Planetcomicon Wrap-up

I was present with 13 authors this weekend.  All of whom have either been that way for several years, or are working currently for a publishing company.  I gleaned information from them at a speed which was frankly astonishing.  

First and foremost, I learned about the minutia of selling books.  There’s a gamesmanship which is necessary.  It’s not evil, nor is it in any way ‘used car salesman’ style tactics.  It’s simply understanding how human beings work.  

Did you know that it’s best to make your book stack look like someone has already taken the top copy off?  It is glaringly obvious when the reason is given, but I was completely blindsided by it.  No one enjoys being the first at anything.  Just like the last of something is hardest to sell, the first of something is equally difficult.  Alleviating that concern in the mind of patrons is a huge starting point.

How about this one: It’s best to stack the books in varying patterns.  A ziggurat style, a playful stair step, a fiendishly clever book blossom.  Seriously, I’m not kidding.  For the longest time, even having worked in a bookstore, I had thought it was all about stacking the books in a nice, orderly pile.  Just one solid thump, and there’s your stack of merchandise.  Not so, not so in the slightest.

Another to log in the obvious in hind-sight category: Corners are king.  It makes sense, once you break it down.  Corners occupy two separate avenues of sight simultaneously.  So, when a prospective reader is ambling down the thoroughfare of the convention, putting the book on the corner allows for that prospective reader to be coming or going in two separate directions.  In a convention setting, there are only three realistic ways to walk around the book: either side or the front.  The rear is adjacent to another booth, and is impassable terrain.  By putting books on the corner, you’ve gone from 33% of potential traffic to 66% of potential traffic.  I can attest that the corner stacks sold, and they sold well, the whole convention. 

I learned that books which don’t sell at the convention (in a multi-author situation such as I had encountered), require a deliberative choice as to their final destination.  Some of the men and women who were in attendance flew in from across the country.  The books had to be shipped from their home location, to the convention.  There’s a cost in doing so.  If they don’t sell that particular book, then they actually have to pay to ship the item back.  With a box of books (a whole pallet full), you’re looking at thirty plus a box.  If a box only has ten or fifteen books in it, then it’s two a book, best case scenario.  Unless you self publish, the profit margins for both the publisher and the author are not enormous.  

One author barely managed to scratch the surface of his trilogy.  His singleton books sold fantastically, but he was left with thirty-someodd books leftover.  Those have now been shipped twice, and any profit that the publisher would have (being responsible for the shipping cost), are gone.  Those books have become, at best, profit neutral.  If they go to a second convention, and don’t sell out there, or even worse if they go to the authors hometown and then have to be shipped out again?  It could end up costing the publisher money to’ve printed those copies of the book.

There are also little tidbits which I hadn’t thought of: business cards which are done in the format of a bookmark.  Cover designs (even self-published) with clean, easy to read lettering.  Making sure that your release has an edge or an offering.  Several of the authors present had illustrations in the books!  Not a lot, but in one case the author was also an artist!  Learning appropriate timing for questions, eye contact, even slight knee bending is appropriate (it creates the impression of a low-threat situation).  Having the customer hold the book, which creates a sense of ownership and allows for consumption of the summary located on the back of the book. All of it queensberry rules, yet still vital to a successful conference.  

The last, and arguably the most significant, was to find a popular comparison.  I heard so many renditions of Stranger Things meets X.  Or my personal favorite, The Matrix meets Incredibles.  All of them, established or not, self-published or not, were not only doing this but finding new ones during downtime!  They are incredible techniques to pique readers interest, and a significant majority of the books moving off were due to this fact.   

I don’t think that I’ll be asked back to do this sort of event.  Sadly, I may have done the unpardonable and annoyed the man in charge.  Regardless, however, I have developed the beginnings of a relationship with some amazing human beings, and learned more in the space of a long weekend than I would’ve in two hard years of experience.  It was an absolutely phenomenal experience, and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.