a reach of around 6,000 people.
It takes me about 90 minutes per week to do this. By now, I know what I’m doing (kinda, I never have figured out their bulk message thingy, and I like to see it in the grid on the Scheduler tab anyway), and I have almost all my messages pre-written. When I think things are getting stale, I’ll add something new into the mix, and when I release a collection, I stop tweeting about the individual novellas. But otherwise, these messages stay evergreen.
Yeah, it’s completely in opposition to what everyone tells you to do on social media. It’s exactly what people say is the most annoying thing in the world (it’s not – that’s someone else’s child). But it also is responsible for 20-30 book sales per week for me. Because I see a decrease of about 10% in gross sales when I take a couple weeks off from social media broadcasting. And like I’ve said before, if junk mail didn’t work, no one would still send it out.
So that’s what I do, and how. if I missed anything, let me know in comments and I’ll try to address it. If there’s any other topic on selling books you’d like me to address, let me know and I’ll put it in the queue.
by john | Jul 23, 2017 | Appearances, Business of publishing, Harker, Real Life, Writing
Hey there –
Just dropping in for a quick update. My writing, at least as far as the stuff I’m publishing, has been slowed down a bunch this summer by travel and the fact that I have been slamming on Black Knight #7 as hard as I can go for a while now. But the end of that project is in sight, so I have managed to get started on Bubba Season 4, Episode 2, where Bubba deals with his psycho Granny, Mad Queen Mab of FairyLand.
I also have a short story due by August 1 that I should probably start writing. But maybe that’s next weekend’s project. I’ve also had a lot of publisher projects to handle the past few weeks, but most of those are either complete, or complete to a point that I can step back from them for a little while.
So here’s what’s coming –
I’m finishing up the first draft to Wild Knight, Black Knight #7. Then I send it off to Deb at Bell Bridge, and we start the editorial process. Hopefully that thing hits before the end of 2017, but let’s not hold our breath, shall we? This book has a lot of threads, and Deb is good about cracking the whip on me and making me do my shit the right way, so I might have to go back in and do some surgery on this thing before all is said and done.
Fire heart, my YA dragon romance novel, releases on my birthday – August 14th. It’s up for pre-order now, and it’s cheaper if you pre-order. I’m raising the price as soon as release day is over, so if you want to get it for $2.99, you better click a link.
My Patreon patrons will all also get a present on my birthday, and anyone who is a patron and has pledged for at least one billing cycle before then will get something neat. So if you want a present, become a patron. You have to do it before patron pledges are billed at the beginning of the month, though. You can’t just sign up on the 10th, then quit after I give out presents on the 14th, and get the present without ever paying for the patron level. That’s not cool.
I’m also serializing a mil sci-fi cyborg book I’ve been working on over at Patreon, so all patrons can read everything there. Amazing Grace has a few more chapters, then I’ll get that edited, and I’m going to enter it into the Kindle Select program, to see if Amazon will pick it up. I’ll be asking all of you to vote for the book once that starts, so get ready!
Once I finish this Bubba book, probably sometime in August, then I’ll hit the next Harker book hard. That gets us to the midway point of Quest for Glory, and once we get that written there will be two more Harker novellas in that storyline, plus a Gabby Van Helsing novella and a Jack Watson novella. It’ll all wrap up into one big damn Season 3 volume, with a fuckton of angels all over the place.
And with that many angels in one place, there’s got to be at least one devil, right?
There are two more Bubba novellas in FairyLand coming, then Bubba will be back in the mundane world for Season 5, picking up the pieces and facing the consequences from his unexpected and unannounced absence. This will tie into the Bubba verse novellas that folks like Eric Asher, Bobby Nash, and Gail Z. Martin are all writing this year and next. So there’s plenty of stuff for y’all to read coming soon.
Now I gotta go – rasslin’s coming on. Peace out.
by john | Jul 12, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books
You’ve heard me say it – write more shit.
You’ve heard a lot of people say it – write more shit.
You’ve heard people more famous and touchy than me say it – write more shit.
But sometimes you might need to hear somebody say this, too – Slow the FUCK down!
