This last weekend was my first festival I attended as an author. It was the Columbia River Author Festival held in Longview, WA at the Longview library, which was really nice because it was about 15 minutes away from my house. The library was very beautiful, the event was well-organized, and I even got to end the day with a walk through their rose garden. All in all, a storybook day.
I’ve been preparing for it for about a month. I rushed my second book to print so that I could have advanced copies. I got a bunch of business cards, postcards, bookmarks, posters and banners from Vistaprint (not a promotion, I just find them cheap and the quality is great). I had PayPal and Venmo things, I had books, I had pens, I had all the things I needed. But did I have all the things I needed?
Leading up to the day, I was a nervous wreck. On Friday I was still finishing up the video for my table display. I’d packed and unpacked and packed my suitcase of supplies a few different times. I’d worried and wondered and checked my lists so many times. I’d been working on my outfit for weeks. What look did I want? How should I do my hair?
I know, just be yourself. I was, in a way. I love dressing up in my kilt and boots, being the Celtic queen that I am. But this was my first time really presenting myself to the public and I wanted it to be just right.
I went on an emotional rollercoaster from almost having an anxiety attack to almost falling asleep in the hot tub because I was crashing off the adrenalin rush and went very zen. To having another anxiety attack the next morning as I was getting ready for the fair.
Somehow I slept Friday night, and was up bright and early on Saturday. Thankfully my partner David came with me to help me set up. The banner was not behaving and the cord was thirteen miles long, so trying to tie it and keep it straight by myself would have been a nightmare. As it was, I got a lot of compliments on my setup, so that made me feel pretty proud. There wasn’t anything I needed, and just a few tweaks I want to make for next time, like having a blank notebook to write things on (I got sooooo many amazing tips and tricks from talking to other writers) and getting stands to better show off my books.
There were a few things, that at least at this show, didn’t work. Like having candy. I think one person took a piece all day long. It’s like the day after Halloween at my house and my waistline doesn’t need it.
The show itself was very well put together, attracted a bunch of writers (about 40) from all different genres, and everyone was beyond wonderful and amazing. The library was absolutely beautiful, they supplied us with food and drinks (that is a note to ANYONE running a show, feed your people), and over all it was a really great, positive first show and it gave me not only the confidence but the drive to get myself out there more and go to more shows.
The best parts of the day:
I sold three books. That alone was pretty cool.
One lady came up and was excited when she saw the cover going “this is the one I was looking for”. I asked her how she had heard about it, and she said “I went through the list of authors and your’s was the one I was most interested in”.
I had a lot of compliments on my outfit.
A lot of people liked my newsletters that I had on the table. Although I’m still somehow stuck with a bunch of them.
I got to meet a lot of other writers from the area and had a bunch of fun networking.
There is one negative that came out of the show, but it’s not so much a knock on the organizers as a knock on writers in general. For people whose lives revolve around words and communicating stories/ideas/viewpoints, we are not amazing at communicating events. Almost every person who came to my table was either another writer who was at the festival, a friend of a writer who was at the festival, or a random library patron who had no idea that an event was going on.
There was no signage downstairs (we were on the second floor) saying “Author event upstairs”. The only signage at all was a small letter sized sign at the top of the stairs, and a letter sized poster on a billboard cluttered amongst other posters and signs. They did give us the poster ahead of time so that we could post it to all our socials, but we’re local writers. How much of a following do we have?
The kicker? I got home to find out that Clatskanie, the other little town right by me, was having an author festival that same weekend, had another author fair that same day, and I had absolutely zero idea even though I’m down in that town almost every week, and I’m on every Facebook page and group that’s associated with the town. No one in my local writing group knew about it. No one was even talking about it.
This was a free event. Everyone who came said it was a great event. How much greater could it have been had people actually known about it?
People say that the arts are dying, that readership is dying, that the written word is dying, that no one wants books anymore especially with the advent of AI. Yet at this event, it became clear that the exact opposite is true. People want human stories. They want human connection. They want imagination and histories and children’s books and all the things. They want them. They just have to know about them.
If we want things to grow, you cannot be a clique. You cannot just hope people hear about it and come. The want is there, but it’s being drowned out. You need to be the loudest thing in the room, and it doesn’t need to take a lot of time or money.
I get it. I HATE promoting myself. A) I’m an introvert. B) it takes time, effort and energy that I usually don’t have. C) I’m not into seeing myself on video.
But this was a no-brainer. You had posters. Have some printed signs saying “event upstairs”. Post it on Facebook/Substack/Twitter. Those are free to do. You already have the pages. Send it out to places in town, comic book stores, bookstores, other places. It was a free event. People are always looking for free things, even if it’s not their thing.
Again, this isn’t a knock. It was such a lovely event, it made me sad that more people didn’t get to experience it. It made me sadder when the common refrain I heard was “We had no idea an event was even going on”.
If we want writing contests, events, conferences to continue, we at least have to do the smallest things of communicating. The people are hungry, we just need to reach them.
Overall it was an amazing experience, and I can’t wait for the next one.
Have a great one, Kitty Kats!
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