Contacting bookshops and other places about possible signings

 

Author Kit

This is something we offer authors for the imprints we manage. If you can arrange your own book tour, we can provide you with twenty books up front. Shops can put them through their till and we'll invoice the shop. Then we'll top up your supply. Please leave at least ten days between venues. At the end of the tour, you can buy any remaining books at cost plus 10% to cover admin, or wait until you can sell them and buy them at normal author discount. We can if necessary allow this against royalties.

If you are or become a prolific seller, we can offer more books on this arrangement. 

We ask you to contact the bookshop or other venue and copy us in. We can then have a three-way conversation.   

Template letter

Here is a letter we use for our imprints:

Dear (name of bookshop owner),

I wonder whether you might consider letting one of our authors run a book singing at your shop? We operate a WIN, WIN, WIN policy for bookshops and authors. We supply the books to our author who brings them on the day. They go through your till and we then invoice you for any sold at 65% of RRP. Any unsold copies remain with the author. We normally supply about 20 but this is up for negotiation.

We promote the event and we hope that you will as well.

A little about the author. There is an example in brackets here.  (xxx is a frequent delegate at the Winchester Writers’ Festival. She blogs regularly for Chandlers Ford Today.)

I attach an Author Information Sheet.

Perhaps you could negotiate with xxx directly if this is of interest?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Author's name 

How to find bookshops

If you're an indie writer or working with a small publisher it's notoriously difficult to get into the big chain stores. However, most of them have a brief to work with local authors and its worth pushing for this. Get to know the staff. Also, it's sometimes possible to hire their events room privately.

If you are in the US try:

 https://www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder

 The UK equivalent is:

 https://booksellers.org.uk/bookshopsearch    

I'm also beginning a summary of useful contacts – booksellers, media contacts, reviewers, bloggers who host others and other places that host author events. You can find this here:

 http://apublishersperspective.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page.html       

      At the time of writing this is empty, but as the weeks go by I'll add to it.  So please let me know of any events that have been successful. Please provide as much information as you can and especially the name and email address of the person to approach.     

Venues other than bookshops

How do these sound?

·         A railway station

·         A beach

·         A kite festival   

These are just a few quirky ideas and have actually been used rather successfully.

If your venue has a retail outlet, you can still use the Author Kit mentioned before.

Sometimes another type of venue can be more helpful than an actual bookshop. I've run several signings in cafés very successfully.