I've always had mixed feelings about the value of attending author fairs, and Saturday was a good advertisement for staying at home.
Here is how they usually go. After
paying a table/registration fee, which varies with the venue, I sit at a table
for 3 to 5 hours talking to visitors and selling books. For part of the time,
anyway. Although I enjoy the interaction with readers, there is a lot of down
time. I take something to do, but it isn’t always enough. Still, if I make more
than my table fee, I usually consider it a success.
By that measure, Saturday’s Hammond
Author and Art Fair was a success. And I did get a lot of work done. But by other
measures, it was a failure.
The Hammond Public Library event is the
most expensive author fair that I participate in, so I was pleasantly surprised
when they gave participants a ticket for lunch at a food truck. Unfortunately,
the line was too long. I didn’t want to take that much time away from my table,
so I munched on the snacks I had brought from home.
The bigger problem, though, was the
distraction. The material soliciting author participants said we would have a
fifteen-minute slot somewhere else in the library to give a reading from one of
our books. I went through Learning to Surrender and selected two related
passages to make up my quarter hour.
When I arrived at the library, the
reading opportunity had morphed into fifteen-minutes each to discuss why we had
written our books. Furthermore, the schedule for the two rooms to be used did
not include me. (More about that later.) The employee who was passing out the
schedules promised to slot me in at the end, however.
I might have been okay with that
format, but just before these sessions were supposed to start, they morphed
again. Now the 15-minute presentations were to (and did) take place in the same
room as the book sales.
That was totally counter-productive.
Before then, visitors felt free to walk from table to table, talking to the
authors and buying books. Now, sales suddenly stopped. Too many people thought
it was rude to wander around looking at books and talking to other authors
while someone was giving a public speech. (Fortunately, I had already made my
table fee back before the sessions started.)
That wasn’t the worst problem,
either. I felt as if I was forced to sit through solicitations I had no
interest in, and I imagine I wasn’t alone. The original format would have
allowed people to choose which, if any, of the sessions they wanted to attend.
The revised location made that impossible.
The Hammond Library staff who work on
the author fair are extremely nice, but the fair itself has always been badly
managed. My checks don’t get cashed for months, and this time they lost the
check and messed up my registration. They must have found it because they
allowed me to participate without asking for a replacement check, which I was
prepared to give them. However, that is probably why I wasn’t on the original
presentation schedule, and when they moved it to the other room, they simply
forgot about me. I don’t know if I would have had additional sales if I had
been called up to present, but I definitely felt left out.
If they use the same format next
year, I won’t participate. Like I said, though, the staff is extremely nice, so
maybe they’ll listen to feedback.
I certainly hope so.
