{"id":4044,"date":"2019-04-20T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interestingauthors.com\/blog\/?p=4044"},"modified":"2019-04-13T11:23:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T17:23:17","slug":"why-i-dont-show-books-at-library-fairs-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interestingauthors.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/why-i-dont-show-books-at-library-fairs-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Don&#8217;t Show Books at Library Fairs Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>      <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<p>It appears to be that time of the year. Emails and cold calls from          people looking to show your books for a fee at various library book          fairs. There was a time during the beginning of my authoring days where          I bought into that scam. I sent copies of books and money to display          them at shows all over the country.<\/p>\n<p>What you will find is that nobody attending the library book fairs has          any intention of ordering books for their library(ies). They are there          to get free stuff. Namely, as many free books as they can walk out of          there with besides free food (if there is any). The stories told to each          of the display services attending is that \u201cThey hope to be ordering          books in two months as soon as the funding is approved for this          quarter.\u201d It\u2019s not an actual lie. They will probably be ordering then.          It will just be through the one big vendor they have always bought          through and not a book being shown here has a prayer.<\/p>\n<p>Every young or new author is wooed by the massive numbers of libraries.          You spend money to get onto a library mailing lists and have 4 color          fliers of your books sent out on those lists. The simple truth is, if          your book isn\u2019t being handled by one of those massive library sales          machines it won\u2019t be bought. Quite frankly you don\u2019t even want it to be          bought. Those vendors have locked into the library market by selling to          them at half of wholesale. If you have a $90 book, the typical wholesale          price is around $40.50 for your distributor and whatever they mark it up          to retailers. The library is going to pay half of the $40.50 meaning          $20.25. The vendor handling the sale will pocket at least half of that.          In other words, you sold your book at or below printing costs so the          vendor could make your printing costs and pay you at least 6 months          after the sale.<\/p>\n<p>The other dirty little secret about sales to libraries is they rarely,          if ever, generate additional sales. You are always told to view the sale          at a loss to a library as a marketing expense. In the technical book          market, people check your book out of the library long enough to solve          the problem they are working on, return it, and never think about owning          their own copy.<\/p>\n<p>If there is a particular library where people you know go to find books          and you want to impress them, simply donate a copy of your work to the          library. It will get put on the shelf and you will get whatever ego trip          you get out of it. Selling books into the library market (especially          technical books) is a business plan for living on the street.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears to be that time of the year. Emails and cold calls from people looking to show your books for a fee at various [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2493,416,2494],"class_list":["post-4044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-fair","tag-book-marketing","tag-library"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why I Don&#039;t Show Books at Library Fairs Anymore &#8211; Interesting Authors Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interestingauthors.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/why-i-dont-show-books-at-library-fairs-anymore\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I Don&#039;t Show Books at Library Fairs Anymore &#8211; Interesting Authors Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It appears to be that time of the year. 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