By all appearances, I look super extroverted. I’m a theatre kid, for crying out loud. And not a behind-the-scenes theatre kid—like, a loud, belting-showtunes-in-the-car, first-in-line-to-want-to-play-an-improv-game theatre kid. I enjoy spending time with my favorite people in a relaxed atmosphere. I value my close relationships dearly. I’m kind of loud. I can guarantee you that some people would go so far as to say I’m annoying. I wear outrageous colors and patterns much of the time. I can hold my own at a party.
…But then, when the party is over, I’ll get in my car, feeling energized, and then go home and it will be two to three business days before I’ll feel ready to do anything people-y. Group projects give me the ick. I also thrive on canceled plans and a rock forms in my stomach when I’m invited to a party, because I’m still a people-pleaser and don’t want anyone to hate me for not going to something when they went to all the trouble of inviting me.
So if you know me personally, just know that I’m much more introverted than I let on. Which tracks with the kind of personality most authors have. Writing books is a nice, creative, blissfully solitary endeavor for the most part. You can create beautiful books without having to talk to a single soul.
Until, of course, that book comes out and you have to do people-y things to market it.
My first time selling my book in public was this past July, where my dear friend Amanda at The Gilded Page Bookshop hosted a Midsummer Book Fair. The event was PACKED with vendors and readers alike. My husband brought our boys and hype up my table. My best friend from Virginia even drove in to surprise me (Lisa, your code phrase to tell me you read this blog post is “praying mantis”). I even made a few sales!
If you’re a first-time author and you’re looking to get a little advice from a fellow author who has participated in exactly one vendor event, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. Let me share what I wish I had known before I did it.
Know how to pitch your book to new readers.
I’ll be the first to admit that Stage Mouse is kind of hard for me to pitch. It’s historical. It’s 1890s. It’s the story of an Irish immigrant. It’s Newsies meets Gangs of New York with a sprinkling of the energy from An American Tail. There’s romance. There’s suspense. There’s hope. There’s theatre stuff. There’s mob stuff. There’s danger sometimes and intrigue other times. She’s a painter, so that’s cool.
When most people come by and asked me what my book was about, I answered with some bumbling assortment of word vomit that may have included the words historical fiction or Irish or vaudeville. It wasn’t pretty. I’m just glad no one filmed me.
I learned, both at the vendor fair and in scrolling Booktok/Bookstagram, that tropes sell. They’re a clear, concise way to tell prospective readers about your book. (If you’ve never heard of tropes before, or if you have and you’re not sure exactly what they are, here’s a good resource.) Every reader has preferences as to which tropes they like in a book. By knowing your book’s tropes, you help readers determine quickly whether they want to try your book. By the time I realized this and started trying it toward the end of the event, I had more interest. Here’s a version of that tropey pitch that I shared with prospective readers:
Stage Mouse is set in 1890s New York. We’ve got a slow burn sweet romance, found family, a reluctant hero, a secret society, and an immigrant story. It’s perfect for people who want the historical immersion of all those American Girl books they read as a kid, but with a grown-up sophistication and suspense. If Newsies is your favorite musical, you’ll love this story of the less-gilded side of the Gilded Age.
This isn’t limited to just in-person vendor events! Try it on your social media platforms, or wherever you’re promoting your books. (…And if all of that info up there does sound like something you want in a book, you can get one here.)
Hype yourself up.
Because I’ve only got just the one published book, I needed to fill my table with more stuff. I had tote bags with bookish phrases on them. I had bookish stickers to suit every type of reader. I also pre-wrapped some “blind date with a book” bundles of other titles. And when folks would approach my table, I’d say a not-too-pushy hello and let them know about all the bundles and stickers and bags and, oh yeah, I also wrote a book and it’s kind of cool, but no worries if you don’t want it.
We were a few hours into the vendor event, and I needed a bathroom break. Lisa was there to shoo me away and mind the table. I was away for maybe three minutes, and when I came back, Lisa was handing someone a copy of my book and one of the tote bags.
“You’re hired!” I joked (because I’m barely making enough for me to get paid, much less hire an employee, any promise of employment is clearly a joke on principle). To which she replied, “Hey, tell them about your book first. Don’t bury it under all the other stuff.”
Many of us, especially women, are conditioned pretty early on that we shouldn’t make much of ourselves or our accomplishments. It was easier for Lisa to engage a reader because she could tell them that her friend wrote the book. When someone else does it, it’s an endorsement. When I do it, it’s braggy and self-aggrandizing.
Then, I remembered the beginning of Barbie, where Barbie was getting awards for accomplishments in journalism and literature, and I checked myself.
