Welcome to the Peschel Press newsletter for June 2022!
Bill here: Teresa has a long post below about our visit to the Gaithersburg Book Festival, so I’ll just add a few words about the status of our upcoming books:
“The Vanished Pearls of Orlov” and “Escape to HighTower”
The next two books in The Steppes of Mars series are being edited. Teresa’s doing the final pass on “Pearls” and I’m doing the first pass on “Escape.” We’re hoping to debut “Pearls” at Cupboard Maker Book’s Bookstore Romance Day (Aug. 20), and “Escape” at the Chocolatetown Book Festival (Oct. 1).
“Man Out of Time”
I’m reworking my long novella / short novel about an Elizabethan gents journey to contemporary New York City after I’m done editing “Escape.”
“Agatha Christie, She Watched”
If you’re following our Agatha Christie review page, you’ll see our progress on the book. I’ve been laying out the book as we go, so the editing / production time on this will be short. We have about 40 to 50 movies left We’re watching all of the British / American adaptations, but not all of the foreign ones, so we’re on track to finish watching by January/February 2023, with the book coming out soon after.
There are other books in the works, but these are the ones we’re focusing on now.
Now, back to Teresa!
In the April newsletter, I began talking about direct sales, branding, signage and such. I continued with May’s newsletter and here we are in June and I’ve only just begun. Direct sales is very, very different from selling via online ads. It’s got much more of a human element involved. It’s hands-on and in person. It’s reader by reader instead of thousands at a time.
You, the author, are on stage. Is that marketing? Or is it sales? Let’s get started.
We had a good show at Gaithersburg on Saturday, May 22, 2022. We sold books, met a lot of fellow authors, and talked to a constant stream of visitors. We did not meet a single person in Maryland who’d ever heard of us. Since we sold enough books to cover our booth fee, it was a sales success. Because we made direct contact with many people who bought a book or took a catalog, it was a marketing and outreach success.
I consider a day spent chatting up readers — even if they don’t buy — to be advertising. I hope that every person walked away with a positive image of Peschel Press. We weren’t quite tied to our booth (we weren’t that busy) but we were busy enough that we didn’t attend the many events the organizers arranged. We couldn’t. That’s something to keep in mind when planning a live event. It’s a job. It’s not recreation. You won’t have the time to wander aimlessly, seeing and tasting and chatting and experiencing. That pleasure is reserved for the guests.
A key takeaway: Have a partner at your booth! The bigger the event, the more you need a partner. A partner lets you use the toilet, get something to eat, take some pictures, fill out receipts, make change, and chat up another customer.
A partner means the cash box is *NEVER* left unattended. You might be able to afford a shoplifted book. You can’t afford losing the day’s take along with your draw.
“Huh?” you ask. “A draw?” “Draw” is a word I learned long, long ago when I was a cashier. It’s possible I’m remembering incorrectly but the word works for us. Your draw is the cash you keep on-hand in your cash-box to make change at an event. This is seed money. You don’t spend it. After an event, you replace it so it’s waiting in the cash-box for the next event. If you price your books at $15 each and pay the sales tax yourself, you need lots of $5 and some $1 bills. You may want a few $10s in case someone early in the day buys a book with a $50 bill. Keep your draw at an even number; $100 or $200 so when you count the take at the end of the day, you know exactly what to subtract when you match cash sales with receipts.
Despite several years of experience, we always learn something new at a show. Gaithersburg taught us several lessons.
Pay Attention to the Weather
It was swelteringly, record-breaking hot. We drank gallons of water, staying hydrated. That meant I (or Bill) left the booth throughout the day to refill our thermoses with free water supplied by the show organizers. Make sure you’ve got thermoses so you’ve got ready access to water. Your canopy will shade you but you can still get dehydrated or get heatstroke. This is another reason to do events with a partner.
Chocolate Melts
Our Hershey’s Kisses didn’t like the heat. Our bowl of mixed Kisses (bought at Chocolate World so I had specialty flavors) is a magnet and a conversation starter.
However, as the day got hotter, the Kisses began melting in their foil wrappers. After a few hours, we put them away under the table in deep shade. They deformed in the heat and developed chocolate bloom. They’re safe to eat but they don’t look pretty anymore. We’re eating them at home because we can’t hand them out to customers.
