Most of us have sold something, and many of us have sold something in person. When the face-to-face sale is something we’ve created, it falls into a special category. I have friends who craft objects from wood, metal, and cloth. If your creation grew up across years of work, though, you may feel differently about selling your book.
This is the task you’re asking a bookstore owner to complete. Your paperback, in a reader’s hands at checkout, toting up the sale and finding a bag if needed. I performed it for the first time over the last two weekends. I’d sold books before, but those of other authors. Sell your own book in person when you want to learn how to love your creation.
At Austin’s Central Library, hundreds of customers walked by or stopped at the 36 inches of bookstand where I sold. The primary mission was to pitch, because when a reader slows, you must engage them to place a book in their hands. “Could I encourage you to take Anna’s story home?” You must always ask for the sale, in one way or another, if you want to earn something being an author.
Library as sales space
We supported one another, author-to-author, during the seven hours of sales time. The library created a green room for us to enjoy a box lunch in, and some authors took theirs out to the marketplace. You won’t sell much when there’s nobody to operate the Square checkout app and hand over the goods. For everyone of those hours, you’re waiting for that reader to slow their pace a little.
“Do you read historical fiction?” soon became “Do you enjoy historical fiction?” If the answer was a nod, or even more, the spiel unfolded. “This one is set at the start of the 20th century. Anna is an immigrant housekeeper who falls in love with a priest at the rectory. Then they have a child together.” The trouble in the story is set out in under 20 seconds.
We put our stories out there because we wanted to send them home with readers. Everyone at the Greater Austin Book Fest was devoted to books. Not that they don’t enjoy shows, or games, but books had a special lure in their lives. You don’t drive downtown and find a spot to park on a whim. One of my allies had to park two blocks away. The Fest was popular.
Making a library pay you
Libraries play a major role in the life of a book’s sales. Not only do library sales earn royalties, they can help an author earn out an advance. Libraries pay hundreds of dollars per copy, sometimes, because it will be borrowed instead of purchased over and over. The idea of libraries stealing sales is shortsighted. A library earns you a reader, and so the rest of your books benefit if they liked the one they borrow. I have an audiobook of Stealing Home at Austin’s library, but soon there will be copies of Sins of Liberty. If you want to read Stealing Home, you will be buying a copy. If the line gets long to listen, you may want to buy the audiobook, too.
I felt joy in being an invited author at my first book festival. You should consider that feeling when you’re laboring over your book. Complete it and publish it, and you could also stand behind a table with your creation of many years’ work. Selling one is a moment that’s hard to match in any other way. It was the equal to the moment on the stage when applause rained over us as an act ended. Cast yourself in that role. You have nailed the first audition by becoming an author. Finish that book, then find a stage to present it.
