The Magic Lever

While we writers like to portray ourselves as servants to the Muse, as mortal scribes channeling Inspiration, we gotta pay the rent and that means selling books. That and riding herd on the day job. Every established writer gets hit with the question: How do I market my book? Which is another way of asking, How do I make money in this writing gig?

The easy answer, Sell lots of books. Be on notice that if I had my hand on the magic-selling-books-lever, you can be sure that I wouldn't let you put your toner-stained mitts on it. So how to sell books? What helps is getting your name out in public. Let me share my experience of what happens when you don't. Last year I cut back on my touring schedule, appearing only around the Denver area. However, I did keep tabs with my fellow writers working the Bard's Tower booth, formerly the WordFire booth, as they dragged the setup from comic con to comic con and greeted metric tons of people. Make no mistake, working the booth is an effort. Set up and tear down is a real pain, and holding court on the exhibition floor keeps you on your feet for a solid twelve hours. The upside is that you're meeting new readers and occasionally, even fans. Paying for travel and meals takes a bite out of your wallet and even if you sell out stock, which I've done, you won't come close to covering your costs. Even so, I missed the excitement of the shows, the comradery of hanging out with this gang of misfits, and the chance to see a new city. But more importantly, a consequence of not touring was a downturn in my royalties. Not good.

This year I signed up for as many gigs with the Bard's Tower as I could fit into my schedule. Though I haven't appeared in many shows, what I've seen is a lot more traffic to my Facebook book pages and more engagement in Twitter. We'll see if that translates into an uptick in royalties. Stay tuned.

On The Road Again

After a self-imposed hiatus from touring, I'm again loose from my cage. A couple of years back I was part of the WordFire Press road crew hefting books from convention to convention. That was a great experience not only hawking books shoulder-to-shoulder with other writers but it was also an amazing opportunity to meet fans. When I first got published I attended as many writer conventions as I could afford such as Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, and ThrillerFest. While these cons were a blast--suffice to say a LOT of booze was consumed--I decided they weren't worth the money. Flying out of town, plus hotel and meals, and the con fees would set me back a cool grand. Anything in New York was almost twice that. Truthfully, at these cons, the public was mainly interested in the hardback NYT bestsellers and most times, the vendors wouldn't bother stocking my vampire novels. I'd usually only get one panel, not surprisingly, first thing Sunday morning. We panelists were lucky if we didn't outnumber the audience!

This year I'm traveling with the Bard's Tower, the venture headed by Rabid FanBoy. They took over the operation from WordFire and streamlined the process. As before, our venues are the comic cons, actually known now by several other names, as Comic Con has been trademarked and reserved for use by those within the proper fold. Besides the format, the biggest differences between what we do and traditional writer cons are attendance and the workload. Attendance meaning greeting between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand people who file by our booth. Workload meaning unpacking hundreds of books, setting up the booth and tower, staffing the booth from 10AM to 8PM, then the final tear down. I bought new Dr. Martens with extra cushy soles, however even with them, at the end of each day, my dogs aren't just barking but howling.

Typically, those of us working the booth sell out at least one title. And it brings a big smile when in these distant burgs, a customer remarks, "Aren't you Mario Acevedo? I have your books!" Bless you, kind reader. I only wish I had a thousand more fans for each of you.

If you want to come by and browse the Bard's Tower, check out my 2019 schedule. See you there.