Face Time

Face Time: Promoting Yourself and Your Books at Reader Conventions

Before the launch of the first book in my urban fantasy romance series in 2009, I researched other authors’ marketing efforts. While the results of the campaigns I studied varied wildly, one piece of advice repeated consistently: Word of mouth is your friend.

But HOW do you spark word of mouth? If you twist the above sentence a little you get your answer: If word of mouth is your friend, friends are your word of mouth.

The past few Saturdays here at Romancing the Genres, you’ve heard from Pat Hauldren about growing friends like weeds, from Cassiel Knight about energizing your long-distance friends with a virtual launch party, and from Kristina McMorris about creating new friends through out-of-the-box marketing, so I thought I’d go old skool with a discussion of one-on-one, face-to-face author-reader interaction: the reader convention.

The Pros of Cons:

I’ve gone a handful of times so far to several different conventions geared toward putting readers and authors together. The con experience offers several advantages, I think, over other forms of marketing and promotion:

 1. The quality of reader

Con goers tend to be a highly valuable sort of reader: enthusiastic, voracious, outgoing and often well connected with other readers. On the whole, con goers read a lot and they want to share their love. Win them to your side and you have the opportunity to create a true fan, the sort of reader who harangues others to read you too.

 2. Showcasing brand over book

In the course of a career, most authors will write more than one book in more than one series for more than one publisher, probably in more than one subgenre. Promoting YOURSELF as well as your books gives readers a chance to (hopefully) connect with everything you write, not just one title at a time.

 3. They’re fun!

This might not seem like the most sensible criteria for making business decisions, but a weekend with readers can be a delightful reminder why we endure the trials and tribulations of publication: Because we want to tell our stories to an audience.

The Cons of Cons

1. The money
Oh, the money… After adding up airfare, hotel, meals, and giveaways, a long weekend of a con can run one or two thousand dollars. And that assumes you are sharing a room, eating on the cheap, and being judicious with your swag.

2. The other costs

In addition to the financial outlay, there’s the lost writing time and the energy expenditure. The con itself might be only a few days away from home, but the preparation for and recovery from it can easily take a week as you make goody bags, properly pack your fairy wings (I ask you, how many other business women have to pack fairy wings for their business travel?!) and follow up with the contacts you make.

If you decide to make cons part of your promotional repertoire, here are a few tips for making the most of your efforts:

1. At a reader convention, YOU are part of the entertainment.
And by you, I mean author-you. Not you-you and certainly not writer-you. Writer-you sits with a writing implement all day and often stares into space. This is not entertainment. At least not to anyone besides writer-you. You-you might be entertaining enough but the important person at a con is author-you.

I could do a whole post on creating an author persona, but the key is to think of author-you as the best, most engaging parts of you-you. With creative additions and fairy wings as necessary. This is the you who attends cons and attracts readers.

2. When you are in public, you are ON.

Cons can be tiring and stressful even when they are fun, but author-you is on display any time you are outside the door of your hotel room. (And sometimes when you are inside your hotel room if you don’t keep your voice down.) Everyone has heard of authors behaving badly; don’t be her. Be open, be gracious, and be quiet when necessary.

3.  Choose your swag wisely.
You want to put something in readers’ hands (as well as their minds) to help them remember you, but swag can get expensive, not to mention heavy when you are traveling. Without question, the best swag is your book. Give it to reviewers, bloggers and readers who seem particularly outgoing. Next best is a sample of your book and/or voice, including excerpts or free reads. Next best is high-value fun items: coffee mugs, good pens, etc. Don’t even bother with cheap pens. For the money, bookmarks are probably still worthwhile for now, but don’t expect them to be more than another “touch” on your audience’s awareness.

4. Set goals, pursue them and evaluate the outcome.

As with any promotional effort, knowing what you want to accomplish will help focus you. If you are a doing a panel at the con, what points do you want to make to inspire readers to seek out your stories? If you are hitting the bar to network, who do you want to meet and why? Make sure you follow up with people you connected with (you won’t “connect” with everyone, and that’s okay; you’re looking for like-minded souls anyway) and keep the conversation going.

5. Have fun!
Yeah, I said this already, but it’s worth repeating. Positive energy attracts the same. My critique partners call writer-me Eeyore for my unsunny disposition, but at cons I bring out author-me and she does know how to have a good time! (For proof, the photo of me in the black and red dress was taken at an RT ball last year. I practically have a lampshade on my head, the epitome of fun!) Like formatting a manuscript or writing a synopsis, face-to-face promotion is a skill you can learn. If you aren’t naturally an extrovert, practice with real friends. Your local writing group is a good start. Offer to lead a book club or do in-person writing workshops to get comfortable talking about books. And then know that everyone who attends reader cons loves books too.

If you have questions about reader conventions, please ask. And I’ll ask you one: Have you had a face-to-face encounter with an author that made you want to know more about her stories?

 Jessa Slade is author of the Marked Souls urban fantasy romance series with NAL Signet Eclipse. The third book in the series, VOWED IN SHADOWS, is available now. Though she is most comfortable sitting behind her computer, she ventures out to meet readers in the wild and giggle about man chest. 


You can find her online at www.jessaslade.com
http://www.facebook.com/jessaslade
http://twitter.com/jessaslade