Last week I saw a guy post something to a FB group that I’m a member of about his new book being basically dead after 30 days, because it’s no longer “new” in Amazon’s algorithms, and should he make it permafree to bring in readers, or just ignore it and keep trying to write the next book in the series to get that out there in the next few weeks.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Y’all, stop the goddamned presses. A book doesn’t die at a month old. Shit, some books don’t even find any kind of audience traction until several months into their life, or maybe a year or more. Let’s think about this for a second – if you like a band or musician, and you happen to not notice that they have a new album out the first couple of weeks that it’s out, does that mean you’re never going to buy that album? No. It means that you’ll grab it when you notice it.
Books are like that. Ebooks are especially like that. Y’all, indie writers have been bitching for years about trad pub working on a produce model and only giving a book 90 days to succeed before they pull all promotion of it, because that’s how long a bookstore can shelve a book before they have to pay for it. NOW you want to stop promoting a book after 30?
Look, I get it. You want to jam a bunch of work out there so your name stays fresh. Listen, I’ve been a proponent of publishing a bunch of stuff fast for a long time. That’s probably why I have so many damn titles out there. But that doesn’t mean that I give up on my babies after the initial rush of sales is over. I still promote (albeit less strenuously) The Chosen, which is the first book I ever wrote and self-published! That book is seven years old, and still makes me money.
Not much, don’t get me wrong, but for the five minutes I spend promoting it, the $50/month that book makes me is pretty good for a seven-year-old book.
No, it’s not much, but how much money did you earn off your second-grader last month? Right. I win.
For a less extreme example, let’s look at Calling All Angels, the Shadow Council novella I released in January. That book has been out for six months now, and the gild is definitely off the lily as far as any newness goes. I send out a tweet each day about the book, which cross-posts to Facebook. I do that with most of my recent releases, and I spent about an hour each weekend setting that up. So we’ll say I’ve spent an hour on that book specifically in the last three months, being generous.
It has earned me well over $600 in the past three months. That’s a pretty good rate for an hour. it’s not terribly specific, because I just don’t feel like digging through all the KDP reports to get the Kindle Unlimited earnings for the book, but in the last 90 days, it’s earned $450 in sales, so I feel safe assuming it’s earned at least another $150 in page reads, just eyeballing the chart.
Do I spend a lot of time flogging that book? No. Do I spend any money promoting it? No. But I don’t spend any appreciable money promoting any of my books. I probably spend less than $200 per month on promotion, and most of that is on Mailchimp, Hootsuite, and Instafreebie subscriptions.
So I guess my point is, and let me be very clear in case anybody misses it, because I don’t want to spend my afternoon explaining myself – THIS IS NOT A MOTHERFUCKING RACE. There aren’t prizes for flinging the most poo against the wall. There’s no blue ribbon for releasing the most shitty books and finally selling a fuckton of one of them in the first week it’s out. You’re building a goddamn career, not pulling a jewelry store smash-and-grab.
Don’t get me wrong – you still need to write fast. You still need to publish more than one book every three years. You almost certainly need to publish more than one or two books every year to build a career. But you do not have to throw a book out there, then immediately abandon it a month after it’s published just because the shiny wore off and Amazon’s computer doesn’t help you anymore.
For fuck’s sake, these tips are things to help you promote your awesome books, not ways to game the fucking system to force you into this rapid-fire shit-slinging like meth-addled monkeys at the zoo. Yes, you get a boost from the search algorithms when your book is new. That doesn’t mean give up when that help goes away, that just means work harder. It means be smart about how you spend your money. If you’re going to spend money on promotion, time it to coincide with when the system is working for you, don’t just give up when it starts to work against you. And shit, it’s not even that it works against you, it just ignores you. Okay, so you don’t get to exploit the search box anymore. Maybe you should, I don’t know, WRITE AWESOME BOOKS AND GROW A GODDAMN FAN BASE instead of trying to game the fucking system in some ludicrous get-rich-quick scheme.
So yeah, if you want to jump on a bandwagon, then go for it. Hop right on, write a book and forget about it after a month. But if you want to build a career, you don’t abandon your shit right after you make it. It takes time to grow a readership. Years, even. So write faster, but slow down.
by john | Jul 4, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Travel
Hey there! If you’re one of the new people who found me through Chris Fox linking to me, welcome. If you’re looking for more contentious debate, I think this week may disappoint. But if you’re looking to sell more books, particularly by hand at conventions, then hopefully this will help out.
