Its Almost Writing Time

One more month of selling and then we'll be on to quieter times. Many people ask when I find time to write when I'm on the road signing books all the time. Well, that's what October through February are for. Writing and Resting. Am I ready for those months? Yes! 

I'm looking forward to having more time to do a lot more of this.

Where am I this month?

• Sept 5 & 6    Newaygo Logging Festival - Newaygo, MI
• Sept 12    Holland Literary Festival - Holland, MI
• Sept 18 & 19    Muddy Maumee Book Festival - Toledo, OH
• Sept 25-27    Funky Ferndale Art Festival - Ferndale, MI 

Why all the on the road time? Well, every year I set out a sales goal. Some people do great selling online. They've mastered the algorithm wrangling and ads. I am not that person. The sales I'm better at are in person. Which is funny, because if you had told me twenty years ago that I'd be driving across states to talk to strangers, I'd think you were insane. No way was I going to do that. No sir. But here we are. 

I didn't leap into this. Baby steps were involved. I knew from much online reading that books didn't sell themselves. I'd read blogs and articles about how in person sales work. But talking to people? Doing the sales pitch thing? Ugh. I started doing events at the rate of a few a year. Like yes, two or three. Looking at my schedule now, you may find that hard to believe. For years, I shared tables to cut costs and to learn from authors who had been doing this sales thing for a while. I celebrated each book sale like a big victory. If I sold 8 books, it was a fantastic day.

After much trial and error, I found what events worked best for me in terms of where my audience was. I can generally spot someone in a passing crowd that has the vibe of my people and start a conversation. Then it's a matter of how much of my energy do I put into trying to make the sale because behind that veil, I'm still an introvert with a limited tank for peopling. Those are the conversion stats I watch.

Sometimes I take breaks from peopling to paint chickens.
You can even adopt a flat chicken to take home with you.

I still share a table or a 10x10 on occasion, but most of the time I'm on my own, sometimes driving for hours to spend a weekend where I know zero people going into it, but I've learned where to spend my energy between networking and sales and how best to recharge it after event hours so I can manage a two and three day show. If you've caught me on the tail end of day three, tripping over words and with my pitch sounding more like "I write books. You should buy them please, yes?", I thank you for your patience and tolerance for my lack of vocabulary. I've used all my words and energy and I'm running on fumes.

This year's goal was to sell 2,000 books. Will I hit it? I'm headed in the right direction, but several remaining events are dependent on favorable weather so we'll see how that goes. And that's why my schedule looks like it does. ;)

Would you like to pet the chicken? Chickens add a lot more peopling 
and talking to my day, but they're great sales ladies and they make people happy.

If you'd like to help me meet my sales goal, there are links to all of my books along the left sidebar. All of my adults books are available as ebooks. Sahmara is also in audio on the usual platforms. If you like signed copies, they're available on the tab at the top, shipped from my hands to yours. If you're a bookstore looking for copies, they're available through Ingram or wholesale right from me.

If you're not familiar with 

the Insecure Writers Support 

Group, check it out here 

and find links to all the 

other participating writers. 

Let's get to this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question: Do you have a favorite character archetype you tend to gravitate toward?

I write morally grey characters. More recently, I've been writing snarky, mature women. Surprise, they're also morally grey. So yes, I write a lot of different very things under the speculative fiction umbrella, but the characters are my formula thing. Except the kids' books. Unless your talking about Nugget, because that chicken, she may also be a little grey. LOL

Happy anniversary to IWSG! Fifteen years and still going is quite an accomplishment in this world of people dropping one social avenue to do the next new thing. Let's keep blogging.