Peschel Press Newsletter February 2023

Welcome back! The year is still shiny new and full of possibilities.

We did our first two events of the year and the results were mixed. On Saturday, 4FEB23, we were part of a sci-fi/fantasy program at the Hershey Public Library. As sometimes happens, not one person attended. So, for two hours, Bill and I discussed the writing biz with Tory Gates, Patricia Jackson, and R.A. Fischer.

We could have packed our tents and gone home but this was a rare chance to talk about the business of writing, marketing, editing, and other interesting things with fellow authors. Usually, we’re all so busy at an event that no one has time to get to know each other better.

This is called making lemons into lemonade. If you do many book events, this will happen. Not one person will stop to chat. Use the time wisely. Bring a notebook and draft out that next story. Edit pages. Talk to the other writers and learn how they do it. This is not wasted time.

Our second event was on Saturday, 11FEB23 at Love Is in the Air. We were fairly busy. We sold a few books. I talked to many potential readers. I did a reading from The Vanished Pearls of Orlov to three people. Bill took pictures and then vanished into the café to proof pages from Agatha Christie, She Watched. I was just busy enough that I couldn’t leave my table and chat up the other writers. This is a normal result and that’s okay too!

We’ve been busy preparing for Sunday, 19 February 2023. Bill and I will be at the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop at 2 PM discussing the film versions of Agatha Christie’s detectives. This will be a 1 ½ hour program with another ½ hour for questions. I’m told 23 people have signed up. Will they attend? Will they listen? Will they possibly buy a book? We’ll know Sunday evening. We don’t know now. We have to do this on faith.

On Thursday, 27 April through Sunday, 30 April 2023, we’ll be at Malice Domestic, the cozy mystery convention. We’ll debut Agatha Christie, She Watched! If you’re a mystery fan, Malice is the place to meet your tribe. This will be our third Malice but our first one as members of Sisters in Crime. I expect to talk to loads of people. Will I sell books? I’m sure I will, but I won’t know the totals until Sunday evening.

We have a brand new event for us on Sunday, 7 May 2023. We’ll be part of Forty Elephants! This is a vintage & handmade market for artisans, taking place at Mount Hope Winery outside of Manheim. This is where the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire takes place every year from late August to Halloween. These folks are serious about vintage: everything there needs to be 80’s or older. We fit into the handmade category because we write our books. It’s a good bet that we’ll be the only indie writers at the show. It’s all day and it’s free.

On Saturday, 13 May 2023, we’ll be at Hershey Art Fest somewhere in the sea of canopies wrapped around the Cocoa Beanery and The Englewood Barn. Yep, this time the weather will cooperate and it will be a beautiful, sunny day.

Book News

Agatha Christie, She Watched is nearing the homestretch. Bill and I are doing our best to have printed copies in hand for Malice Domestic. We don’t just want to debut AC, SW at Malice. We want to submit it for an Agatha nomination for 2024 in the nonfiction category. Keep an eye out for our website, Instagram, and Facebook pages for its arrival date.

Escape to HighTower got pushed behind Agatha Christie, She Watched but it too will appear before summer. I’ve near the end with the edits and it won’t take long, once AC,SW is done to get it laid out and published.

Teresa’s Advice About Doing Craft Shows

Since it’s still early in the year and you’re making your plans, now’s the time to consider if you want to do craft shows like Forty Elephants or Hershey ArtFest.

If you’ve got trade paperbacks (you do, right?), table, chairs, canopy (vital!), all the other stuff, and you’re willing to chat up total strangers for a ten-hour day, then you can do these events. The key point is that arts and crafts shows are not book festivals.

When people attend a book event, whether it’s author day at the local library or the Gaithersburg Book Festival in late May (we’ve applied and don’t know yet if we’ll be accepted), they expect to see books and writers. It’s a given that they’re readers. Or, friends and family are readers and they tag along, looking for gifts that will be welcomed.

This is not true of arts and crafts shows. No one expects to see books or buy books at a craft show. Folks attend them to look at neat stuff, buy jewelry or hand-crocheted sweaters or home décor. This is true whether you’re at the annual 6-hour long Kiwanis club spring fling, held in a local church’s basement with 25 vendors, or you’re at a much bigger show like the Pennsylvania Christmas Show which lasts for five days and you must be there every day from open to close.

