My summer book tour through the Midwest gained me a lot of things. Money. New fans. And a fresh perspective on how to sell books at live events. After three years and dozens of events, I am now able to look back with more experienced eyes on my early days and identify the things I wish I’d known when I dipped my toe into the exciting ocean that is in-person sales.
With more and more book festivals and other bookish events emerging every year, here are five things for new authors to consider when thinking about how to sell books at live events.
This article is based on the “5 on Friday” reel “Unsolicited Advice on How to Sell Books at Live Events” that originally appeared on IG Live. Watch the video on Instagram
October 2021 (left) vs September 2024 (right). Scroll to see the full images.
Five Ways to Prepare for Your First Live Book Selling Event
1) Have an Eye-Catching Cover
A good cover is always important, and live events are no exception. People have a lot of ground to cover, and they aren’t going to stop and talk to everyone. You may only get a second or two of visual evaluation from each person. Your covers, which should be the focal point of your table, need to communicate a lot at a single glance.
That being said, you don’t have to explain everything about the book on your cover. In fact, the prevailing wisdom is your cover shouldn’t depict literal scenes from the book. Essentially, a book cover should do convey two things:
- Genre. The best way to make sure your book conveys your genre is to check your comp titles on Amazon.
- Aesthetic or Emotion. How are people going to feel while they read your book? Are they going to feel warm and fuzzy? Tense? Thrilled? All of that can be communicated through visual design.
By having a tailored to market cover, you are helping people use the two seconds they look over your booth self-select in or out. People who aren’t interested will keep walking without breaking stride. Others will slow down and linger to get a better look, at which point you should greet them and engage in conversation. And sometimes, people will come up to you and say, “I saw you from across the room and I know this is for me.”
Does that sound too good to be true? It’s not. It’s happened to me on multiple occasions. My covers did so much of the heavy lifting all I had to was smile, make some small talk, give a quick pitch (more on that later), and swipe their credit card.
2) Make Your Table Inviting
Another reason people don’t know how to sell books at live events is they think that they need a ton of books published before they can participate. That’s not true. Yes, you are unlikely to cover the table fees for a major convention off the proceeds of just one book. However, libraries, community centers, and other not-for-profit groups hold smaller book or craft fairs for modest or no fee to the vendors. Check with your local chamber of commerce or library branch to see what’s available in your area.
Once you chose an event, what should you have for your table?
General Presentation and Operation Items
- Tablecloth. Almost every event I’ve been to has required me to provide a table cover. Some have even stated that it must be black. You can buy a different color if you want, but you should keep at least one black one as well.
- Payment Processor and Cashbox. Square is still the gold standard for payment processing at these events. You can get the swiper to hook into your phone, or with tap to pay now enabled for most if not all cell phones, you may not even need that anymore. As with all festivals, cash is still king, so make sure you have at least $100 in small bills to make change.
- Pens. This should really go without saying, but you’d be surprised how often someone at the booth next to me asks to borrow a pen. This isn’t required, but I use colored ones that I coordinated to the book cover, just for a little extra personality.
Your Book(s)
Reasonable people can disagree about the best way to display your books, so I will give you what has worked for me.
I have found five to be the magic number of copies per book to have on the table. Three I stack up, and then place a stand on top to display the forth one. The fifth one I lay in front of the display for people to pick up. I may bring more copies and replenish depending on several factors (size of the event, if I’m traveling, etc). But unless I’m down to my last four books or less, I don’t drop below five on the table.
Swag
It might sound easy to create good swag. After all, doesn’t love free stuff? But there’s a subtle art to having good swag, and while I’m by no means a master, here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- Simple, high-quality items are best. When I got into my first bigger book event, I thought I’d make a splash with some super fancy swag, and I created custom mini-notebooks. They were on the expensive side, but I figured it would be worth it because everyone would love them and they would be the talk of the convention. Instead, when I offered a notebook to someone, they looked horrified at the idea of taking it for free. It was so nice that I literally couldn’t give it away. Since then I have scaled back to bookmarks with tassels and charms. I still get the comment that they are too nice to be free, but I don’t mind.
- Stand out in the crowd (or rather, the pile). Event attendees get bombarded by swag, and a lot of it is destined for the trash. A simple cardboard bookmark is all to easy to toss. Something with a little hardware–and pretty hardware at that–is a lot more difficult to part with.
