Cons and Festivals

In fantasy and science fiction, many books are sold at conventions or festivals. One reason for this is that the majority of fantasy and science fiction novels are published by small publishers who are looking for direct access to the reading public – since they are often enough ignored by the big booksellers and wholesalers of the business. Fantasy and science fiction conventions and festivals offer a good opportunity to present books to exactly those people who do love fantasy and science fiction. It’s a very targeted way of addressing the right customers.

Self-publishers are no different. Those of us writers who market our works also cart our books from one event to the next, hoping to find enthusiasts who like to read and as a result like to buy books. This is not always easy because, of course, there are more books “assembled in one place” than even the  most dedicated reader can carry.

I’ve done it myself. My books have been published by big publishers (Heyne, Droemer Knaur), small ones (Feder und Schwert, Edition Roter Drache, Verlag Torsten Low etc.), and since the big publishers prefer younger (female) authors, I now also have a book table at cons and sell directly to fantasy fans who like my work or are simply interested in something new.

Last weekend I was at the FeenCon. FeenCon takes place in Bonn. I’ve gone there for years. I used to just give readings and present my new books. Today I also have a book table to offer my novels to interested readers.

Experience has shown that FeenCon is always great. People stroll around happily, often  in wonderful costumes (sometimes drenched in sweat, depending on the weather). And they buy books. The book is dying out, is an opinion propagated by the media. Readers are becoming fewer and fewer, they say. That tends to be true of course, unfortunately, but they are still among us: the enthusiasts, the ardent readers, the book collectors. They all moan a bit about the fact that they have no more room for books, that their SUB (stack of unread books) keeps growing and that the voluminous novels – and most fantasy novels are blunt objects with which you could slay your enemies – are hard to lug around. Nevertheless, these wonderful people buy books. They also buy SF or fantasy costumes, printed t-shirts, games and RPG accessories. And they like to talk to you.

I love talking to the reading public. Of course, I particularly enjoy talking to those who buy my books. But I also enjoy people who just come to the book table for a chat. They are great, imaginative people, not “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of ” the boring average, they are special and unique. Folks I can relate to. We all belong to the same “family” of people who prefer to read dragon sagas to reading balance sheets.

Speaking about balance sheets: you don’t get rich. If I were to calculate very carefully, I’d have to give it up: both driving on Cons and writing in general. But I love both, the one and the other. If a few books that people have enjoyed will be all that’s left of me after I have shuffled off this mortal coil is, that’s something.

Of course, all of us who write would like to be bestselling authors. But maybe you just have to be a bit more mainstream to appeal to the “average reader” and have to sell average ideas that don’t immediately scare off the big publishers who like things orderly and well placeable within what has been written before.

Okay, sour grapes to some extent. I’ve had my experiences with the book biz, not all of them good. But of course I wouldn’t say NO to a big publisher if they approached me and offered to make me rich and famous by applying a big marketing budget to one of my projects. After all, bestsellers are directly proportional to the marketing budget used for their publicity.

But that’s not likely to happen. And that’s why I went to FeenCon last weekend.

I had a great time.