I woke up this morning to find an email in my mailbox from the organizer of the indie author book fair I blew off yesterday, addressed to all the authors who had signed up: all 140 of us! Apparently he emailed everyone at 5am to wax poetic about how he understood the day had been disappointing but how he really appreciated all the love and support from us, his “literary family.” Ugh. Ok, so apparently the fair was not well attended, something my instincts warned me about, so yeah, I was right to blow the whole thing off! I would have wasted precious time and energy and ended up feeling disappointed. Frankly, I feel angry on behalf of all the authors who did go and didn’t have the turnout they expected. I think the organizer should have done a better job attracting readers, and his self-indulgent email just adds insult to injury.
I’m lucky. I have so many ways to sell my books (just today I cashed a massive check from Hendley Market where my books sell really well), so many ways to find new readers! For me, attending or not attending that fair didn’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but for many authors, new ones especially, this was probably an occasion they had invested lots of hope in.
So, yeah, not cool! Seems like each day there’s more and more people out there who want to take advantage of writers trying to market their books. You should listen to some of the spam calls I get from so-called literary agents who are anything but.
Anyway, I’m glad I dodged that bullet. Meanwhile, I l’m back on the Island, I have a comfortable new mattress (which feels like a new lease on life), I took a long walk down the Seawall with my friend and saw a car that looked like it could have been driven by Cornelius in Storms of Malhado, and the proof copy of Breakaway Bridesmaid just arrived. It’s beautiful, but I might have made the front cover too dark. Luckily, I can fix that. And I’m one more step closer to the paperback being published!
