The Path of the Bookseller

Here’s a very good piece about off-site events, and managing the author’s expectations of them, courtesy of the Book Publicity Blog.

We did a long book festival a few months back, running over two weeks and having about a dozen author events. We also ran a mini-store in a room set up at the main venue. It was pretty much a mess.

The people who run the venue selected the books. Some community members found some of the books offensive (I don’t know which or why). This was. of course, perceived to be our fault.

We also had to set up in an inconvenient location, taking over the eating area of a specialized fast-food joint with a dedicated clientele. This meant that a lot of the people in the sale space were annoyed, and very few were actually there for the books.

We got an insane number of books, both for the authors and of other things that someone assumed that o9ur audiences would devour. (I doubt that we sold more than a handful of copies of Chanukah Bugs from the entire bookcase of them that we had.)

We weren’t connected to our computer systems, which meant that we had to do credit card sales by hand, and that we couldn’t use our usual search systems. I did, fairly quickly, figure out a work-around: I brought in my little Asus Eee laptop and got on the venue’s WiFi (so painfully slow that I would have done better copying the contents of the data packets down by hand and walking them over to the store three miles away). With this, I was able to hunt down the books for people and, if we had them in the stores,  have the next person coming over bring them with them. The customers promised to purchase them when next they returned tio the venue. None ever did.

And then there were the volunteers, a bevy of mostly cheerful women (no men), mostly with a can-do, take-charge attitude. Their enthusiasm was welcome, but they were not all that much of a help. While we were setting up the tables and bookscases, they dove into the book boxes and began unpacking, flinging books hither and yon with a filing system akin to throwing darts in a tornado. We were unable to convince them that we, who did this for a living, actually  had good methods for effectively and efficiently getting books out of boxes and onto the tables, in ways that might enable people to actually find and buy them. They also weren’t trained or authorized to ring up sales. So they mostly stood or sat around, and, when asked questions, pointed customers toward us.

When I got there the first day, it was quite obvious that the representative of the venue was in charge and had the final say on everything. It was also quite evident that the ueber-manager for all our area stores, who was also there, was solely in charge. And the same was true of the area group sales czar, who was similarly giving orders. The workers, seeing this develop, eventually just huddled in a corner and waited until all were gone, so we could put the books in a reasonable order and sweep the shredded cat fur off the floor.

I don’t know how many books we had — perhaps a thousand different titles. I would be amazed if we sold any copies of any more than a hundred of them. Three months later, we’re still boxing books up and shipping them back to the publishers. I sympathize with them, as they paid the shipping both ways.

The authors, though, were uniformly gracious, and working with them was a pleasure. They had the art of autographing down pat, each in a slightly different way. Most sat at a table and signed. One, however, for whom there was more of a reception, worked the crowd, walking around, greeting people, and signing books wherever the people were. All were fairly well-known and sold well in their field, which was a good thing for us. In my experience, almost all of the star authors with whom I have dealt have been a joy to work with. It’s the ones who are new to the game and have small audiences that tend to have delusions of grandeur and attitude jets set on stun.

I’ve had some experience from the other end, too, having done a nationwide book and performance tour for Surprise Me With Beauty in 2002. I became a bookseller some months later (having found myself with a new career in a new town, partially as a result ofthe tour), and now can kick myself for some of the clumsy presumptions that I made. But it made me more aware of how authors might see things when they come through on tours. I hope I’ve been able to make things easier for them, and, not incidentally, to help them get more sales.

What you need to know about off-site book sales « The Book Publicity Blog.