Authors are a varied bunch. They differ widely in background, personality, education, and writing style. So it should be no surprise that book fairs and festivals differ widely from each other. The Bexley Local Author Book Fair that I attended on August 25 had authors trying to sell their books to fair attendees, but that’s about the only similarity it had to the Springfield Book Festival I went to a week earlier. Among the differences were the following:

• At Springfield, I could set the price of my books; at Bexley, the price was set (at $9.95) by Gramercy Bookstore, which sponsored the fair and received a share of the authors’ sales revenue.
•  At Bexley, I could sell only one book, The Bullybuster; whereas, I could also sell Fast-Pitch Love and Lost and Found: An Anthology at Springfield.
•  In Springfield, each author had a separate table at Mother Stewart’s Brewing Company; whereas, authors in Bexley sat side by side at long rows of tables in the local public library’s auditorium.
•  More people (both authors and book buyers) participated in the two-hour Bexley book fair than the seven-hour Springfield event.

I don’t want to sound as if I’m complaining about the Bexley fair. On the contrary, I think the Gramercy staff deserves great credit for organizing this event and giving local authors the chance to interact with the public and sell their work. There were also opportunities to interact with the other 40 or so authors. On my left, I had Robert S. Turner selling his New Testament-based novel A Rope for Judas, and on my right, Edward Krauss marketing his 1950s romance Solomon, the Accountant, which is set in Toledo. At other tables were authors selling children’s stories, self-help books, fantasies, romances. mysteries, memoirs, and inspirational tomes. After making their selections, fair participants took their books to a table by the auditorium’s entrance, where two Gramercy sales clerks handled their purchases.

I sold two copies of The Bullybuster — one to a woman who planned to give it as a gift to a family member, and the other to Lee Martin, a frequent workshop presenter and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author, who was kind enough to stop by my table. I also enjoyed chatting with writing-group friends Charles O’Donnell and Brice Bunner. There was one disappointment. A woman who seriously considered buying the book for her son, a member of a robotics competition team, ended up making her purchases elsewhere. Win a few, lose a few, I guess.

My two purchases netted me $11.14, which meant that the bookstore picked up $8.76. As best as I could tell, most of the other authors had copies left over from the 10 that each of them brought. Clearly, if you are a self-published author, you better not count on your writing to put food on the table. On the other hand, book fairs like the ones at Springfield and Bexley, offer rewards that go beyond dollars and cents.