I walk my dog, Zion, an energetic Schipperke, each day to keep him trim and fit and hopefully wear out some of the never-ending energy he has that sometimes makes him unbearable. Little did I know this daily habit would help me learn how to organize a book event.
On a Monday I walked past the Paradise Hills Public Library, a small branch part of the San Diego Public Library down the street from where my wife and I live, and decided now was the time to introduce myself to the branch manager. I'd been wanting to do this for a long time and for the life of me cannot fathom why I didn't do this sooner.
You see, once I became a published author I quickly learned the potential of participating in author events. Street fairs bring huge crowds, as do libraries. Being published is one step. Marketing you and your book is a whole new ball game. It didn't take long for me to realize seeing how my name is not ending with Grisham, Clancy, King, Meade, Rother,Matthews, Hilborne, and the like, well... to put it plain...why would anyone want to buy a book written by me?
Don't get me wrong! Because my name is not any of the above mentioned does not mean my book is not worth a reader's time. After all, many of the best and favorite books we read are from authors we never heard of. We bought their books because someone recommended the title, or we saw the book cover and title in a bookstore (new, used, even a thrift store), liked what we saw, read it and loved it! Besides, even the famous authors who are household names were once like me, which is to say not in the famous and household category as of yet anyway.
I learned right away my biggest supporters would be family and friends. Book lovers would come later, but better late than never, right? Fortunately I'd been talking about how I loved to write since I was fourteen, so 30 years later when my first book, the award-winning thriller The SANDMAN, was published I had a lot of support from the people I chewed their ears off about how I wanted to be a writer. Not just any writer a published writer. Family, friends from my personal life, friends from work, all supported me and helped me realize my dream. However, when interest waned it was up to me to market my book in order to keep the momentum rolling. After all, I spent so much time and effort doing what I loved it didn't make sense for me to sit behind my desk and do nothing.
After my second signing at Bay Books in Coronado, CA, I knew I had to do something. So I attended book events at street fairs and libraries. It soon became obvious how these large events drew crowds. My publisher at Navigator Books told me to attend as many as I could because if you could get half a dozen or more authors to attend an event, the chances of drawing a larger crowd were greater than if you alone were the sole author expected to be seen and heard.
But let me keep things in perspective for you. Any event is a hit-and-miss. I've been in retail for twenty-five years and do a lot of marketing for products. Even when we plan and execute everything right the crowds don't necessarily come. But the exposure for what you do and are trying to sell is still worth its weight in gold. Take for instance the Reader's & Writer's Event I organized with the help of branch manager Shaun Briley at the Paradise Hills Public Library in San Diego, CA. The library created a flyer with the pictures and bio of 13 authors (me included) who would be in attendance of the event scheduled for September 21, 2013. This flyer was located in every library branch associated with the San Diego Public Library for a full month. That means our name and picture and book(s) were exposed in high-profile buildings where hundreds of people visit each day. Have you ever walked past something that caught your eye, didn't buy it or pay too much attention to it, but some time later you saw it again, only this time you stopped walking, went over to the bookshelf and reached for the book that caught your eye some time earlier? Next thing you know you read the back cover, liked it, bought it, and took it home to read it.
This is the kind of exposure that is worth its weight in gold. For instance, yesterday one of the guests visiting the event listened to my pitch about my books. Authors love talking about our books. Anyway, she said, "I've heard of your name before, but don't remember where?" Well, this person bought a copy of my latest book, 'Who's Minding the Store?' It's a comedy taking place in a retail store. I have no doubt she bought a copy of my book because she'd heard of my name somewhere before, could not remember where, but this time grew more interested and actually wanted my book. So she bought it!
This is what I mean by the power of exposure. You may not sell a lot of copies of your book at these events, but the exposure will pay off in the long run, and people will applaud you for going to the length of making things happen for you.
To get back to how I arranged the book event. Shaun Briley, the branch manager, shook my hand, listened to me explain how I am an author and wanted to know if the library would be willing to host an author event here. It so happens this little library has a great children's turnout, but not so much adult turnout. Shaun was looking to improve adult participation and we both agreed an author event would do precisely that. We arranged for a meeting the following Monday, but which time we would agree on a pre-determined date for the event and how many authors would participate.
This is where the tricky part could have been had I not participated in a number of street fairs and library events in the past (I've been published since 2009). When you go to these events it's important to make friends with other authors. Get their business cards, ask them to remember you for other events they are part of so you can participate. Get your books entered in contests. The SANDMAN was entered in the 2009 Military Writer's Society of America's Book Awards and placed 1st Runner-Up for Best Fiction! Now I can promote myself as an award-winning author.
In any case, I asked my publisher, Maria Edwards at Navigator-Books in San Diego, and Karla Olson with San Diego Read Local, to get me in contact with their list of local authors who would be interested in attending an event with the Paradise Hills branch library. Both thought I should reach out to the authors I'd already met first, and if needed, they could forward my request later. Their reasoning was that both knew I'd attended enough events that we probably already knew the same authors who want to participate.
They were right!
I got an overwhelming 13 authors to commit participation, and when I met with Shaun the following Monday in late July 2013 I was ecstatic. I felt to be a credible author who in fact could not only help promote myself, but genuinely help the library improve adult participation. Some of the authors in attendance had huge credits to their names. For example, Caitlin Rother is a New York Times Bestselling author and Pulitzer Price Nominee for Journalism. Thomas K Matthews is a Top 100 Bestselling author with Amazon. Jenny Hilborne is a Bestselling author with amazon. Terry Ambrose's books have been praised by bestselling authors, Sarah Bates' book was accepted and is on display in the Arlington National Cemetery Bookstore. Kimberly O'Hara writes children books. Shari Lynn Brown writes the Mystery of M series. Teresa Burrell is a lawyer, advocate, and successful author. Brae Wyckoff is promoting an epic fantasy adventure trilogy beginning with The Orb of Truth. Jeff Edwards displayed his Navy Thriller books that won Clive Cussler Admiral Awards twice! And Paul R De Lancey displayed his hilarious books from the Lords of Fun series. And then there was me. I had the privilege of setting my table alongside these talented authors with my books on display. Sounds like a pretty good list of authors in attendance, doesn't it. Well, I got there names from the business cards I'd collected, and when I reached out to them some of the authors I know said they would ask other authors they knew, who in turn did the same. Before I knew it I had the list of authors willing to spend three hours of their day with us for this event.