If I’d considered the heat, I would have brought far fewer Kisses. I would have also gotten ice from the hotel. Packing ice around the bowl of Kisses (a bowl within a bowl) would have helped them survive. I bought those Kisses for events, not to eat ourselves. I lose money when we eat them.
Cash flow matters
Writing is a business and cash flow matters. We attended Gaithersburg as a publisher. Our 10 by 10 space cost $200. If we’d applied as authors, we’d have spent $150 apiece. Bill and I both write, I write under two names, and we’ve got a much larger range of books than the typical author. We’re unusual and we’re slowly learning to take advantage of our name, Peschel Press. Do people ask us if we’re taking submissions? Yes, they do and the answer is always the same. No, not at this time but we’ll answer any questions you have about getting yourself into print.
So. A $200 entry fee with no guarantee of selling a single book. Add in a hotel room for Friday night, because we needed to set up between 8:15 and 8:45 a.m. I know my physical limitations. Getting up at 4:30 a.m. to go through the McDonald’s drive-through for breakfast followed by a 2-to-3-hour drive from Hershey followed by spending the day on my feet was too much.
If I want to break even, I need to sell enough books to cover my booth fee and my hotel fee. Add in dinner on Friday night, any food during the day, gas and tolls, and you’re looking at selling a lot of books just to break even. That doesn’t cover the cost of the books, nor does it cover our time. It also doesn’t cover the cost of our buying a book at Gaithersburg from another author (which we did).
Did I break even? No, but I came close! If we’d got subs for dinner instead of Indian food (a rare and delicious treat!) and didn’t buy another author’s book, we would have made it. Packing sandwiches from home for Friday’s dinner would have been a better choice. The hotel provided a free breakfast so we stuffed ourselves knowing that afterwards, it was Belvita breakfast biscuits for the day.
Consider Your Costs
You always need to consider your costs. You do not want to be paid exclusively in exposure bucks. You want real money to cover the event’s expenses. Getting your name out is helpful but name recognition won’t pay the mortgage.
It looked like many authors at Gaithersburg got paid with exposure bucks. At least one person did not sell a single book. He sat under a canopy for eight hours in the blazing heat and spent $150 for the privilege.
The author next to us sold his books (historic adventure aimed at a tween market) for $3 and $5 each. I have no idea how many copies he sold, but based on what I saw, it wasn’t many. I have even less of an understanding of how he broke even. I know how much it costs me to print my titles. We use a print-on-demand service. It’s more expensive on a per book basis than working with a printer, but we can buy fewer books.
We currently have 26 titles in our line. Multiply 26 titles by 3oo books apiece and that’s a huge pile of books that will then fill our living room and bonus room as we slowly, slowly, slowly sell them at events. That’s also a huge amount of money tied up in inventory. We don’t do that many events. I’ve got a fairly good idea of what I’ll sell. Thus, we use print-on-demand. It costs more per book but I order only what I think we can sell.
This author asked me at the end of the event if I thought it was successful. My answer was I wouldn’t know until I calculated my sales, my costs, and worked out how close I came to breaking even or even making a little money. He was … surprised is the best way to describe it. He was happy because he’d sold a few books and talked to a few people.
That’s fine but if you want to quit your day job and become a full-time author, you’ve got to get paid with real money and not just exposure.
Incremental Improvements
Another thing we learned at Gaithersburg was how to deploy our new stand-up banners and the back-of-the-canopy banner. The stand-up banners looked great! We bought two of them from VistaPrint. They’re double-sided, show our range, are much easier to carry, erect, and pack away than our old makeshift one.
They’re also less stable in the wind. We had to move both of them several times. We couldn’t block our neighbors, we couldn’t block pedestrian access, and we didn’t want them to fall over. They both ended up under the canopy with bungee cords holding them upright. The base, which worked perfectly in a hotel ballroom, didn’t work nearly as well outdoors on an uneven parking lot. That meant that only part of each banner was visible.
The back-of-the-canopy banner took some fiddling too. We adjusted, moved it, and rearranged the bungee cords until we got it hang reasonably straight.
It was worth buying the banners. They helped make our booth look great. We had one of the best-looking booths at Gaithersburg. Five years ago, we wouldn’t have.
So that’s Gaithersburg. Next month — assuming the universe doesn’t toss us another curve ball — I’ll write more about direct sales.
Thanks again for joining us! Writers need readers and we need all of you.