This past weekend, on the 11th, I took part in the Greater Austin Book Fair, a brand new event held at the (pretty schmancy) Central Library here in Austin. I had a good time, sold/traded some books, got some free beer, met some folks. It was my first time attending anything like that, so I thought I’d just jot down some thoughts/reflections here, a kind of after-action report.

First off, the library system here in Austin is really incredible, and what a cool thing that they had the funds, space, and gumption to put something like this together. In particular, the whole thing was free for me – no tabling fee, no registration, free beer and appetizers for the writers the night before, free lunch/snacks/coffee the day off, hell they even validated parking, something almost unheard of in downtown Austin these days. Also, for it being the first time they’ve put this thing on, they did a really nice job – lots of volunteers, everything worked like it was supposed to. Good work all around!

The organizing principle of the whole shebang was to get writers from the “Greater Austin” area involved, which included Travis, Hays, and Williamson counties, and it seems like they held to it. About 80 or so authors were involved, and they were all central Texans, as far as I could tell. It’s a neat idea, and really speaks to our library’s commitment to the whole “community” thing. As an approach, I think it worked really well – people who wandered in seemed to really enjoy the fact that they were, by default, welcomed.

What that produced, in terms of the books on display, was a pretty eclectic floor. Graphic novels, children’s picture books (a surprisingly lot of these!), YA, all alongside the full sweep of adult fiction, literary, genre; it was all roughly spatially organized with similar stuff close together, but it did result in some kind of funny interactions. For instance, a lot of people would come off of the historical/speculative fiction folks next to me and then get spooked out by my books; I had several people say that the covers to both Toadstones and Night Fears were TOO scary, which just speaks to the skill and care that Malarkey Books and Paradise Editions lavished on them.

Made me realize, though, that there’s probably a pretty big difference between the Greater Austin Book Fair and a more focused, genre-specific event. Had to spend a lot of time orienting people within the genre itself, something that might be easier if everybody comes in with the idea of lookin’ at spooky books already. Then again, you might be just exchanging one set of explanations for another, in that in a genre-defined setting, I’d have to work to highlight why THESE books deserve attention among all the other spook-em-ups there. We’ll see, I’m planning on doing a very specifically horror-genre convention later this summer.

It was also interesting for me, because I’ve never been to a non-academic conference before – the biggest difference is in the way panels are done, which was kind of odd in that there was just sort of a broad topic, with a mediator asking a few questions and then the panelists kind of just going down the line and answering them. Maybe that’s atypical and just the way this one worked out, but I feel like it could be done better. Not necessarily people coming in to give presentations, but maybe something more structured like a conversation. I dunno, it’s tricky, and I have to admit that I’m also not ever *really* all that interested in hearing writers talk about writing, so maybe that was just on me.

I suppose I should get down to brass tacks, thought: how many books did I sell? Grand total of seven, or about 1/hr for the whole day. Three Toadstones and four Night Fears, and I swapped four (two of each) to folks for copies of their books. I brought twenty of each, which meant I hauled a lot back, but that’s okay… although if anybody out there wants a copy of either (or both) of them, I’d be happy to sell em for, lets say, $20 each? Feel free to shoot me an email at geoliminal [at] gmail [dot] com if that’s the case!

What did I learn about conventioning? First off, HUGE thanks to Lauren Bolger (buy her book, Kill Radio!) who, as a veteran of many conventions, gave me so solid advice: in particular, getting some bookstands and printing out papers with book info and QR codes on ’em and such was extremely helpful. In the future, I think I’ll have some cards printed up too, mostly so I could hand over my contact info to other writers I met more easily.

But, all in all, I had a lot of fun, and I’d encourage people to attend these sorts of things, if they can – I don’t think they’re any kind of career-making event, but this one was fun and I’d definitely do it again.