STEINBACH MALL BOOK FAIR

     Well, another excursion selling books directly is over. This one wasn’t nearly as brutal as last week’s Horrorcon, which was effectively 15 hours. This one ran from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, at the Steinbach Clearsprings Mall. So eight hours, plus two hours travel back and forth and set up.

     Some background – Steinbach is a town, mostly Mennonite, about 45 minutes out from Winnipeg. Population about 20,000, it’s sustained by local agriculture, and feeding off of Winnipeg’s commerce – it’s the place for car dealerships for instance.

Clearspring Mall is a fairly active mall on the outskirts of Steinbach. Main tenant is a Sobeys, it’s got a mix of stores. A lot of malls are dying, but this a fairly lively shopping center.

     Authors of Manitoba is a local writing organization driven by perky little human dynamo, Casia Schreyer. Casia is from Steinbach, hence the Authors event at the Clearspring mall.

     Honestly, I had my doubts. I’ve come to appreciate that there’s an entire culture or industry of these small vendors – not just writers and book sellers, but soap makers, jewelry makers, knick knack sellers, clothing sellers, 3D printer afficionados, crafts-people of every possible stripe and variety. And there’s literally a circuit of flea markets, church bake sales, small collectors conventions, local festivals, street parties, etc. etc., where people gather, and where these vendors show up.

     Some of them are incredibly elaborate – lovingly crafted handmade stuff, big detailed booths that are practically a cottage with roofs, signage, all kinds of stuff. Some… are selling knick knacks and junk from Temu. It’s all over. Mostly, there’s some degree of personal investment.

     I don’t really wholly understand it all. Do people make an actual living at this? I’ve come to think that at least some do, although it feels like a tough way to do it. For some, it’s a labour of love. For some it’s a hobby of sorts for a little extra money to supplement income or just get out of the house.

     I think actually, there’s scope to examine these people and this interesting little culture of travelling vendors. Someone should do a Master’s Thesis or something.

     Anyway, so Casia organizes one of these events at the Steinbach mall. It turns out there were about fifty-something vendors. I was impressed. About half of them were writers by my count – there’s the usual jewelry makes, knitters, specialists. We all occupied two rows of tables, down the two main wings of the mall.

     Like I said, I had doubts. It didn’t seem to me that an Author’s event like this was, in and of itself, going to attract much of a crowd. With something like the Horror Con, or Collectible Cons, or a Science Fiction Convention like Keycon, people are going there for the thing itself. You get a table or booth there, you know people are coming for that.

     This? I didn’t see us getting much more than regular Mall traffic. It might attract a few extra people. But not that many, particularly considering its in an outlying town of 20,000 rather than in the city of a Million.

      But I thought, what the hell. Give it a try. Who knows.

So how did it go? Well, it was very well organized. As I expected, it felt like mostly the regular mall traffic, with a scatter of people that seemed to come specifically for the event.

      I sold ten books – I don’t have enough reference to say whether that’s good or bad, or how to measure it. Sold ten, I had twenty titles out.

I wandered around a bit when I had a free moment. I think the woman next to me sold a dozen – she does Viking Time Travel Romance, four or five books out. A guy named Lucas, who had a trilogy that was basically Star Wars meets Buffy sold sixteen. Another guy with three books sold seven. A couple of tables sold nothing. A couple of women I talked to – beautiful table, colour postcards, nice art, sold a dollar eighty in merch, after almost eight hours, they were completely dispirited, I spent some time trying to cheer them up and reassure them – there was really absolutely nothing wrong with their display table or books. Luckily, while I was there a very nice man came up and bought a book, so they had at least one sale. The table opposite me packed up and left early. A friend of mine, Ian seemed to feel disappointed with his sales, but we didn’t get a number.

      So with all that, I still don’t know what the expectation should be. Selling ten books, I covered my table costs and then some, printing costs, gas to and from Steinbach. In that sense, made a profit. In another sense – two people manning a table for twenty hours, pus all the amortized time and investment.

