Book Talks

I’ll be traveling around the Midwest and Texas in October giving talks at Rotary clubs and libraries.  I’d put the tour list here, but it’s long, and would take a lot of time for me to look up all the addresses and/or contact information, and no one goes to these events based on this blog, so I’m not going to take the time to list them now.

            Instead I’m going to talk about why I go to these clubs and give these talks.  I have found Rotary clubs, and groups like it, to be an invaluable tool for independent non-fiction promotion.  The organizers of these clubs need to find a new speaker every single week, and they’re trying to find subjects interesting enough to keep their members coming back.  Having a true story to tell is a blessing for them, as long as it’s an interesting one.  While I struggled for years to get bookstores to let me do signings, clubs that need regular speakers have been more than willing to accept me.  And some have even contacted me and asked me to come to their organization to speak, saving me the time of having to go to them.

            I haven’t been charging for these events as I want to get into as many as possible.  I make money by selling copies of my books at them, and sometimes I make a couple hundred at a single event.  It’s not enough to live on as the work required to set it up and to travel there winds up being inefficient.  However, it spreads the word of the book and of me as an author.  I often make friends and contacts who later join me on social media, and they see what else I’m writing.  Like most things in independent publishing, it pays to have a number of titles so each individual event doesn’t wind up being your only trick.

            I approach these organizations by looking them up, finding out who would be in charge of booking guests, (if I can’t find that, I just find the president or whomever is in charge,) and I email them.  I tell them what the story is and I provide a link to the web page where the information is listed.  I also mention anything that is sellable about the story.  (In the case of Two Gun Hart I tell them that it’s the first time a lot of information about the Capones has ever been revealed.)  And I make sure to mention anything that’s relevant to their area, as sometimes clubs prefer stories with a local connection.  (Oddly enough, most of the ones in Iowa wouldn’t have me as a guest unless I could show a local connection.)

            This doesn’t work so well when it comes to fiction because typically the best you can do is say you have a story you’ve made up.  The problem is, everyone has a story they’ve made up, and they don’t know why yours is extra special.  And besides, people at events like these usually want to hear about something that’s true.  They’re fascinated by true stories and will gladly invite authors with great true stories to their events.

Sci Fi and Comic Book Conventions I Want to Attend

I’ve been talking recently about what worked and what didn’t when I released book 2 of the Relic Worlds series; and more importantly, what I learned.  In one weekend I released book 2, presented the Relic Worlds series at Wondercon, and gave away book 1 in a KDP Select free promotion.  The result was not a lot of immediate sales, but a lot of people who are now following the series.

As a result, I’ve begun to plan for more online promotions on Facebook and Twitter, I’m doing a newsletter campaign on Mail Chimp, and I’ll be doing another free book promotion in conjunction with the second book having a countdown deal.  These are all the online plans, and the other half of the equation is networking in person.  This is best accomplished by going to conventions, so I’ve made a list of the conventions I plan to go to.

I was told that Texans will buy anything.  In fact, I was told that Dallas has the best sales rate of any comic book/sci fi and fantasy convention in the country.  Denver is apparently a close second.  I’ve decided to make my trips to these conventions coincide with trips my girlfriend and I want to take, and since we want to see Austin, I’ve decided my next convention will be Alamo City, which takes place in San Antonio, (just an hour’s drive from Austin.)  San Antonio supposed to be a pretty fascinating city itself, so I’m looking forward to that one.

I plan to keep Wondercon as sort of my “home base” if you will, building a regular following there while I travel to other places just once each to build my following.  I also want to attend Emerald City, which is in Seattle, and Chicago’s C2E2 Pop Culture convention.  Unfortunately, both of those are right around Wondercon, and that might be too much intensity in too short a time, (not to mention the expense.)  So I might only do one of those two.  Finally, I want to do New York Comic Con, though that might be way too expensive.  However, it’s the largest Comic Book convention, even larger than San Diego Comic Con, so it might be worth it.  Or it might just swallow a small project like mine up whole.  Maybe I should do that one a little further down the line.

I’m also looking at Sac Con, which is in Sacramento, and Nerd Con in San Diego, since they’d be close.  I did Loscon, and they want me back, but SO FEW of the people at that convention go into the dealer’s room that it’s not really worth it.

I’ll be looking at more conventions, and I’ll be going to as many as I can afford.

http://alamocitycomiccon.com/