What many of us mistake for humility is actually low self-esteem. We avoid saying positive things about ourselves for fear of coming across as selfish or insensitive. The thing is, it’s not a binary thing. You can celebrate your own successes and be honest about the ups and downs along the way. You can declare how awesome it is that you did The Thing and be gracious in delivering the message.
A lot of people don’t even want to write a book. Maybe some folks think about doing it. And if they start writing, they might not ever finish it. And those who finish a manuscript may not ever get it published. The fact that I not only completed a manuscript but published it is a big deal. It took me a little longer (because kids and Covid and other responsibilities), but I got there. And I should be proud of that.
So yes, I did take Lisa’s advice for the rest of the vendor fair. I pitched my book to people as if a friend wrote it. I told everyone about my book before telling them about anything else I had on my table. And wouldn’t you know it? I sold some books.
You aren’t for everyone. And that’s okay.
In addition to being a recently published author, I’m also an actor. Every so often, I take the stage with my local theater group to bring wonderful stories to life. From Miss Scarlet in Clue to Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, I love performing. I even had a brief stint once upon a time as a character performer at Walt Disney World. It’s fun to pretend for a little while—leave everything on the stage, and leave myself behind.
I was surprised at how much performing I did at the vendor event. Instead of being a completely different character, though, I was… myself. And that was surprisingly hard for me.
If folks scoff at things my character does in the play, I shrug it off. They’re not disparaging me, they’re disparaging the person I’m playing. If people come up to my table at an event and look around, hear my pitch, and then give me a polite “maybe I’ll come back around” but never do, they’re not rejecting a character. They’re rejecting me and my creativity.
Here’s the thing: there’s not a single book out there that has appealed to every reader. Not a single, solitary, one. I, for one, can’t get into the ACOTAR series, but I really enjoyed the Outlander books (the first three, anyway; after that the wheels kind of fall off BUT THAT’S FOR ANOTHER BLOG). I understand on paper that my book won’t be something everyone will want to read.
That’s all well and good until you watch people look at your years of hard work bound up in a paperback cover, maybe even leaf through it, only to put it down with a “meh” and walk away. It feels weird to see people in real time say no to something you’ve worked hard for. And yet it happens all the time when you shout into the void for someone to buy your book.
When you don’t appeal to every single reader, take heart: no one else does either.
Give yourself time to decompress.
Maybe this is only true of those with neurodivergent brains (AuDHD checking in over here!), but it is draining to be yourself for hours on end. In most situations, you can let yourself drift into the background of conversations when you don’t feel talky, or you can take breaks.
During a vendor event, you have to be yourself. For hours. And not even just yourself, but the most winsome, authentic, engaging version of yourself you can be. (Don’t be a fake version of you, though. People pick up on inauthenticity.) You’re “on” for a very long time. And just like any device that’s left on for a while, you’ve got to recharge those batteries.
Try not to plan a big dinner out right after your first vendor event. Give yourself time to settle in at home, maybe stare at the ceiling for a few minutes (I’m not kidding; I did this and it helped me a lot). Let someone else do the cooking if you can. Don’t do any more work for the rest of the day. Breathe. Reset. Unless you’re an extroverted author, in which case, you might be riding high and are ready to host a party at your house right after or take a group fitness class or talk to more strangers or crash a wedding, or whatever it is you mythical social unicorns do. I wouldn’t know; I haven’t met a single extroverted author yet.
Get your payment stuff set up beforehand.
Some of you might be here looking for more practical advice, so this is me tacking it on the end. Set up all of the payment/transfer methods you can. I used CashApp, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle. I brought some petty cash to make change if anyone made a purchase with cash (they did). I also set up Square, which allows me to process credit cards on my phone.
And when I say “I set up Square,” I mean “I set up the app, my account, and even listed my items in my app, but then I didn’t set up tap-to-pay.” This is apparently a very easy thing to do on your phone, but I didn’t familiarize myself enough beforehand, so I was manually entering things into my tablet like a doofus. It didn’t lose any sales for me, but it was a clumsy way to do business during the day.
For the other methods, I had a little sign with all of the QR codes that folks could use to pay me. That worked just fine. For cash transactions, record them as they happen—a notes app or spreadsheet works, but I literally had a piece of notebook paper to use and that was just fine—so you remember how much to account for.
And at the end of the day…
…it’s the end of the day. Your experience may be very different from this. You might have successes and setbacks that aren’t at all like mine. The point is that you put yourself out there, you did the thing, and you should celebrate that. Take your own wins and losses and grow from them. And if you’ve got your own stories from your first vendor event, drop them in the comments! We’ll commiserate—and celebrate—together.
