Rookie wRiter’s Journey
My First Author Table at MARCON
I’m going to skip forward to the present in this wRiter’s Journey to Memorial Day Weekend of this year. It is the occasion of my first Author’s Table at a SciFi convention held in Columbus, Ohio. It is definitely part of the journey because of all of the lessons learned when you do something for the first time.
I am going to digress just a bit to last February when I published my second novel in The Nu Trilogy and wanted to plan for a year of traveling around the country visiting all of the ‘CONS to promote my work. The first thing that I did was get a list of all of the conventions scheduled for 2023 so that I could apply for space to have an author table. Taking the list in date sequence, I went to each website to find the contact information for vendors.
Not surprisingly, the first three months of conventions (March, April, and most of May) had all closed their applications because all tables had already been sold to other vendors. The first convention where this was not the case was MARCON. I sent an email to the “vendor” coordinators address requesting an application. From there, I went forward to all of the CONS later in the year, only to find out that I was either ineligible to apply (not enough novels written) or the tables had already been sold. It was very discouraging. I was free to move about the country, but I now I had no place to go. Oh well, I thought, I might as well get to work on the third book in my trilogy and leave off worry about conventions until July, when I could begin applying for the 2024 conventions.
Then on March 26th I received an email from the Vice ConChair for MARCON apologizing for the late reply, but was I still interested in applying for a vendor table? Hurray! I immediately filled out the offered application and sent it back. Two days later I was notified that my application had been accepted and to await further instruction about the schedule for setting up my table.
It just so happens that I have family living in the Columbus, Ohio area, so I did not need to worry about booking a room at the convention center hotel. This would save me a great deal of expense, so the stars seemed to be aligning. I planned my table presentation, had a large poster made for my latest book, got new business cards and a stack of bookmarks made with all of the appropriate artwork to promote my new book.
Everything was ready to go and hopefully I had enough copies of my books to satisfy demand!
This is where life smacks you in the face and shatters your dreams. All of the tables filled up around me, but in the entire vendor room there were only five authors selling their own books. All of the remainder of the vendors were selling artwork, pins, stickers, swords, CD’s of space music, T-shirts, 3D printed dragons, knick-knacks, magic wands, etc., etc. Over a period of 3 days I sat with my pen in hand and sold a total of eight books. That was barely enough to cover the parking in the convention center garage.
There appear to be several reasons for my poor showing in sales. First of all, it was a beautiful Memorial Day weekend in Columbus, and people had a plethora of choices for outdoor activities, including several outdoor concerts. That meant that MARCON attendance was pitifully low. Also, this CON had been discontinued for several years and was now being re-established with a rookie set of organizers. I can’t complain about the headliner for the conference. It was David Weber, one of my favorite authors and the developer of the “Honor-verse”, named after his heroine, Honor Harrington. Alas, that was not enough to really boost attendance.
When friends ask me how the convention was, I tell them that sales were slow, but the lessons learned were priceless. Here are those lessons:
When something appears to fall into your lap, that something may not be of great value (I got my author table, but not the sales I expected).
When you are carrying several heavy boxes of materials to a convention, you need wheels of some sort to make the job easier. I will be buying something for my next convention.
Research thoroughly what type of vendors will be selling goods. If the vendor room is not author-centric, don’t expect many sales.
If most attendees will be dressing up in costumes, they are there to show themselves off, not to buy your books. They will probably be buying stickers, jewelry, swords, hats, T-shirts, etc.
Bring some entertainment with you for those long hours with nobody passing in front of your table.
Always manage your expectations. Dream big, but expect small.
I hope you can pick up a few pointers if you are new to conventions. Perhaps my musings will save you anguish and help you manage your own expectations.
In my next post, I will go back to lessons learned during the publishing of my first book back in 2015. I hope you will be able to join me on my Journey.