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July 01, 2009
Summer Conference in Toronto
I went to Canada recently for the Canadian Booksellers Association’s Summer Conference in Toronto, Canada, where Shimmer is being published by Unbridled Books and distributed by McArthur & Co.
Don’t tell my publisher, but I’ve yet to get comfortable wth the level of shameless self-promotion that the process of publishing so often requires of writers. In my ideal world, readers would simply pick up my book, Shimmer, and read it for what it is.
There’d be no flashy book jacket. No marketing materials. There’d just be the words on the page.
Of course, it doesn’t work that way. Yet the intimate environment of the CBA’s Summer Conference came about as close as I could ask for to my ideal world: Booksellers wandered by our table, picked up my book, said Hello, and took a copy of the novel with them.
I pitched no one. I was shamelessly self-promotional not once.
Instead, I met and shook hands with people who like books. Who like people who like books. Who live in a world of books. People who will, hopefully, now read my book and enjoy it and spread the word to other people who might enjoy it too.
One of the things I liked best at the conference was when a bookseller would pick up a copy of the book, turn it in their hands, flip a few pages, then look at me and say, “Looks good. But we don’t sell fiction. I’ll just leave this.”
Take a book, I said each time. Read it for yourself.
And there’d be a look of pleasant surprise on the face of that non-fiction bookseller. That children’s book buyer. “Hey,” they’d say. “Thanks.”
Because the Summer Conference was all about books. Sure, it was also about sales and marketing and promotion. But, for a writer standing at a table, it was much more about people who like and love books. Whether they sold business books or children’s books, they were all readers. And they were all people who might like my book.
How can you go wrong with that?
by Eric Barnes, author of Shimmer
I have always loved Canada. I was ranting about this to friends and family for weeks before CBA. There’s a realness and lack of pretention to Canadians. A deeply comfortable mix of the best of Europe and the United States. Cultured and easy-going. Interesting and interested.
I spent my childhood going up to Vancouver and Victoria. In college, we’d visit Montreal. I spent my honeymoon at Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.
The booksellers who came to Toronto were the same. Very nice. Very interested. Very much excited to meet the authors of books they may well sell.
There was another great moment, repeated a number of times while the three authors from McArthur & Co and Unbridled − Anne DeGrace, Emily St. John Mandel and me − stood at the table at the conference: The booksellers would come up to the table and say something to one of us like, “What are you selling?” as they picked up one of our books. Then they’d look up. Look down again. Compare author photo to person in front of them and finally say, “Oh, wait, you’re an author. I didn’t know we’d have writers here?”
The surprise and excitement was genuine. Their wariness at “being sold” would melt away. And, once more, I’d simply be shaking hands with someone who loves books.
Thanks for having me to Canada.
Posted in: Authors Blog, | Keywords: authors blog, canadian booksellers association, marketing, promotion, summer conference
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Comments
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Posted by Communication Skills 03/25 09:07 AM
Sure, it would be great to just hand out books and have people read them. However, there has to be a marketing element to this so that people are motivated. Catching their attention is part of the ploy to get them motivated enough to purchase your material. Conferences let you showcase not only your material, but also yourself. Sometimes you do have to market yourself because readers are interested in the writer as much as the books they are producing.
Posted by Clint 02/15 10:13 AM