Signing Books at the Harlem Book Fair!!

On Saturday, I signed The Sciell and Chains of the Sciell at the Harlem Book Fair. It was awesome! I sold so many books.

The morning, however, didn’t start out so great. It was raining buckets. The fair’s outside. Fortunately, it stopped raining by the time the fair started.

That wasn’t the only irritation. Our table number was R79 but we didn’t see any numbers when we got there. The rain washed them away and no one working at the fair knew where R79 was. Fortunately, the first exhibitor we asked table number was R76. We figure things out soon after.

Our space didn’t have a table or chairs. Those were pretty easy to grab. We were supposed to have a tent but another author said she was told you had to pay extra for a tent. My mom/publisher had the agreement that said a tent was included.

Then, we were told they were out of tents even though people around us were still putting up recently acquired tents. They pulled some tents from Narnia and told us we might have to share. Those tents were only large enough for one table. We were looking at the real possibility of not having a tent. When that sun was up, it was up.

Fortunately, we eventually got a tent. Glorious shade!!

After that, it was smooth sailing. I was interviewed by someone working with the book fair!

The fair had a good flow of traffic and my book covers caught many eyes. The sun turned the blue on the cover into a nice spotlight. We talked to a lot people.

We put out flyers for The Marked Hosts and people ate those up. Well that cover worked! We almost ran out of my business cards.

Then, we had another irritation. The booth across from us started playing music, loud, At first, it made the atmosphere extra fun. Felt like a party. After about an hour, the music was a hammer to my temple.

It was just loud and drum-y and endless. On top of that, it was hot- even in the shade. I had to shout so people at our table could hear me which meant my throat was sore. Water and a mint fixed that right up. Too bad it couldn’t cure me of that music.

The fair had also author talks and workshops, but I was there to sign books. Didn’t do any walking around. Despite the annoyances, it was a fun days. It’s always nice to talk to people about writing and my books.

Check out my Facebook Page for more pics.

Similar Posts

  • Bublish Beginning

    Bublish is what  you make it. I talked about a book marketing site in the post Bublish Case Study. My free trial ended a couple of days ago. To recap, Bublish lets you publish excerpts of your work with Author Insights (bubbles) attached. You can share these bubbles on Twitter and Facebook. The book/bubbles are…

  • Characters and Careers

    A career molds how a character views the world. For instance, writers see stories in everything. I use job and career interchangeably because, in my series, the word career doesn’t exist. In The Sciell, I didn’t have to worry about careers. The characters lived in a small community. They didn’t have any career aspirations. Most…

  • Are Book Trailers Effective?

    If done right. Yes. People have shorter attention spans for consuming content online. Rarely do people read entire articles, let alone book summaries. Yes, I know books are meant to be read not seen. That’s like saying a good book sells itself, which, unfortunately, it doesn’t.  Back in the day, an author’s job was to write. That was it….

  • Hidden Magic

    Sometimes we get so used to seeing things we become immune to it’s magic. Over the weekend, family and friends from DC stayed with me. They wanted a taste of NY Christmas. I’ve been living in Brooklyn, NY for three years and two years before that I’d been attending school in NJ so, I visited…

  • Holding Your Book

    I love ebooks, but there’s nothing like holding your first book. I finally finished the layout of The Sciell and uploaded it into CreateSpace. I had to upload and re-upload it because first, my interior was rejected and then my cover was rejected likes three time. Finally, everything is done…almost.  I just got the proof….