Shaun and I agreed we needed time to market and promote this event. It was late July 2013, so we agreed September 21, 2013 from 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM would be a perfect time. This way we had over a month to promote the event. Two weeks later the library had created a flyer announcing the event. You can view it on my facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/WhosMindingTheStore?ref=hl. The back of the flyer had pictures of each author with their bio and books. We also donated a copy of our books to be put on display a month prior to the event to help generate excitement inside the library.
Then I asked each author to please reach out to our family, friends, and readers using facebook, twitter, google, tumblr, and anything else they could think of. I visited the local businesses in the area. A grocery store, restaurants, a retirement community, three churches, a boxing gym, a healthcare center, all of which willing accepted a flyer to be put on display in their building. These locations were within two miles of the library and high-profile places, too. Even the elementary school down the street from the library agreed to display the flyer.
Parking was a bit of a concern. The library was small, so I visited the St. Timothy Lutheran Church across the street and they graciously allowed us to display on the flyer,additional parking is available at the St. Timothy Lutheran Church. Pretty cool, huh? The library being part of the San Diego Public Library got maximum exposure on the library's website main branch, two thousand emails were sent to persons connected with the library, and because the library has resources I don't, well, their help was instrumental in letting the public know what we were hosting on Sept 21, 2013.
Each author spent the next month tweeting and facebooking and reaching out to connections about the event too. My son said, "If just three persons from each of you visit the library that's 39 people alone." I thought that sounded good, too. Shaun told me he felt we'd done all we could, and so did I. As I pointed out earlier, these type events can be hit-and-miss even when you do everything right. The main thing for all of us was exposure. Letting people know what we were doing. I'm sure person's who did not come read about the event the next day on facebook and wish they had come to visit. I'll even bet they went to the bookstore and ordered a copy of a book from one of the authors, or plan to in the near future. As I said, exposure was the main thing here. Yes, we all want to sell copies of our books. We want a copy in every household. We want readers to write reviews of our books on amazon. We want them to write comments about our books on our websites and on facebook and twitter. And by participating in this type of event with so many authors was a good way of doing this.
In retrospect, you have to build your network. Get names of authors who want to attend these type events. Give them plenty of time to schedule and make arrangements with work. Remember, life intrudes and sometimes an author may have to back out for personal reasons. Have a list of authors ready to stand in place of those who may cancel, but get strong commitments from those willing to attend. Everyone must do their part. That means reach out to your network. Talk about the event on facebook, twitter, and other free online sites. Ask radio stations and local news networks if they will do a segment about the event. I personally was not able to get a response in this area, but the library did! I posted the websites and short bio of each author on my own facebook author page to generate excitement. And then I continued talking about it to people I know. Fortunately, the feedback was great. Even my neighbor across the street, Eddie, brought his daughter to visit. I thought that was great!
Take a look at my facebook pages and see pictures I posted about the event. I kept my table display simple and small, and that was effective. I learned from Terry Ambrose the importance of having a good poster of your book, hence the enlarged picture of my back cover on my table display. Caitlin Rother had so many books in print I had to commit a large table for her, and I find this inspirational because I plan on having that many books published in my lifetime, and more, too. That's another thing to talk about. We used the library tables for consistency in our display, but they only had six. We needed to share tables, but I brought my three 4 x 2 tables just in case, and it turned out we needed them. A local vendor agreed to donate coffee and pastries, and that was very nice. At first we tried to see about getting a local restaurant to donate higher level of food and drink, but city health codes prevented that. The coffee and pastries sufficed well enough. I also had three tablecloths for the ones I used, but not enough for all. Teresa Burrell said she had plenty of matching tablecloths, but I didn't think about asking anyone. Consistency is a good thing when having your books on display with so many authors, so next time I'll know better. But in the pictures I think you'll find it turned out well.
Thomas K Matthews had some good feedback about the event. Because things are changing right before our very eyes we all appreciate these events much more. You see, not all libraries and bookstores hold these type of events. I've reached out to some with no help or call back whatsoever. Can't put my finger on why, but that's the way things are turning out. Many people are buying online instead of through bookstores, and I get that's here to stay. But you can also order your books through a bookstore and save on the price of shipping when you pick up your copy in a bookstore. That's a $3.98 savings on shipping charges and you end up supporting your local bookstore in the process.
Lastly, make sure you bring a pen to sign copies of the book you sell. After all the planning and organizing I did when I sold a copy of 'Who's Minding the Store?' I reached for my pen and realized I'd forgotten to bring it. Fortunately, Jeff Edwards recognized the look on my face and loaned me his. I thought, we have editors to help make our books better, and we have each other to loan pens when the need arises.
If any of you have questions or need more information about how I made this event come to life, with the help of Shaun Briley at the San Diego Public Library, please feel free to reach out to me at lucerobooks@gmail.com, or on facebook and twitter. Should you buy a copy of our books, please don't forget to write a review. We appreciate the feedback.
Keep on reading!
David
www.LuceroBooks.com
https://www.facebook.com/WhosMindingTheStore?ref=hl
