Monday, August 14, 2017

Packing for Gen Con!

Damn, Gen Con starts on Thursday, and I'm driving out tomorrow night! It's an 11 hour trip by car for me, so I'm driving halfway tomorrow night (stopping somewhere in God-Knows-Where, Pennsylvania) and the other half Wednesday, then setting up. This is my third year, so I know the drill!

I'll be selling FOUR new titles at Gen Con this year. FOUR. Namely, Brave New Girls: Stories of Girls Who Science and Scheme (woohoo! new antho!), The Adventure of the Silicon Beeches (this one's a tiny novella, so it's easy to slip into other boxes), Love, Murder & Mayhem (grabbed a stack from Crazy 8 Press at Shore Leave!), and Starswept (making an early, soft-launch appearance).

Of course, this makes packing my car a headache. Last year, I was bringing the same few titles as the previous year, so I just looked at 2015's sales numbers and brought comparable numbers. This year, though... I'm at a loss. Instinct tells me to bring the same number of Artificial Absolutes that I sold last year, but I'll also have Starswept this time. I'm probably gonna push the latter more since it's new... does that mean I shouldn't bring as many of AA, since people who would have bough AA will probably grab Starswept instead? But what if Gen Con is more of a Firefly-style space adventure crowd than a teen sci-fi romance crowd, and they go for AA? HALP!

Fortunately, Paige Daniels has tons of copies of both Brave New Girls anthologies, leaving room in my car for me to bring both lots of AAs (in case I sell as many as last year) AND plenty of Starswepts (in case it turns out to be the big seller with its shiny foil letters). But next year, I'm going to have yet ANOTHER title... possibly two depending on how quickly I can write. I can't keep packing more books in my car under the philosophy of "I'd rather over-bring than run out"... I have a little sedan.

How do bookstores do this for a living?? Talk about writer problems!!

No comments:

Post a Comment