As I wrote earlier this week, I could be found in Artist Alley at SVScon this weekend. This was my first author appearance ever and not only was it a great experience, it was quite a weird one too!
–
I hadn’t really expected my first appearance as an author to involve a guy wearing a trench coat and a horse mask getting butchered with an axe by the Joker. But I guess things never turn out quite as you imagined them…
I was sharing a stand with my friend and cover designer Hans Christian, where I was selling paperback copies of Resounding Echo as well as posters of some of the Angel’s Voice artwork. We had a great table in the middle of the Artist Alley area, and a great atmosphere provided by the Apocalypse Roleplay stand behind us. Nothing like smoke, loud metal music and stray foam bullets flying past you every once in a while!
I had expected to be less than busy, but the interest for my books surpassed my wildest expectations. Not only was it rarely empty in front of our table, I got to talk to a great amount of people about not only my own writing, but about being an indie in general. Ebooks are not that common in Denmark yet, and independent author is not a term even used, so many people found my publishing process interesting.
I had completely underestimated the attention I would gain, and before I knew it, I had run out of books! Even the posters almost got sold out, leaving me with an almost empty table. I will definitely have to prepare myself better for next time!
It has been such a great experience, and I’m already itching for the next time I have the possibility to do something like it again! Seeing sales numbers on a screen or getting a Tweet from a reader feels good, but it’s nothing like speaking about your writing face-to-face with interested people or being able to smile at someone when you hand them a physical copy of your book. It feels great and gives only satisfaction and excitement, without the feelings being followed by constant thoughts on how to market your work to keep the sales up or how you have to go through the next edit of the book. It’s a purely positive feeling that lasts much longer than an increase in your Amazon sales report will ever do.
I hope to repeat the success next year as well, and I’m already looking into if it will be possible for me to be at J-Popcon in February too. I would love to hear from some of the people I talked to, so feel free to leave a comment and share some of your own SVScon-stories!
—