Who doesn’t love a fair? A book fair, that is.
This past weekend, I participated in the fifth annual Rocktown Author Festival hosted by the Massanutten Regional Library in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The library does an excellent job with this event, providing snacks and lunch for the authors as well as inviting some of the authors to present panel discussions. This year, close to 40 authors participated in the festival.
Well-run or not, I have mixed feelings about book fairs like this. I’ve done three in the past year—two in libraries and one hosted by a local bookstore—and honestly, as an introvert, I think I’d rather spend my Saturdays doing something else. I like writing, but I didn’t start writing books in order to hand-sell them.
I do like talking to potential readers, however, although giving the same spiel over and over again for five hours isn’t much fun. I had copies of five of my six books with me on this occasion, and when visitors asked me about my books, I did the full rundown, with an “elevator pitch” for each one, hoping that one would strike a chord that would lead the visitor to buy something.
Also, literary fiction stands out like a sore thumb at an event like this, but there’s a wide selection of genre writing—fantasy romance, horror, mystery, thriller. People would come to my table, look at my books, and not be able to discern what genre they were. If I said “literary fiction,” some people’s eyes would glaze over, so I usually asked them what they liked to read and I would try to find a connection between their interests and my books.
Still, I probably should have stayed home to work on my new book.
I love book clubs.
I’ve been facilitating a book club for about 15 years now. We meet once a month and discuss a variety of books, mostly non-fiction, that address issues we think we need to know more about. We usually have lively discussions over dinner at a local restaurant, so I always look forward to our gatherings. Every five months or so I ask the members to nominate books for our next reads and then we vote. Our current read that we’ll be discussing this week is a terrific book of popular history: The Shattering: America in the 1960s by Kevin Boyle, a historian I happened to meet at a bookstore in Ireland last year.
As an author, I also love being invited to meet with other book clubs that have read one of my books. My latest book, The Last Bird of Paradise, has had a fair amount of interest from such groups. I’ve met with four recently and now have three more coming up. My appearance at one of those will be by Zoom because it’s in a city several hours away, but I still think it will be fun. I’ve even prepared a discussion guide for the book (included in the book) to help clubs identify issues they might want to talk about.
If you are interested in having me join your club’s discussion of one of my books, by Zoom or in person, if practicable, please let me know!
Artists’ Residencies.
I’ve written about my fondness for artists’ residencies before. These are places where artists can go to focus on their work, away from their regular lives. They all operate a little differently, but they’re generally comfortable places in stimulating environments. In some, your workspace is also your bedroom, but in some you are provided with a separate studio. In some, meals are provided. In others, you are expected to do your own meal preparation in shared kitchens or sometimes in a kitchen that is included in your living space.
A residency that I have been to a number of times is the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts located in Amherst, Virginia (and its second property, VCCA France, located in Auvillar, France). It isn’t that far from where I live, but I still manage to get far more work done there than I do at home. VCCA provides artists with a bedroom in very nice residence building that has beautiful communal areas, three meals a day, and a separate studio in another building for working. As it happens, this Friday (April 18), members of the VCCA Fellows Council are offering an Art Residency Application Primer to help prospective applicants understand the process better.
If you are interested in applying to VCCA or another residency, you might want to sign up for this free program.
And . . .
- In a recent newsletter about words and word count in writing projects, I mentioned NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month, an annual event in which writers commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. Only a few hours after my newsletter went out, NaNoWriMo announced that they were shutting down.
- I continue to post on my blog about what I read each month, and if you’re interested in that sort of thing, you can check out my reading journal.
- For a couple of years, I have had a feature on my blog called I’ve Got Questions in which I interview emerging writers about their new or recent books. The pace of entries in that feature has slowed, but there have been a few in recent weeks. Check them out here.
That’s it for now. I hope April is treating you well.
Cliff, you are a model and resource for writers everywhere. I agree handselling books is not the best way unless you crave personal interaction, which most writers don’t. I’ve found that being the featured entertainment at a conference, where the organizers include the book as part of the entrance package/fee and put a copy on every audience chair, is preferable. I don’t sing like Brad Parks in my author talks, but a mixed audience of readers and writers (and librarians) always boosts sales afterwards. And traveling results in new friends who often want a book club appearance or community presentation.
Book festival readings and signings, as you know, are more satisfying. People are buying your book because they liked your reading. Like a pat of the back, eh? Thanks for the posts. Keep on, keep on.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Sally!