Author Vending Lessons After One Year

So going to BookCon was a heck of an ordeal, as I mentioned previously. I have never been a vendor at an event where I had to fly in, and it of course meant paring down all of my vending essentials down to the bare minimum. What can I fit in a carry-on? How do I get my books there? What do I absolutely need, and what do I not need? Check out my video below for some of the packing decisions I had to make.)

Now it’s been a month, and in the meantime we’ve traveled out of town again for a completely unrelated event. Two trips in one month mean laundry is a thing. I’m still working on book deadlines, and the kitties are very needy. I’m also left with the daunting task of finding all the things I used for BookCon, restocking them, and then reorganizing them for a new event. A kind author friend shipped my remaining books back for me from New York (thank you, Amber!) I was completely out of all my book goodies: magnets, postcards — even bookmarks! So I had to do a refresh order from VistaPrint (fortunately taking advantage of one of their big sales!) and get it all in before our next event on the 4th of July.

The 4th of July Family Fest had its first year last year, and it was the first event where I actually did really well. I was unexpectedly interviewed on the radio by a book lover, and I had a number of readers come out just to see what I had available. I was over the moon, as you can expect, and so I’m making sure I’ve got plenty of stock this year and plenty of copies of Stolen too. I met some of my biggest fans last year at this event, and I’m curious to find out who I’ll meet this time around. It’s always a great experience going to local festivals, and this one isn’t the smallest we’ve gone to, but it’s not BookCon size either. Regardless of what size it is though, I always try to be prepared!

In a couple of months I’ll be prepping for another big book festival of BookCon size, the Decatur Book Festival, which is the largest indie book festival in the country. There I’ll be stocking for not just one, but two booths! Oh boy. Some lessons I’ve learned from BookCon is to always bring an extra stamp pad (mine dried out, but it lasted me all last year!), and bring plenty of extra pens for all colors of paper. I have silver sharpies for The She-Wolf of Kanta and I have my fine-liners for Stolen. I also learned to bring plenty of swag beforehand. I failed to do a refresh before BookCon and was wiped out almost completely.

I’ve learned a lot since year one of vending as an author, but I’m still learning in year two, and I expect to be learning for many years to come! I feel far more comfortable and more experienced in how to do these things now, but I still probably stress out way more than I need to (hence this blog post haha).

I’m hoping to do more posts like this one, talking about what I’ve learned vending as an author, discussing what I could have done differently, and figuring out how to always improve my methods. Would you be interested in hearing more about this process? What topics would you like to learn about? Leave your comments below!