If you’ve been around here any length of time, you’ve probably seen me say that you usually won’t make your money back in the short term doing conventions. They’re part of the long game, rather than a quick ROI project. Conventions are about marketing, brand-building, and networking. Selling books is a side part of the gig. Most of the time. Some cons, like comic cons and the big media cons, are way more about selling stuff, because in a crowd of a couple hundred vendors and 50,000 people, it’s going to be hard to get noticed enough to be “sticky” in someone’s head unless they buy your shit and love it.
So for the purposes of this article, let’s use the term “con” to refer to the small to mid-sized Sci-Fi and Fantasy cons like the one I did last weekend (LibertyCon in Chattanooga, TN) and the one I’m doing next weekend (ConGregate in High Point, NC). These events can have anywhere from a couple hundred people to several thousand, and running a table at one of these cons takes a few more things than you would initially expect. So here are a few tips and “con hacks” that I’ve come up with through the past seven years of doing this.
1) Have some flat swag – Have something to put into people’s hands. Bookmarks, postcards, even a xeroxed one-sheet about your book if you don’t have the money or wherewithal to make anything better. But a lot of people are not going to buy your book at the con, realistically you’ll talk to far more people who won’t buy the book than people who will. So you need to have something to put in their hand so they can remember you when they leave.
2) Have a Sharpie – Especially at bigger cons, you’ll have folks who say “I’ll come back.” If you give them a piece of flat swag, they still might not be able to find you amidst all the chaos. Write your booth number on the back of the bookmark. Look, I didn’t say these tips were rocket science. I just said they were helpful.
3) Carry plastic bags to the con – You intend to sell shit to people. People need a way to carry shit. Plastic bags are cheap if you buy the crappy ones you get at all the dollar stores, or free if you just recycle plastic grocery bags. But I have made more than one sale by beckoning over some poor soul who is barely able to carry the stack of books and crap they’ve bought, and they’re so grateful to have a bag that they listen to my pitch. Admittedly, I’m way more likely to help out somebody with an armload of books than an armload of Funko Pops, but I don’t sell Pops. I sell books, and someone who has already shown a predisposition to buy books that day is my target audience.
4) Flat stock is the devil – Don’t lay your books down so that the shopper has to stand completely over them to see the cover. Invest in some cheap wire folding book stands (sometimes also called plate racks) and stand your shit up! You spent money on the cover to that books, or someone did, so show it off. Standing up your books helps draw in the long-distance browsers, the folks that don’t want to get too close to the table, lest they buy something. Until they see something awesome, and can’t help themselves. if they can’t see your book, you aren’t giving yourself the option to be that something awesome.
5) Witty bookmarks are the absolute jam – I have one piece of marketing material that i can trace to direct sales. For The Black Knight Chronicles, I made a run of bookmarks that say “Suck It, Edward” in big letters at the top. So when I put those in my vampire books, and stand them up, people from across the aisle can see me making fun of Twilight. Frequently they’ll chuckle, then walk all the way over and either pick up the book or ask me what it’s about. Worst case, they want the bookmark. But more than once I’ve had people buy either the Omnibus ($23) or the entire set of Black Knight books ($50) just off seeing the bookmark. H.P. Holo makes bookmarks with a big circle at the top that says stuff like “SPACE PIRATES” or “WIZARDS & MONKEYS” (it doesn’t really say wizards & monkeys) on them. This lets people see what the book is about from a distance, and draw them in. That kind of dual-purpose swag is awesome for drawing people in.
6) Take Credit Cards – I did a comic con this year, in 2017, with a comic artist who didn’t take credit cards. He proclaimed his disdain for a smartphone, why he wouldn’t need one, why he does fine without a Square reader, and why all this newfangled technology was silly and useless. At the end of the one-day con, after he watched me ring up over $200 in credit card sales, compared with his $20 in cash sales, he said to me, “Maybe I need to look into getting one of those.” I understand that it used to be hard to accept credit cards. There was expensive equipment, monthly fees, and all that BS. Square is free. Paypal is free. Yes, they take about 3% of the sale. Last weekend I processed almost $300 in credit card sales, and I only had a sales table for Saturday. Square can have their $9, because I guarantee you that I picked up at least $100 in additional sales by being able to process cards. Added Bonus – money that is spent with you on credit cards usually doesn’t hit your bank until after the con, so it’s not burning a hole in your pocket whenever you walk through the deal room!
