I’ve been dipping my toe into direct selling. What has come of this is that while the idea might be sound, my choice of markets isn’t. Oh well, you have to try. Artisan markets might appear to make sense on the face of it, as arty types will come along and be interested. My experience over three markets suggests not. Indeed, people veered away from my stall or blanked me outright. I also noticed that many of the other stalls weren’t selling much either. Maybe it was quiet. Who knows? But what I quickly managed to assess was the non book reader at a thousand paces.
But here’s another phenomenon. The people who do talk to me who are writing their autobiography have written one or are planning to write one. Bear in mind here that I am selling fiction, so why would I be interested? (Hint here, I’m not). If they were another fiction writer, we could have a proper two-way discussion.
As Mrs L elect said on the drive home, it was rather a waste of our time. Being Ukrainian, she didn’t mince her words. I have a few more booked in that will take me to the end of the year, so the experiment isn’t fully done yet, but I expect the same outcomes – a few sales that bring me almost to break even. What I really need to do is get my toe in the door of book-specific markets and festivals, but they seem to be far and few between. Is reading a dying art?
My daughter loves to read and has tons of books. My wife likes to read historic fiction, she always has a book or her kindle on the go. I read a fair bit but I tend to read non fiction, I don’t read novels. Our spare bedroom is a library and has a few thousand books in it. I don’t have any data on the younger folk, I’ll have to do a survey of my nieces who are in their thirties and now have kids that I could ask about.
Reading is not a dying art but any art form which is niche is very difficult. And not just art but any niche content, for instance, I like to follow some walking videos. These hardly get 1000 subscribers on youtube. But change strategy and start making conspiracy videos and subscriptions will rocket!
Reading is just a minority interest.
like being in chess club at school.
most people aren’t intellectual.
heck, studies have found around half of people don’t have an internal monologue. having an internal voice probably helps reading.
I used to read. love to read.
have two small children, a wife, house, cars to maintain. free time to read? what’s that? what’s free time? I’ve got upgrades for my truck that are sat in the garage for months because I can’t get an afternoon to put them on…
reading? lol.
And I quickly learned to spot that as people walked around. By the time I was halfway through the first market, I was able to work out who would at least stop and look, and who would walk past without a glance or make a positive attempt not to make any eye contact.
I love to read and I have a lot of books in my home.
I have friends who rarely, if ever, read. One is proud of not having read a book since skool. 🙂
I suspect that since the advent of computers there are a lot fewer readers around in the West.
“One is proud of not having read a book since skool.”
Each to his own I suppose. I’m proud of not having kicked a football since
school.
I’m proud of avoiding kicking one while at school.
“heck, studies have found around half of people don’t have an internal monologue. “7
Is it the blokes?