Writing books may be the hardest part of being an author, but actually selling books is even harder. I have links to all my books right here on my website, and other places online. Earlier this month, some friends and I got together to try selling our books in person at a live event. 

Some months ago my critique group (me and three other women who have been meeting regularly for over eight years now) decided to formalize our group with a name and a theme. We’ve always supported each other in our writing, brainstorming, and editing processes, and we decided to expand that support to the marketing side of things. None of us are marketers (we’re authors, gosh darn it, not sales people), but we went with the idea that four are better than one. 

We gave ourselves a name, 4 the Love of Reading, to promote a love of writing, reading, and all things bookish to our local community. So for our first foray into said community, we rented a vendor booth at the local county fair. 

Did we sell a lot of books? No, actually. People don’t come to a county fair planning to spend money on anything other than food, really – and they’re generally not thinking about books or reading at all. We knew that going in, though. We chose the county fair because it was an inexpensive, low-pressure way for us to try out this in-person book selling thing. 

We had some great chats with people, gave away a lot of free bookmarks, and survived the sweltering heat of the first few days of the fair. Our booth setup got tons of compliments – and a blue ribbon for best vendor display! 

We’ll probably do another event soon – like a Christmas fair, or a book fair. I enjoyed this experiment, and even though I didn’t sell lots of books, I’m glad we did it. Here’s to the next event and lots of book sales! 

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