7) Make friends with your neighbors – I try really hard to help out the people next to me at cons, whether I know them or not. Selling books is not a competition, and a rising tide really does lift all boats. Getting a book in someone’s hands is awesome, no matter if it’s your book or the book from the guy next to you. Because once people are predisposed to buy books, they will buy a variety of books. So it’s good for everyone when everyone is selling. Being nice to your neighbors also means that you’ll have someone to keep an eye on your shit when you have to go pee. So don’t erect huge displays that fuck the sightlines of people getting to your neighbor. Don’t blare sound music all day through the con (no matter how cool it is), unless of course you’re a band or a musician, then at least try to mix it up so your neighbors don’t have to hear the same song for three days. Bring extra bottled water and share it with your neighbor. Be happy to break a twenty for them if you have more change. Just be nice and friendly, and it’ll work out well for you in the long run.
8) Get a bigger hand truck than you think you need – I had a decent little $50 hand truck from Lowe’s that I used for a couple years. Before that I had a nice little fold-flat hand truck that did me well until I had too many title to carry on that in one trip. At RavenCon, I had the Lowe’s hand truck, which theoretically had a flatbed load rating of 400 lbs, loaded down pretty damn heavily. We hit a pothole in the hotel parking lot, and one of the wheels shattered. A few feet further along, and the overburdened other wheel gave up the ghost. We struggled that shit into the room, set things up, and did the show, but that hand truck was toast. For the next con, Suzy bought me one like this. Mine is a little different, but it can do vertical or horizontal, has 1,000 pounds capacity, and is big enough to carry everything for two authors (at least) in one trip. It’s friggin’ awesome and I wish I’d just spent the $150 on that one the first time.
There’s a million other things, but I’ll leave with just a quick inventory of my “con box,” the big blue tub that I carry around that has no books in it, just the stuff that I feel like I should have with me to do a booth or a table.
- (2) 8′ Black Tablecloths – I use them either to cover the table if one is not provided, or to cover up my crap at the end of the night.
- Falstaff Books Table Runner – this is new, but it’s just a nice little banner that drapes over the table with our logo on it.
- (12) folding wire book stands – I almost always need less than this, but it leaves me one or two to loan out. See point #7
- Package of big zip ties – I have a sign that ties to the back of my book rack. Also useful for hanging my bags and a trash bag.
- plastic bags – I got a box of “t-shirt bags” years ago and they haven’t run out yet.
- Bookmarks – I have a Falstaff Books bookmark, plus one for Bubba, Harker, and Black Knight. On the back of the Falstaff Books bookmark is a link to a free ebook download of a sampler that gives people a taste of everything we publish.
- Stickers – I have stickers for each property that I have bookmarks for. Buy a book, get a sticker.
- deodorant – I forgot it once on a trip. Never again.
- Drugs – I keep a stash of ibuprofen, immodium, and claritin-d in my con box. These treat the three main things that can ruin a con for me, so I try to stay prepared.
- post-it notes & a small legal pad
- pens and a sharpie
- SC Business License – not all states require a state business license to vend at a con. SC does. I just never take the license out of the box, so I always know where it is.
- Business cards and holder
- spare phone battery – it’s one of those little things by Anker that can recharge a phone, iPad, or more importantly, a Square chip reader.
- Square reader, iPhone 7 adaptor, and Chip reader – I know the chip reader is more secure, but more importantly to me, it’s more efficient. The swipe reader takes multiple swipes at least 50% of the time, but the chip reader almost never takes additional time and effort. I hate the fact that the iPhone no longer has a headphone jack, but I didn’t get to design it, so I bought an extra adaptor and put it in the con box.
- (2) Snap light stick – shit happens. Some con spaces have very few windows, or are even underground, like the Charlotte Convention Center. I don’t ever expect to need to have a small chemical light source, but the day I want it will be the day I REALLY want it.
- pocketknife – I don’t leave home without it.
- Leatherman – some jobs are too much for even a pocketknife
That’s what’s in my con box. It goes to every con, and is the most important thing that goes into the truck.