      I think my display was good. On the other hand, the guy who sold sixteen had practically no display at all. Displays varied a lot, I’m not sure how much this correlated to sales. Intuitively, it feels like a more elaborate or impressive display should earn sales. I don’t know for sure.

      Did I have too many titles out? Would I have sold more if I’d had fewer books on display – say three or four, to focus attention? Or did having a lot of titles attract people? Beats me.

      But, overall, I’m satisfied for now.

      Best sellers were the Mermaid’s Tale with three and Drunk Slutty Elf two. Also moving were Axis of Andes, New World War, Dawn of Cthulhu, Elf and Zombies, and the Time Traveler.

       Those numbers are statistically too small to draw inferences, but I think over time there’s an emerging pattern. Certain titles sell well generally, certain titles are very dependent on the audience present. Not really rocket science, I know.

     I only gave away one book this time – one of my first sales was to a little old lady, some frail grandmotherly type. She bought a book, The Mermaid’s Tale, and as we were doing the transaction, she talked about living off her CPP and Old Age, so for her to spend money on a book of mine – that’s a huge compliment!

     But then, she’s someone’s grandmother, on a fixed income, and I started to have an attack of conscience. So the next time she came by, I gave her a free book – just told her to pick anything at all.

     This isn’t the first time I’ve given free books to sweet old grannies, on fixed incomes, with limited mobility.

     Honestly, I should never do a table at a Senior’s Complex, because if I do, those grannies are going to clean me out.

     The audience was a little different from the Horrorcon. I guess that’s obvious. One thing there was that mostly I sold books one at a time. On the other hand, of the people that bought – three of them bought more than one book – these three represented seven book sales – definitely motivated readers, likely invested. A fourth was on the verge of buying a second. Again, numbers too small to draw statistical inferences, but maybe an indicator of situational behaviour. It’s enough of a flag there that I’d watch for a pattern.

     Regarding purchase behaviour, minimal pattern. Some people bought right away. Some looked and kind of got hooked. Some went away and came back.

     The best one was a young woman – total arts type, who showed up with her friends, then later on showed up again, and hovered, and then came back and hovered some more, zeroing in on a couple of books.

     It was so peculiar, it really felt like that kind of cautiousness/desire sort of come close/back off you might see with a hungry stray cat or dog, wanting that food you’ve left out, but worried about your presence.

     I offered her the two fifteen dollar books she seemed fixated on for twenty. I didn’t mind giving a discount.

She was still really nervous and tentative. So finally, I took one book from her, put it back, put the book that interested her most in her hands, and said “Okay, tell you what. Take this book, and go find someplace comfortable to sit with it for however long you want – twenty minutes or half an hour even. Go ahead and read it. If you really like it, then come back and buy it. If it doesn’t work for you, just bring it back. It’s all cool.”

     I figured the worst that might happen is she wouldn’t come back at all. And I dunno, if she enjoyed it enough to abscond with it, or if she was broke and couldn’t afford it but really wanted it… why not? I wasn’t going to sweat it.

     Sometimes you have to trust people. And honestly, I’m not going to slam someone ever if they really really wanted it. If it turned out she fell desperately in love with the book, and the two of them ran off to Greece together to be happy, and I never got paid…   C’est l’amour.

     Anyway, ten minutes later, she was back, bouncing like a happy puppy, definitely wanting the book. So she bought, I autographed and she want away thrilled.

      It made me happy.

      If she’d wanted both, she could have probably bargained me down to a two for one sale. I loved her enthusiasm, the sheer fascination engagement she had for the writing.

     Also notable was Fisher Lavell, a fellow vendor. She came to visit me a few times – she showed me her books, told me all about them and being shortlisted for awards, came back and showed me another work in progress and her son’s artwork. For some reason, unknown to me, she seemed to think my opinion had value? But I know what it’s like to write, to be proud of it, and just to want to show it to someone, to talk about it – to assert validity or just existence and to be validated. I understood.

