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catherineldfWhew. Finally back home with no more writing-related trips or events for the next couple of weeks. This is after racking up a trip to Atlanta for Gaylaxicon, followed by a trip to Madison for WisCon, followed by reading at the Walker for Rain Taxi's Northern Spark Festival event, followed by a podcast interview then tabling at Des Moines Pride last weekend. This is all in the last 6 weeks, done alongside my day job, vestiges of a personal life and deadlines for new projects. The results (not necessarily related to the event): a Spectrum award nod for Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades, the first anthology that I edited; a grand total of 13 direct book sales, plus time spent networking with booksellers and librarians to order in Hellebore and Rue; networking with other authors, publishers and reviewers for cross-promotion, reviews and potential future projects; 2 readings and 7 panels; 2 interviews; and 3 reviews for Hellebore and Rue directly attributable to the aforementioned networking. Plus an unknown number of other book sales correlated with title recognition resulting from being underfoot all the time as well as promotional boosts from my publishers, my colleagues and authors contributing to aforementioned anthologies, since I'm not doing this in a vacuum.
Welcome to the life of a small to medium-sized press author in what NY perceives as a niche market.
Granted I'm a somewhat adventurous example. The reading at the Walker was primarily literary writers and poets and I spent last weekend tabling and cross-promoting with m/m romance authors while a big chunk of the rest was sf/f related. It was still a lot of work, some of it fun, some of it less so (the travel time has been kind of brutal) for not a lot of immediate payoff. This is in terms of actually selling books; I've met some wonderful new folks and touched base with a lot of old friends in the past 6 weeks.
As a small potatoes, albeit not unknown author, much of this gadding about is on my dime. Will I make that back? Maybe. Eventually. So is it worth it? This is a more ambiguous question. I love meeting people and talking to readers (even the ones not reading me). I talked a newbie author out of subbing to Publish America last weekend. I got exposed to some new work by authors I haven't read before. I think I made some new friends. I definitely made some new connections which will mean less in the way of reinventing the wheel for the next few books. So yes, overall I've got to see it as worthwhile. Momentum keeps me moving so I can jeep writing and selling books to an expanding readership And that's the name of the game, isn't it?
Welcome to the life of a small to medium-sized press author in what NY perceives as a niche market.
Granted I'm a somewhat adventurous example. The reading at the Walker was primarily literary writers and poets and I spent last weekend tabling and cross-promoting with m/m romance authors while a big chunk of the rest was sf/f related. It was still a lot of work, some of it fun, some of it less so (the travel time has been kind of brutal) for not a lot of immediate payoff. This is in terms of actually selling books; I've met some wonderful new folks and touched base with a lot of old friends in the past 6 weeks.
As a small potatoes, albeit not unknown author, much of this gadding about is on my dime. Will I make that back? Maybe. Eventually. So is it worth it? This is a more ambiguous question. I love meeting people and talking to readers (even the ones not reading me). I talked a newbie author out of subbing to Publish America last weekend. I got exposed to some new work by authors I haven't read before. I think I made some new friends. I definitely made some new connections which will mean less in the way of reinventing the wheel for the next few books. So yes, overall I've got to see it as worthwhile. Momentum keeps me moving so I can jeep writing and selling books to an expanding readership And that's the name of the game, isn't it?