Ready or not, the summer conferences are coming back in full force.
If you only recently put out your first book (first of all, congratulations!), this might be your first opportunity to attend a conference as an author, and I am sure your already-chaotic life coupled with any lingering anxieties over the pandemic are not making your job of writing a packing list any easier. Trust me, I get it. I’ve been there.
Even if you have sat down to write your packing list, you might find the task overwhelming. There’s lots of advice out there about what you should and shouldn’t include.
At my first author conference, I fit everything I needed for my author table—books and all—in a single carry-on suitcase. (Where did my clothes go? Rolled up and stuffed in my backpack, cuddling up to my laptop.)
Yes, it can all fit in one suitcase, people! Read on to find out how!
Your Books
Unless you have a new release coming out just in time for a conference, order your books now. If you are just starting out, ten of each of your books is a safe starting point.
There are two big benefits to ordering now instead of waiting for conference time. One is that you now have the luxury to spread out those orders, so for friends like me who are strapped for cash, you can budget accordingly. The other benefit is that there will be a guarantee that you have at least most of if not all of your books with you. You do not want to be the author panicking in the hotel lobby because Amazon just emailed you that your books will be arriving later than you planned.
And, if you have books, you’ll need something to display them. I found those little silver displays at a Dollar Tree in the picture frames section, but you can no doubt find something similar at Michael’s or wherever you shop that caters to hobbyists.
If you have a friend with a 3D printer, they might be willing to print you little plastic stands in a color that suits your genre or author brand! No friend like that? Try googling around—there are bound to be local businesses or libraries that also offer 3D printing near you or someone you know. Or maybe a techy college student on Craigslist would be willing to help you out, since many colleges and universities have 3D printers now.
More Than One Way to Take Payment
I will not be getting into the ins and outs of selling at conferences when it comes to taxes and all that jazz here, but I can tell you a few ways to take your payments to keep tracking easier.
Physical Money
Some readers will come with lots of cash, and you will have to make change for those readers. Calculate your prices ahead of time so that they work out to nice, even numbers—no dealing with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters!
You might also want to consider keeping a tiny notebook and pen wherever you store your change to keep track of purchases and inventory. This will help you later when you’re making decisions about how many books you should buy to optimally restock.
Digital Money
Other readers will come with absolutely no cash, and will want to make payments online. Be prepared for them, too! I had a little (really, too small) “menu” made—you can see it right there in the center—with a QR code that took readers to a variety of payment methods: PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App, plus a link to see my prices more closely and a link to my merch store.
You can do something similar yourself! A cheap picture frame and a printed-out custom QR code—QRCode Monkey offers the most customization I’ve found for free—are all you need. As for which link to create a QR code for, if you don’t have the ability to change your author website, there are many, many options now for creating “link-in-bio” type sites—like Milkshake, Linktree, Carrd, and even Canva—that allow you to make one-page website that can take readers where they want to go.
(Pssst! No author website? We have a course for that!)
A Way to Capture Readers’ Information
Here’s a secret: this is the real reason you want to attend conferences. It’s the networking and the greeting readers. Selling books is nice, but building relationships with potential readers who are genuinely interested in you is even better. That’s why it’s so important to capture email addresses, especially in this age of rising and falling social media giants.
Pen and Paper
I have personally seen several authors forget a pad of paper and pens for readers to sign up to their newsletter. You never want to be the one making a #TargetRun for supplies on the busiest kind of day in the author career.
Truthfully, you don’t need anything fancier than a legal pad and a handful of cheap pens. But if you want something a little more on-brand, you can use Canva or your favorite word processor to create a sign-up page with your author logo at the top, using the fonts and colors associated with your brand, or even create multiple columns to ask readers for additional info, like their birthday.
Of course, if you choose to go the pen and paper route, make sure to snap a picture of your sign-up page every few hours and also at the end of the day. Go the extra mile and upload the pictures to a private folder in a cloud storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox. You don’t want to lose those email addresses!
Digital Capturing
If you have a tablet of your own—or if you can convince your family that they won’t miss it for a few days—you can simply hand it to a reader for them to sign up to your newsletter directly from your website, or direct them to a special sign-up page you create that tags them as being someone you met at an event.
But this does involve handing it over, so you will need to take that into account. Get a dependable case, and pack lots of tech-safe disinfecting wipes.
If you do decide to go for it, one major upside to using a tablet is that you can also use it to have your book trailers play on a loop and draw readers in. Don’t have a book trailer? You can always make your own, and lots of creatives like myself make them.
Tablecloth & Decor
Now, I am a last-minute sort of gal. So my half-tablecloths you see up there are actually, like, scarves or something from Bullseye’s Playground at Target. As a matter of fact, most of what you see on my table was either from Bullseye’s Playground (the cakestands holding up the mugs, the little vases) or from Dollar Tree (the pens, the half-gold glass holding the pens).
Do you see those white roses I have? Those were made from pages of an unsellable copy of one of my books, and I received quite a few compliments on them! And when it came time to pack up the table, I was happy to give away my little flowers to anyone who was eyeing them. Not only did that lighten my load going home, but it also ensures that those few people remember me down the line.
When it comes to budget-friendly decor, it pays to get creative!
Coming soon: a blog post on how authors of any genre can spruce up their author table decor—without breaking the bank! Make sure you’re following us (@writersatelier) everywhere to make sure you don’t miss it!
The Swag
Paper Swag
Also referred to as “flat.” Business cards. Bookmarks. Trading cards. Anything made of paper and that readers can take with them. This is the least expensive swag to make, but also the easiest for readers to forget or toss with a shrug. If you can put a creative twist on an old favorite—I made colorable bookmarks, for example, along with ones that allow space for taking notes—that readers find interesting, these could still be a viable option for you.
Physical Swag
Giving something to readers that they walk away with and keep is yet another way to stick in readers’ minds. These can be as small as pieces of candy and as big as custom water bottles.
And I get it—physical swag is expensive. You may decide to forego the physical swag altogether in favor of paper swag, but a nice compromise might be offering a few nice pieces of merch to give away. I use the FreePrints family of apps for exactly this purpose.
My best advice—whether you’re giving away a few pieces of swag or going all-out—is to make your swag (a) useful, (b) memorable, and (c) cool. Yes, all three if you can manage, but two out of three ain’t bad, either. If in doubt, poll your readers or poll the event attendees (as long as the organizer is cool with it) and ask what kinds of swag they’d like to see from authors.
I LOVE this! So helpful! Thank you so much!!!