      Hell, back when I started self-publishing print books (not too long ago) I was totally thrilled, I’d run around giving away my print books to practical strangers, I gave it to dealers at conventions – it was my way of saying “Look! Look! I’m a real writer! Here’s a real book! A Physical book! I made it!” I think I probably gave away a couple of hundred copies – I was hungry for any kind of validation. So yeah, I understood.

     So anyway, sitting there at the table for eight hours, from ten am to six pm, the challenge is boredom. I sold ten books to six people. Even if I spent twenty minutes on each buying customer (I didn’t), that’s still a lot of downtime.

     There was time spent on chatting up potential customers who didn’t buy. Factor them in, still a lot of downtime.

     So I watched.

     Remember my recurring nightmare of doing a table and having thousands of people walking by refusing to make eye contact? Yep, here it was. Not thousands, but easily a few hundred.

     I entertained myself by cataloguing them. Turns out, there’s several kinds of ways in which people make it past your table trying to avoid the possibility of you selling them something.

     First there’s the tunnel visioners. They ignore you completely, walking with forced casualness, eyes straight ahead, as if they were walking down an empty tunnel. It’s like they’re going “Pretend he doesn’t exist… Pretend he doesn’t exist… Pretend he doesn’t exist”

    There’s the glancers – as they approach, their eyes flicker towards your display, checking to see if there’s anything that might attract them, and then resolutely looking straight ahead.

    There’s the side eyes, oriented straight ahead, but checking you out intensely from the corners of their eyes. They’re thinking maybe you have something interesting, probably not, but they don’t want to get snared into a sales pitch.

    There’s the thousand yard stares – like they just came out of Vietnam, they look at you and your display, but they don’t register. They see through you, their eyes focusing on some point beyond. “Books… A book killed my whole squadron over Macho Grande” “Over Macho Grande?” “Ill never got over Macho Grande.”

    Then there’s the fussbudgets – they’re messing with their phone, or their kids, or their purse. They glance apologetically as they walk past, maybe even a nervous smile. It’s “oh you seem nice, but I’m so busy, I’m sorry I can’t stop.”

    The best one, was this father and daughter that literally seemed to press themselves up against the wall, sidling past, like they were on a ledge over a lava pit. They seemed almost terrified, like book cooties were going to get them.

    Yeah, sad isn’t it. Still, in that situation, it’s hard to read a book, or scroll on your phone, just the constant movement of people, and the prospect that at any moment you can be called into action drags on your attention. So I just amused myself people watching.

     I don’t think you can be too aggressive with this. It intimidates casual strollers, I suspect that calling out, or too much eye contact intimidates – feels like I’d be trying to pull them into a relationship they’re not sure they want.

     Instead, I tried to let the display do the work, and supplemented with costume – top hat, trench coat. The idea was to passively attract the gaze, rather than aggressively engage and potentially provoke. At least, that’s my working theory of how to do this.

     Of course, once I did have the gaze, that spark of interest, when they stop to take a look, that’s when I sprang into action – if they were orienting on a book, I’d just let them – smile vaguely, not quite make eye contact, give it a moment or two to see what they’d do, and if appropriate, say something about the book or mention similar titles.

    If they weren’t zeroing in on a particular book, I’d pluck a card from the top hat, presenting with a flourish, and go into shtick.

    “You can touch them. They don’t mind. In fact, they actually kind of like it. They like to be touched, to be held, to be opened. They enjoy being fondled. So feel free.”

    “Except that one.” I’d point to a random book on the stand. “That one bites. Don’t touch that one.”

That was one of my faves, but I had a handful of shtick’s, whatever seemed best for the occasions. The point is, to come across friendly and fun, less a book seller and more a pal or a confidante.

     Or at least, that’s what I was trying for. Who knows – maybe Steinbach is now full of stories about the “weird creepy guy in the top hat.”

You can never really be sure how something is going to come off – what you think is cool can turn out to be clownish.

     Oh and my best shtick, no one even paid attention to! I had a price list display, it red:

     Maybe the display cared needs to be bigger?

     At some point, you just have to relax and have a little fun.