Let me repeat this: no one plans to buy books at a craft show. The only kind of book a visitor expects to see is a hurt book repurposed into a table ornament.

But it’s quite possible to sell books at craft shows. I do. But even more than a book festival, craft shows demand that you bring your A-game if you hope to sell anything when the vendors around you have gorgeous jewelry or nifty wall art or fabulous vintage clothing. You’re not competing against other authors in your genre or outside your genre. You’re up against the world which isn’t interested in reading.

This is true no matter how big or small the event is, or whether it’s juried or not.

Juried shows are where you have to submit photographs or examples of your work. Juried shows want to keep out Chinese-made Disney knockoffs and anything you’d normally see at the thrift shop or yard sale. They don’t want junk.

Even a non-juried show may ask you for photos simply because they don’t want to get 50 jewelry vendors and nothing else. Arts and crafts shows are more successful with a wide mix of artisans to draw in more shoppers.

Whether juried or not, a craft show may not accept you because the organizers can’t wrap their heads around the idea of a writer at their show. But you won’t know unless you apply.

Like book events, craft shows have limited slots available for vendors and those tables fill up fast. If there’s a show you want, sign up for their Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook feeds (whichever social media you use) so you know right away when applications are being accepted.

The easiest way to find a craft show is to look around in your area and see what’s happening. A local newspaper will have advertisements for upcoming shows. The local radio station will run announcements as will local TV stations. Ask around everywhere you go. Look for banners and signs outside the fire department or the church. You won’t have time to apply but you can visit the show, see if you think you might be able to sell books, and talk to the organizers about being put on their mailing list for next year.

This can be really important. Like book festivals, craft shows often skew in a particular direction. Pre-Covid, we did a show at Indian Echo Caverns. We sold six books and just about paid for our space. It was a long day. But if we wrote YA or children’s books, we would have sold out. That Fall Harvest festival was kid central. There must have been 5,000 kids there, doing kid activities all day with their fond parents and grandparents shepherding them and happy to buy educational materials. We had the wrong books for that show and we didn’t go back. I heard about the show, applied, and was accepted. What I should have done was attended it as a visitor first to see if our books would work with their audience.

This means that you’ll visit a show this year and, if the show suits you in terms of price, date, and location, that you’ll apply next year. This works very well if you write series books with a theme that matches the event. Thus, if you write quilt mysteries, apply to be a vendor at the quilt show. You’ll be the only writer there. The visitors might be thrilled to see themselves and their passion in print and your sales may thrill you.

But, since no one expects to buy books at a craft show, it’s even more important to have a bravura display that shows off your books and their genre. You must dress and behave professionally or you’ll be ignored. Reread all my back newsletters on how to behave, your uniform, your signs, etc. As always, be friendly, helpful, and know the locations of bathrooms and food trucks. It also really, really helps to have a series in a popular subgenre, like contemporary paranormal smalltown romance. A very niche book, like our 223B Casebook series, is too niche for almost any craft show and so we no longer haul them with us. They don’t sell.

Be sure to read an event’s FAQ and their application form carefully. It will spell out cancellation fees, expected behavior, insurance requirements, and whether the show goes on, rain or shine. If you don’t like their terms, save your money and time. Don’t send in the application.

Craft shows rarely cancel because of the weather. We’ve done this for years and only once was a show cancelled for rain (last year’s monsoon did in Hershey ArtFest). Normally, you huddle under your canopy in the rain and try to keep your goods dry and clean and pray for the occasional hardy shopper. You *must* have a waterproof 10 by 10 canopy with side panels and weights to hold the canopy in place in the wind. A lightweight picnic table cover won’t do. If you don’t want to spend the $$$$, don’t do outdoor craft shows.

Our canopy, side panels, and weights ran us about $400 but that was years ago. It would cost more now. We had to re-waterproof it because the factory finish had gradually worn out.

Do not expect to sell books. Maybe you will. Probably, you won’t sell enough books to cover your vendor fee. Or, you may sell nothing. Even more than book events, craft shows are publicity for your brand, marketing experience, and they let you practice your book pitch. You probably won’t meet anyone who knows you exist. That person who took a chance on your book is a new, potential fan.

Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you again in March.