Boskone: Mostly Hits, One Miss
I attended Boskone before I started publishing science fiction and I was impressed by the number of authors I recognized. I’ve attended the last two years and it still hasn’t lost that magic. And being able to rub shoulders now as an author myself is a lot of fun. I was particularly looking forward to setting up a fan table for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) and meeting SFWA members that I expected would drop by.
I like to arrive the night before so I can get a good night’s sleep and have plenty of time to find everything to get ready beforehand. But this year, there was a storm the day before and some work events conflicted with getting an early start. So we decided to wait and just drive over on the morning of the convention.
When we arrived, I visited the area where registration would be. There was one person there and I was gratified that they recognized my name. We confirmed when registration would open and where the fan tables were.
After we checked in, we went back to the car and, on the way, found that the galleria was already open. Once we’d put our stuff in the room, I went back and set up the SFWA Fan Table. I had received the necessary supplies just two days before: A banner, tablerunners, an ARCH D sized posterboard, two kinds of flyers, and rack cards.
It took less than an hour to get setup. I commented that it was WAY less work than setting up a dealer table. When I set up the tables for Water Dragon Publishing and Small Publishing in a Big Universe at Readercon, we had more than 70 titles to unbox, organize, and set up on book stands. By comparison, this was a snap.
Then I just hung out at the table.
I had some other events scheduled. I moderated a panel, served on three panels, and had a reading. They were all excellent. Well, all except the reading: Nobody came to my reading. I got my books out with cards and stickers and ribbons and ‘zines. But nobody came. I sat there for a half hour, then packed everything up and went on with the con. That’s how it is when you’re a nobody.
My younger son came with me and helped cover the fan table when I couldn’t be there. He made a point of telling people that he was not a SFWA member, but was eligible to be an associate member. He said that people told him nice things about me, which made me feel good.
I got to meet a lot of SFWA folks. Some current board members, former board members, and former officers stopped by. And a goodly number of members. I also got to explain SFWA to a bunch of new people. I don’t know how many new members we might get. But, personally, just getting to meet a bunch of people, was a big win for me.
We had been watching the weather and had considered staying another night in the event it looked bad. Originally, it looked like it might be a big snow event. But then it looked like it might just be rain. Then it looked like it might be icy. So we packed up a little early to drive during the warmest part of the afternoon. In the end, it was just rainy on the MassPike, but there had been a lot of snow at our house. We had no problem getting home, but I was a bit daunted to pull the car into the 8 inches of snow on the driveway. But I was able to park. Getting the car out may be another matter.
Inscrutable Amazon
I watch the Amazon rank of my books to get a measure of what’s going on. Since I’m not the publisher of my books, I don’t have access to the underlying raw data from all of the different places where my books are sold. But watching the Amazon rank gives me some indication of what’s going on.
The reasons why the rank changes are pretty inscrutable. When people buy copies via Amazon you see a big bump. When nobody’s buying, it declines. But it sometimes goes up and down small amounts for other undetermined reasons: Maybe people searching for it? Or making searches in which it appears? Who knows?
When Better Angels: Tour de Force came out, we marked the original Better Angels short story free everywhere. It’s the first story in Tour de Force and you can see it for free as part of the digital preview anyway. But it turns out that you can’t mark Kindle books free. Amazon won’t let you. If Amazon sees you’re giving a book away elsewhere, however, it will sometimes mark the Kindle book for free too. (This happened with The Third Time’s the Charm, which is still free everywhere, including at Amazon.)
When a book is free, its rank seemingly goes way, way up. That’s not too surprising, I suppose. When it was marked free, it went from ~3M to about ~50K and then would bounce around there. It would sometimes spike up to 1500 or so and then drift back down. I noticed it spiked up the other day and then, when I checked again, it had dropped down to 3.5M. “Huh?” I thought. So I went to look at the product page and noticed that it wasn’t free anymore.
It’s still free elsewhere. I checked at Smashwords and Kobo anyway. Weird. It’s impossible to know why Amazon does anything they do ̈̈— other than that one can reliably predict they’re shoving their blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
Small Publishing in a Big Universe at Watch City
Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) is sponsoring a table at the Watch City Steampunk Festival again this year on May 10 in Waltham, Massachusetts. If you’re an author who would like to attend you can fill out this form to join us and sell your books. You can already see who is signed up this year.
Watch City is an amazing spectacle! There are hundreds of people who attend wearing steampunky costumes with dozens of vendors selling art, crafts, and food. Plus music, contests, and performances. It’s a fun-filled day with lots of excitement and cheer.
I ran the table for SPBU last year and we sold a fair number of books. I’m looking forward to going back again this year! Maybe this year, I’ll be organized enough that the colors of the price tags will actually mean something. It could happen!
