Thursday, February 5, 2015

Building a Fan Base by Dianne K. Salerni

Sorry to mislead you with the title. I don’t have any sure-fire tips on building a fan base. I’m going to tell you what you have to endure on the way to having one.

Anyone who’s published a book and scheduled signings/lectures/panels has had the unhappy experience of no one showing up. It’s awkward. Store employees feel sorry for you. Librarians apologize for poor attendance. The spouses of the panelists ask questions, just to give you something to do for the scheduled hour.  I participated in many, many events like this in 2010, the year my first book was published. (As well as in the years afterward, and I’m sure there will be more in the future.)

Then, of course, there’s the excitement of an event that is well-attended -- by your friends, co-workers, and relatives. These events are special, and every author is grateful for the support, especially when your parents and your aunts buy 5 books apiece.

But I will never forget the first time a stranger showed up at one of my events. She’d seen the advertisement and my book, We Hear the Dead, in the store a few days earlier. She recognized that my book was about the Fox sisters, who began their famous séance career in Rochester, New York -- which happened to be this woman’s home town. She came to meet me and talk about the Fox sisters. A fan of the topic—not necessarily me—but a stranger who attended my event nonetheless. My first.

Fast forward a couple years to a book signing at an indie store three hours from home -- always a dicey thing, because I can’t count on my aunts to attend and buy 5 books each. But I was astonished by the turnout of people who were loyal customers of the store. A few of had even been drawn in from nearby Catawissa, Pennsylvania, the setting of my book The Caged Graves. They were fans of the store and of books with a local interest.

Just this past weekend, I had a launch party for my latest release, The Inquisitor’s Mark. I was expecting the usual turnout of friends, relatives, and co-workers -- who did indeed come out to celebrate with me. But to my astonishment, there were a bunch of faces I didn’t recognize.

  • Kids who had seen me at school visits and afterward read either The Caged Graves or The Eighth Day.
  • A boy who had randomly picked up The Eighth Day in the fall and was dying to read the sequel.
  • A girl who bought The Eighth Day at the Baltimore Book Fair and had driven with her mom over an hour to attend this event and get a signed copy of The Inquisitor’s Mark.


Fans of my work. About a dozen of them. Not hundreds, by any means, but I was elated. I had some fans who didn’t know me personally!

What did it take to get there? Five years. Four books. Many failed signings. A few lucky appearances at well-attended events. Some captive audiences at school visits.

Lesson? Very few of us will become instantly famous with our first book and have fans who turn out in droves wherever we go. For most of us, it’s going to take patience, bouncing back from failure and humiliation, and stubbornly continuing to write for years just to get a dozen fans turning up at an event.


It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.

19 comments:

  1. Oh, the torture of my first signing... a table right in front of the store entrance, only 4 books sold, two of them to B&N employees... It was a very long hour. It's nice to know it happens to other new authors. *fist bump*

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    1. A more experienced (and well-known) author once told me that the connections you make with the book sellers and librarians is more important than the number of books you sell at an event.

      Still hard on the ego, though.

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  2. Thanks, Diane! I'm in the process of setting up a signing at our indie bookstore in Fairbanks.

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  3. Dianne, thanks for sharing! It sure is a marathon (wayyyy longer than the NY one!). I'll be doing a group author signing in May - my first one. And hope that draws a bigger crowd - or at the very least I'll have others to chat with. :) With my debut MG coming out I'll be jumping into the world of school assemblies (eek!) and wondering how the signings work out scheduled the evening of a school event that day. Have you done that and drawn the kids from school to it? Good luck with many more signings and I hope the dozens of fans turn into thousands pretty quick!

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    1. Donna, I have never tried that. Since I only recently retired from teaching, school events are new to me (and I haven't had many yet). Books were either sold at the event or prior to the event.

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  4. Yes, Dianne, there is a Santa Claus who comes in the form of an adoring fan asking when the next book will be out. I never could understand people who act as if it is a burden to sign books or write back to fans. To me, it has always been a privilege. Remember that when I show up will a stack and beg you to sign all of your books for me!!!

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    1. I KNOW, right?! I was recently on a forum where an author complained about a friend of a friend asking her to do an interview for her daughter's high school newspaper. She said, NO, she was too busy, then grumbled about being made to feel guilty about it.

      I wanted to reach through the computer and shake her.

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  5. A certain eleven-year-old in my house just finished The Eighth Day last night!

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    1. Yay! Hope said eleven-year-old enjoyed it! If you'd like me to mail a signed book plate or temp tattoos to go along with the book, email me!

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  6. A good attitude begets good will, I've found. (Shame on the grumbling author.) If you ever come to Portland, Dianne, I will show up with a crowd!

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    1. I hope I will get to Portland some day! And if I ever reached the point of complaining that someone made me feel guilty after I coldly refused to speak to a teenage fan ... then maybe I would need to quit writing for teens and kids?

      (I mean, if the author really was too busy, I'd be more sympathetic if she declined regretfully, not with resentment.)

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  7. Good words.

    And, oh, yes, I remember doing a group event where we had *one* non-family member attend. It was almost worse than no one, because we still did our whole panel Q&A. And I remember the family members kept winning the giveaways - ha! Finally, we just gave the one reader our whole book-giveaway pack.

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    1. Ha! And think of the pressure on that one reader, surrounded by relatives of the authors. "You are going to BUY my niece's/wife's/mom's book, aren't you???"

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  8. Thanks for the encouragement. Something to remember at those hard book signings.

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Thanks for adding to the mayhem!