- Include your contact info. Ultimately, this is the reason why I don’t worry about parting with “too nice” bookmarks for free–because each one has a QR code to my website on it. It’s a pretty bookmarks, but it’s also a business card that’s less likely to get thrown away. Because of the higher quality of the item, the personal who took it usually spent at least a couple of minutes chatting with me first, so the odds of them remembering me are higher as well.
- Customize. People love limited editions. Whenever possible and appropriate, I customize my bookmarks with different charms for each event I go to. For the Midwest tour I used leaf charms. For the last RAVE event (held in Las Vegas), I had an enamel diamond with the suit symbols from playing cards. In each case I only had a certain number, and once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Signage
A lot of authors use vertical pop-up banners that you can customize and purchase on Vistaprint. These work best for big events where you have the space and might need something larger to pull eyeballs onto your booth. However, not every venue has space to accommodate the large signs, and if you’re at an outdoor event they do not do well in the wind. Believe me.
An alternative to the large sign is a smaller retractable table sign that you set up next to or behind your books on the table itself. This may work if you only have a few books, but eventually you are going to want to use every inch of your table for your published works. If you’re at a half-table, space is also a factor.
Personally I suggest going with a customized fabric table runner with your author name and tagline (if you have one). It’s portable, cost-effective, and you will always have space to use it no matter how many books you’re selling or what size table/event you’re at. It may not be the flashiest thing in the room, but it the longest lasting and most useful sign for the cost.
A Note on Price Lists
The reason I don’t display my prices at my table is, like everything in this article, based on experience. When I did have a price list displayed, I found that people would use their two-second scan of my table focusing on that before they would even look at my books. I don’t have a discrete set of numbers for how many potential sales it cost me, but I also doubt it brought in any sales that I wouldn’t have made anyway.
In the end, there seems to be more to lose than to gain by displaying prices, so I have chosen not to. If people are interested enough in the book after I’ve pitched them (again, more on that is coming), they will ask how much it is. The price doesn’t change whether its on a sign or coming from my mouth, but because they’ve found value in what I’ve pitched them, the chances of making a sale are a lot higher than when they have nothing to go on but number on a sign.
3) How to Handle Yourself while Selling Books at a Live Event
Of all the aspects of how to sell books at live events, this is the one that made me the most nervous. I’m not a sales person. I’d hazard to guess that most fiction writers aren’t. So what do you do at a live event? Do you just stand back and wait for people to come talk to you? Do you call out to people and get them to come over? And oh God, what if the whole event passes and you don’t sell a single book?
Let’s get something out of the way first: You’re not gonna get it exactly right the first time. And that’s okay. Like writing, and like everything, learning how to sell books at live events successfully takes practice. You’ll be amazed how much you’re approach will change from just the start of your first event to the end of it. By the time you’ve done a year’s worth of events, you won’t believe how far you’ve come.
Start Small
But, because this is about your first event, it’s important to start small, particularly when it comes to the size of the event you chose for your maiden voyage. You’re not going to want to dive into a Comic Con first thing. You may even hold off on some of the bigger book festivals. Instead, see if there are any modest book festivals or craft markets in your city or region. You could also reach out to local bookstores and see if they would be open to hosting a signing event for you. You may only have a few people approach you, and that’s okay. The point is to simply get comfortable in the space of live selling.
Be Friendly
Writers are reclusive creatures. We aren’t used to being on display, and when someone approaches you to get more information about your work, it’s natural to feel a little nervous. Three years in and I still get butterflies occasionally. It helps to remember that, when someone approaches your table, they aren’t there to administer a test. Something about your work spoke to them. Now, you speak to them. You don’t have to be super slick. Just be yourself and let the conversation flow. This may be challenging in the beginning, but it will get easier.
What Do I Say?
Unlike online sales, live events provide the benefit of being able to read people’s body language as they do their two-second scan. By the end of the your first day, you will be able to spot the signs of an interested customer. They’ll slow down a little because they’re checking your covers or signage. They may even make eye contact with you.
If you see these signs, that’s your cue to introduce yourself. There’s a lot of ways you can handle this, but my favorite is something along the lines of, “Hi! Do you read a lot of [insert your main genre here]?” For me, it’s fantasy. If the answer is anything approaching positive, including “no, but I’m interested in maybe starting to read more of it,” that’s a further opening to talk about the book.
