Hello everyone!
After years of doing craft fairs as Bonfirecherry, yesterday I attended my first ever event as an author.
This is the first of two book fairs I am doing this year, I am not really planning on doing any more fairs for The Trip Between the Two as previously mentioned due to the planned re-imagine (read the last blog post talking about it here).
I can’t help but think about how my first craft fair went in 2013 and comparing it to yesterday, mainly due to being around more experienced people in a new environment.
Before I go into the many improvements I need to make, I do want to say I did have some sales & made my money back for the stall, so I can’t say it was a loss and the footfall for the event was great!
The picture used for this post is the layout I had, I think for next Saturday I need to do some more major improvements. There was a better table cloth I could have used but didn’t bring it and it just looks messy. Despite planning everything a day prior, I went against it and I think I spread things out all over the table and I shouldn’t have needed to do it.
Something I didn’t really think about until a few days before, was there was a lack of anything to say what the book was about so I quickly put something on some card & that was it, it didn’t really good and due to it’s being a trans related book and anything related to trans might cause people to roll their eyes at my book (which a few people did) I have to think how to explain the bullet points of my book (eg it deals with gender and identity, with some fantasy and mystery mixed in) in a different way to get people seeing it a lot easier until looking at a piece of card on my stall.
I think for fairs I should not use the coming soon sign until much later when it’s near release, I should get people looking at the book I’m selling instead of telling them to wait.
I know I am sounding rather negative so far, but I need to improve to get better, especially as I’m new to the game.
Aside from the layout, there are two other things I need to think about.
I need to rehearse what I need to say to people walking past my stall, as I didn’t really think about & just winged it on a day and I think that didn’t help much of getting peoples attention, I am going to have my family help me write a script for next weekends event. My stall was next to the talented author, Jules Langton & wow she blew me away on her confidence & her way of attracting people to her stories about witches and a modern gothic tale with a past life twist. I work in retail for a full time job, I deal with different people every shift and I was nervous yesterday.
The final thing, which is nearly just as important as the other points mentioned in this post, is networking. I’ve made friends through networking at craft fairs, some of whom I am still friends with nearly a decade later and for whatever reason I didn’t really do it yesterday. I was hiding in my shell, keeping to myself and I regret that 100%, becoming friends with those in the same field is great.
I think that’s everything I can think of to talk about, again, the event was great & I might do another event of theirs in the same town next year as Market Harborough was beautiful, just can’t help but think of the things I need to improve on.
Thanks for reading,
Megan
Megan Leyman 
Leave a comment