8 Reasons Authors Should Sell Books at In-Person Events

Guest Post by Dylan West

For authors struggling to sell a single book on Amazon in a whole month: how would you like to sell 10 to 20 of them in a single day? When you table up at a local sales event, that’s not hard to do. That’s just one reason to vend at regular, local events. Here are some more:

1. Brand awareness

if you hang a big, clear, beautifully designed banner at your table, you let passersby know that your business exists. Because I table up at a decent-sized event each Saturday, over 50,000 people see my books and banner every year.

2. Fan building

When shoppers walk by or visit my table, people take actions like:

Check out my books and ask me questions
Buy my books or sign up for my newsletter (often both)
Buy the related merchandise. If they buy my t-shirt, they may wear it, providing free advertising
Give me donations (sometimes large ones)

In-person events are the best way to increase word of mouth and gain further opportunities. Some people will:

Tell other passersby to check out my books and rave about how good they are – this happens to me quite a bit, and it’s driven lots of sales 🙂
Tell friends about my books. Some may even buy my book as a gift or haul their friend over to my table
Invite me to some other sales event or speaking engagement. One person invited me to speak at a local college, which paid me a $100 speaking fee and bought 3 of my books to display at the front of their campus library!

Seeing you in person will make people remember:

To finish the book they bought from me last year
To buy more books because they loved the first one
To sign up for my newsletter or read the newsletter articles I’ve been sending them
That my books exist – that’s a huge thing. If someone buys a book from you a few years ago, it’s easy for them to forget about you if they didn’t sub to your newsletter

3. Sales Practice

Nothing makes you better at sales than getting hundreds of sales opportunities each month. Each shopper that stops is a live-fire practice session.

4. Steady cash flow

The money I make at my sales events funds my next book. I don’t have to pay anything out of pocket after my initial investment. I use sales earnings to pay for book cover art, ISBNs, formatting, software, copyright filings, business licenses, author copies, web hosting, domain names, paid ads, and a lot more I’m forgetting.

5. Newsletter building

The best way to gain new newsletter subscribers is to collect emails from people who just bought your book(s). They are more likely to open and read your emails than people who signed up for a free novella and then unsubbed right after.

6. Fun

I could go on for hours about all the wacky and funny things I’ve experienced at farmers markets and comic cons while vending. I get to meet neat people, pet cute doggies, crack lots of corny jokes, hear corny jokes in return, see really interesting performers, hear live music, and have the thrill of making big sales.

And I have fans hunting me down at events when they learn that my newest book just came out!

7. Identity

Nothing reminds you that you are, in fact, a published author like going to regular sales events. Many indies who published a book long ago have almost forgotten that they are a published author and that they should be selling their books.

Going to in-person events makes your authorship more real than if you lob an e-book onto Amazon and do nothing more.

8. Reviews

You will get more reviews for your books if you table up at sales events. Especially if you remember to ask shoppers to leave a review!

Now that I’ve persuaded you to table up at local events, let me share some tips for how to run them so you actually sell books – based on my years of experience!

Read Part 2: How to Set up an Author Table for Maximum Book Sales

About Dylan West

Dylan West writes faith-based, young adult science fiction and fantasy novels. He is a Jesus lover, web and video game developer, former Navy nuclear operator, foreign language nut, and a nut in general.

While other people are busy thinking normal thoughts, he’s crafting corny jokes. Dylan lives in Chesapeake, VA, with his wife and daughter.

Please sign up for his newsletter to get the geekiest science research tidbits that go into the making of his books: https://dylanwestauthor.com/.

Discover more from Creative Cornerstones

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.