If it’s a hard no, I may ask them about what they do read to see if there’s any genre overlap I can pivot to (mystery, romance, dark humor, etc). Or I may simply make a little small talk and bid them good day. You’re going to get nos, and that’s fine. Even so, it’s important to stay engaged and be interested in the people you’re talking to, whether or not you think you can make a sale. After all, you chose to do this event instead of staying home and selling books online, and it’s likely because you not only want to sell your books, but connect with potential fans. Which is great, because that’s what they’re there too. They want to find a new book to fall in love with. There’s no reason that can’t be yours.
4) Perfect and Practice Your Pitch
I told you I’d get to it eventually.
Like the rest of your in-person sales game, your pitch probably isn’t going to be perfect out of the gate. It is going to improve and evolve over time, and the more you practice, the faster that evolution will happen.
As with covers, there are loads of resources out there about what makes a good pitch. Personally, I shape mine around three things:
- The main character
- The complicating event
- The love interest
For example, a pitch for Death by Miss Adventure might sound something like this:
“Death by Miss Adventure is about a woman who kills bad guys by turning herself into a ghost and making their deaths look like weird accidents. But then she’s accused of a murder she didn’t commit, and in order to clear her name, she is magically bound to an investigator who is British, surly, and powerful, sort of Draco Malfoy meets Mr. Darcy. He definitely thinks she’s guilty and would rather just punish her than waste time debunking her lies. But of course, as they get sucked deeper into the investigation, things get more complicated, both with the case and with each other.”
When spoken, this pitch takes about 30 seconds, and as you can see, it’s not super polished. That’s on purpose. This isn’t a TED Talk. I’m not giving a presentation, I’m talking to a person. If they laugh or interject something, I don’t want to be so caught up in my recitation that I can’t respond to them. The key is to give enough information to make them want to know what happens next, and even so they can kind of maybe guess what’s coming, but not so much that they know the whole story.
Special Note: It took me eight months of events selling that before before I came up with the Mr. Darcy-Draco Malfoy comparison. Now, when I deliver that line, I can physically see the interest register in the person’s face. Those people almost all bought at least the first book, if not the first two. It is an iterative process, and it can take time, but when you hit it, you know.
Pitching and Your Target Audience
As with any kind of selling, pitching in person also benefits if you know your target audience, and that can vary per book. For Death by Miss Adventure, it’s women over 25. For Dead Mall, it’s largely teens age 13-18 and men over 35 (sounds like a weird combination of ages, but if you read the book I think it does actually make sense). Knowing that helps me steer anyone who approaches my table toward the thing that they are most likely to enjoy.
And remember: If you get lost, nervous, or randomly blank out in the middle of your pitch, it’s okay. I’ve done it more times than I can count, and no one ever minded. They’re already listening to you, so slow down, take your time. You know your book, you know what the important features are, and most importantly, you know that they’re gonna love it.
5) Promote Special Pricing
Pricing is a complex issue that is going to vary greatly depending on region, genre, time of year, and so on. But there is one thing that I was taught at a seminar that, since putting into practice has been a gamechanger for my live sales, so I’m going to share that here with you.
Offering bundle prices (i.e. a discount for buying more than one book at a time) may seem like a no-brainer, but it has made more of a difference than you can imagine. Here’s how the flow usually goes:
A person comes up to my table. I say hello and ask them an introductory question. If they respond well, I pitch them on my book. If they’re interested (because I don’t put prices on my table), they’ll ask how much for the first book.
“Fifteen for one, or two for twenty-five,” is my response.
Not kidding–95% of the time, they say, “Sure.” That’s a 66% increase in sales. With tax included and no shipping, it works out to be a much better deal that even Amazon. Plus it’s signed by the author, and don’t forget that free bookmark. They’re one more book into the series, and you have a little bit more money in your register. Everyone wins. And it’s another reason why I’d suggest waiting until you have multiple books written before considering bigger events. The better bundles you can offer, the more likely you are to be able to cover your expenses.
Ready to Get Out There?
I hope this article has made you feel a little more secure about how to sell books at live events. You’ve already got a dynamite cover, I’m sure, so that’s step one already done. Deciding on swag and ordering your signage will be next. If you have more than one book, develop a bundle pricing mode. Write a pitch and run through a few times.
And then…breath, and let it go. Whatever happens, you’ll have made it through your first live event! That’s an experience from which you will learn so much more than this article, even as long as it is, could ever teach you.
And above all, don’t forget to have fun!
