Showcasing You, the Author, and Your Books at Trade Shows, Book Fairs, and Genre Cons

I'm Robert Stanek and today I'm talking about trade shows, book fairs, and genre cons. As a successful author whose works have been showcased around the world, I often get questions from other authors about how to effectively use these events to sell books. Previously, I blogged about selling your rights at trade shows, taking your work to Hollywood, and other related topics.

Many authors seem to think trade shows, book fairs, and genre cons are all about selling. But in reality, these events aren't necessarily about selling anything at all. You, as an author, should be there mostly to build relationships and industry connections.

In the early 2000s, my books and I were at nearly every regional, national, and international show for a number of years. A steady, multi-year investment landed numerous rights and distribution deals:

My William Stanek books have been translated into 34 languages and counting
My Robert Stanek books have been translated into 15 languages and counting

It took a great commitment of time, capital, and resources to make those deals possible. The publishing landscape has changed considerably since the early 2000s, however.

Today, I would, and do, approach trade shows, book fairs, and genre cons very differently. For starters, you're going to have better luck at these types of events if you have several creative works, rather than a single published work.

As an independent with several works available, you're going to have the most success at regional shows, including the regional shows from:

California Library Association
New York Library Association
New York State Reading Association
Michigan Reading Association
Texas Library Association
Connecticut Library Association
Pennsylvania School Library Association
Florida Library Association
New Jersey Library Association
National Education Association
Pennsylvania Library Association
Illinois Library Association
California Library Association
New York State Reading Association
New England Library Association

Note that most of these regional shows are either "library associations" or "reading associations". Here, you are connecting with library staff, school library staff, teachers, school administrators, readers, and others. If your books aren't available to libraries or schools, you'll want to approach the library shows very differently than you would otherwise.

Regional shows can be expensive, so you may want to stick with ones in your area before you try anything outside your local area. Don't spend money on tables or booths without first getting as much information as you can. You also may want to attend one or more of these events beforehand.

An even better idea? Build up to something like this before you spend any money. My recommendation: regional independent bookseller organizations and shows.

Regional independent bookseller organizations are excellent resources, and it's good to get to know the organization in your area to see if it and you are a fit. Regional indie bookseller organizations include:

Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA)
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA)
New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA)
Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association (GLIBA)
Midwest Independent Booksellers Association (MIBA)
New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA)
Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA)
Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA)
Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA)

These organizations also host book shows. Attend the shows hosted by these organizations, learn how they work, and see if you think they might work for you and your books.

With some experience at regional shows and with regional organizations, you might want to look to national and international shows. Shows of this type, I recommend include:

American Library Association Midwinter
Bologna Children's Book Fair
London Book Fair
BookExpo America
American Library Association Annual
Beijing International Book Fair
American Association of School Librarians

International shows have the most potential, especially the London, Beijing, and Frankfurt shows. At these international shows you can have tremendous success selling translation and other rights to your works.

Attending trade shows, book fairs, and genre cons can be expensive. Don't spend a dime before you take the time to research the aforementioned options to determine whether any of them are for you.

With any of these shows, whether a regional, national or international trade show, you don't have to attend personally. There are many organizations that will host and showcase your books for you. Thus, rather than spend $250 for a table and $625 on travel expenses to attend one show, you could pay one of these hosting organizations a flat fee to showcase you and your books at multiple shows for around the same amount of money. For example, it may cost $125 to showcase one book at one show or $350 for a shelf in a display that allows you to showcase 5, 6, or 7 books.

Hope this helps!

Robert Stanek

Have you ever considered selling your rights?

Frankfurt Book Fair 2012 begins Oct 10, and continues until Oct 14. If you’re a writer, whether self-published, professionally published or somewhere in between that should have you thinking about selling your rights. Why? Frankfurt Book Fair is Mardi Gras for Books and one of the best places to sell the rights to your work. Want to know what selling your rights means and why it matters? Read on.

Frankfurt Book Fair is a 5-day annual event that takes place in October each year. Not only is it one of the largest book-related events of the year, it is also one of the best for selling rights and licensing. Thousands of industry experts attend Frankfurt Book Fair, including authors, publishers, agents, film producers, and more—and they’re all there to network, to sell or to buy. Mostly, what they're buying and selling are publishing rights, media rights, and product licensing.

If you can attend the event in person, you can go directly to the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre to talk business with people there to buy print-related rights. Or you can go over to the StoryDrive Business Centre where the focus is film and media rights. Each year there are about 500 agents on hand, representing some 300 agencies. Want to talk about and learn about the digital book business? There’s a place for that too. Or you can simply wander through the thousands of book exhibits, featuring publishers, books, and authors from all over the world.

If you can’t attend personally, there are ways to be represented as well. One way is to have another exhibitor display and respresent your books or works at the fair. My books were represented for many years at the fair and it helped me sell foreign edition and translation rights all over the world.

 

For independent and small press authors, foreign edition and translation rights for print or ebook are the rights you're most likely to sell. You also might sell the rights to audio, large print editions, Braille, English-language editions outside the United States & Canada, and more. Media rights relate to film, stage, and television, but sometimes radio too. Licensing rights relate to products that are based on or related to your works.

Going out there and selling your rights so that your work can be available in foreign and translated editions isn't easy though. It requires time, effort, and capital--and this commitment is one of the reasons I'm telling you about the Frankfurt Bookfair. Because, if you're not attending this year's fair, you may want to start planning for next year's fair right now.

 
Start now because there's a lot of work to do beforehand and not preparing well in advance is like throwing money out the window. To get ready for the fair, you need to:
 

• Decide on a budget and marketing plan. As you will have to pay for each book or work you exhibit, you want to be sure you exhibit your very best work. For example, if you've been wanting to get professional covers and additional editing or proofreading, the time to do it is now before you pay to exhibit your work. In other words, start getting your ducks in a row so you can put your best foot forward.

 

• Select the books or works that you want to exhibit, with your budget and your marketing goals in mind. Then tailor your marketing for these books or works. Some vendors will include your books or works in their exhibit catalogue, along with related marketing materials. You want to do your research and get the right information in the catalogue, as it's something visitors to the show may keep and bring home with them for review.

 

• Select a vendor / exhibitor partner, and that means vetting the available vendors to see which one is the best fit for your needs, your budget and your marketing goals. There are many vendors / exhibitor partners. Some of these have resellers who will resell you (at a markup) to the same vendors / exhibitor partners you could reach on your own directly (and cheaper).

 
You'll want to finalize your materials and get everything lined up months in advance. One of the reasons for this is that it can take weeks to ship boxes of books to the vendor / exhibitor partner you've chosen and they in turn may need to receive your books weeks in advance so that they can ship the books to the fair. To reduce overhead, vendors often ship by freight/book rate, which can be very slow. So if the vendor needs to ship boxes 8 weeks before the fair to ensure everything gets to the fair on time, you may need to get your box of books to the vendor a few weeks before this.
 
Got the time and believe in yourself? Then give book fairs a try and when you eventually land a rights or licensing contract, I hope you'll give me a shout out.
 
More tips and advice on book fairs in future posts. Got questions? Ask.