As a genre author with a small press publisher, or a self-published author, it can be extremely difficult to get any traction among all the millions of titles available.

So how do you get noticed?

A: Shout out “HEY, BUY MY BOOK!” all over social media
B: Take out a half-page advertisement in the NY Times (or your local paper)
C: Stand on a street corner and accost perfect strangers with copies of your book.

Option A might garner you a few sales, but generally speaking all that method will do is tend to annoy your followers and weaken any social media credibility you may have established along the way.

Option B, unless you happen to be extremely well off financially, is going to be prohibitively expensive.

This leaves my preferred method, Option C. Okay, I don’t actually stand on a street corner. Instead, I decided to figure out where my target audience hangs out, track them to their lair, and engage with them directly.

My genre is swashbuckling Fantasy/Romance. Upon doing a bit of research, I realized that the people who would want to read my stories are likely to attend Renaissance Faires. I’ve been a vendor at two faires so far this season, with four more to go.

I have, as you can see from the picture of my set-up, invested fairly substantially in marketing materials—banners, signs, a nice tent. All things to catch the eye of the passing faire-goer. For the two weekends, I sold just over a hundred books.

How did I do it? Nothing magical about it. Hustling, pure and simple.

This is not a job for the introverted author who prefers to lurk in their darkened office, with only their cat for company. But if you can steel yourself to the notion of getting out there and chatting up the passing masses, well… the effort can definitely pay off. I’ve done a lot of work honing my presentation, to try and come across as interesting and fun (rather than as just a pushy salesperson). People are normally thrilled to meet an author “in the flesh” and many are truly excited about having a signed copy of an author’s book for themselves or for a gift.

I have to say I earned every dollar I made. If I sat down for more than twenty seconds at a time at these events, it was a lot. I was out in front the entire time, talking to anyone who went by and giving them the spiel:

“Swashbuckling fantasy featuring a dashing knight, an indomitable damsel, and a dragon with a most inconvenient case of hiccups.”

This last almost always elicits a chuckle, and then I’ve got ’em right where I want ’em. I do my best to get the book into their hands so they can read the back cover blurb (“If you read the back, it’ll make you want to read the middle. Perhaps the beginning, or even the end…”). Over the course of the two weekends I talked to thousands of people about fantasy, writing, and (especially) dragons. Sure, a lot of people just passed right by without even looking at me. But if anyone slowed down to listen, I did my best to, at the very least, get a bookmark into their hands. Because as the chap on the Lotto commercials is wont to say, “Hey, you never know…”

Obviously this method won’t work for every author. My genre in particular lends itself to this type of marketing. SciFi authors can work the various SciFi conventions and Comic-Cons. If you write romance, thrillers, or mysteries, there are certainly gatherings of people who would be interested in your work—you just need to do some research and figure out where those are, and try to plug into them. Check with your local writers guild, if such a thing exists; check with the local chapter of the organization that represents your chosen genre (MWA, RWA,, etc).

Get creative. If you write cowboy romance, maybe look into setting up a booth at a rodeo on Friday night. You could even sign up to be a vendor at a craft show (I’ve done this as well, because writing is by golly a craft!). But whatever your genre, the key as far as I’m concerned is to learn where your target audience can be found and engage them directly in those venues.