Fourteen

People often evaluate the success of a vendor fair in terms of "How much did you sell?" as if selling was the only goal of a a vendor fair.

A couple weeks ago when my three youngest and I were packing up from "Shakespeare and Art in the Park," I received an invitation to join the vendors at New Orleans North on June 10 in Joliet.

So I did.

I did not go to sell. I went to market.

I assumed that an outdoor, Mardi Gras-type of event was not a good place to sell books.

But since it would attract thousands of people, I could distribute BryonySeries cards.

At first, the fates appeared to be against any success.

I had structured my day knowing I had to be set up by five o'clock. Unfortunately, an unexpected work meeting that ran nearly two hours derailed my structure, and I finished the last story an hour past my own deadline.

By that afternoon, it was raining - hard. And during the time I was helping Timothy (and not very well), set up the tent in the rain, I took a work call.

Still, we were set up and ready to go by five-thirty, around the time that the rain had nearly stopped and the revelers were arriving.

I have to stop this post here to give a huge "THANK YOU to Timothy, Rebekah, and Daniel, who did most of the heavy lifting of setting up and taking down. Rebekah also handles all sales and the trio stayed for the entire event - which they enjoyed,. But that is beside the point.

Now, I was really suprised when I made my first two sales shortly after that.

I wound up selling fourteen books, including two to a man who took a card at the beginning of the event and came back at the end, shortly before we packed up.

Granted, fourteen books is nothing earth-shattering.

But I was pleasantly surprised considering I had expected to sell zero.

No one book in the BryonySeries outshone the rest, also The Adventures of Cornell Dyer and Bertrand the Mouse has a slight edge. Mostly, though, I sold books across the spectrum of titles.

So what did you learn, Dorothy?

Basically, not to pre-judge an opportunity.

The current advice for book marketing is very targeted: imagine your ideal readers and be available where they show up because your books won't appeal to everyone.

Now that's very true. My books won't appeal to everyone. No product does.

But my books do appeal to a wide variety of someones.

And those someones often show up in places where I'd never imagined to find them.