I always appreciate the opportunity to meet people face-to-face, discuss my work with them, and possibly sell them a book, so I quickly sent in my registration when a fellow author told me about the Jeffersonville Local Author Fair. The fair took place at the Destination Outlets shopping mall located off I-71 some 40 miles southwest of Columbus. This was the first such event where I set up shop outside with about a dozen other authors. (There were indoor spots, too, but those had all been taken by the time I registered.) Fortunately, I managed to put my table under the eaves of a Kate Spade store, and thus avoided the sun’s wrath.

Things got off to a slow start. The fair started at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, but the first people to come through the mall didn’t seem interested in buying books. It wasn’t until noon that shoppers began to take a close look at the authors’ tables. I followed my strategy of marketing Fast-Pitch Love to people with sports logos on their clothing, but that didn’t work especially well. What did work was discounting the book to just $3/copy. Since the book’s publisher, Clean Reads, had gone out of business, I felt that was a proper step. In the end, I sold six copies, leaving me with only nine for future book fairs. Obviously, it’s time to either find a new publisher or go the self-publishing route again.

I wasn’t the only Columbus-based author at Jeffersonville; my friend and fellow Write-to-Publish critique group member Charles O’Donnell set his table up next to mine. It was a good thing he did, because I needed to borrow his pen to sign my books after my own pen went dry. Charles has authored several techno-thrillers, including Shredded and Shade, which are part of a series. He told me the third book, Univirtual, is in the editing stage. I was glad to see him making several sales of his own at the fair.

Along with the six copies of Fast-Pitch Love, I also sold two of The Bullybuster. One went to Darian Rowles, another author at the book fair. Darian has published a self-help book entitled Uncork Your Life, which is designed to guide a reader toward becoming the person he or she was “meant to be.” Lessons learned from her own struggles in life represent a big part of Darian’s message. Darian had me autograph The Bullybuster to her son, Bransen. This young man had evidently been a bully victim himself, so I made sure to add my usual inscription “Down with bullies” to my autograph.

As I noted, there were a dozen or so other authors outside with me and even more inside the mall, but aside from Charles and Darian, I didn’t interact with too many of them. A listing of fair participants showed they covered a wide variety of genres: horror, romance, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, Christian, and middle grade. I apparently was the only YA writer. I should mention one other person I met — Rebecca Benston, the owner of Higher Ground Books and Media. Now that Clean Reads has gone out of business, I need a new publisher for Fast-Pitch Love. Higher Ground may fit the bill, although I’ll likely start by exploring publishers who specialize in YA.

When I shut down operations at 4:30, I felt satisfied with the day’s results. In addition to the eight book sales, I passed out a few Bullybuster bookmarks and at least one set of robot stickers. Of course, given the price of gasoline, almost any event that requires road travel will cost more money than it brings in. The current price of $5/gallon is more tragic than Hamlet, more shocking than Frankenstein’s monster, and scarier than Pennywise.

Closing