I suppose I should put a bunch of exclamation points on that headline. Moderate success — between the five of us, we sold 48 books — is much better than it could have been. I’ll be doing this again at Capricon, and I expect I’ll have at least a few participants.
Like any good science fiction hero, when confronted with a problem, my answer is: “Gosh, we’d better go back to the lab and start inventing things!” In this case, the question is, how the heck do I sell my books?
Here’s what I’ve invented: four other writers I know and I are going to rent a table at Windycon (November 9-11 at the Westin Hotel in Lombard, Illinois). We’ll have a banner saying “5 Authors in Search of a Buck” and sell our books jointly. The other four authors are Phyllis Eisenstein, Mike Blake, Doug Rice and Ellen Anne Eddy.
Here’s the pitch: some of our books are self-published and some are commercial, but I’ve read books by all of these people and I can vouch for them. All of them have read at least some of the other books, as well. I’m hoping that gives us all credibility — we are all guaranteeing the quality of each other’s work.
(And if you’re shy about self-pub books — and who could blame you? — I offer this minimal, bottom-level guarantee: all of these books have been edited and proofread. If you don’t think you need that guarantee, you haven’t bought many self-pub books!)
Anyway, please stop by for a visit when you’re at the con!