Books and Fairs – June update #IWSG

I thought an IWSG post about books and fairs might go down well this week. I mean, I spend most of my time reading books and going to sell my books at fairs. And I enjoy both of those very much.

This is my Insecure Writers Support Group post, in which we share our successes and failures as writers, our insecurities, in fact. Anyone can join in, just sign up at the IWSG Sign-up page, write a blog post on the first Wednesday of the month, and go back to that sign up page to link with everyone else–or a goodly sample. Our host is Alex J Cavanaugh, and cohosting this month are:

 Liza at Middle Passages,Shannon Lawrence, Melissa Maygrove, and Olga Godim

The Latest Fairs

I’ve only done two fairs so far this year, at Romsey in April and Lyndhurst in May. Romsey was very successful, Lyndhurst was about as slow as you can imagine. I actually sold more than many other stallholders (and I didn’t sell much). It was a lovely day, the first of the bank holiday weekend, and Southampton were playing in the League championship final. So I’m told. I’m also told they won, so they’ll be in the top league next year. Keep in touch with local issues 🙂

I enjoy the fairs a great deal. It’s not necessarily about my books. It’s about talking books, what the people like, and what I’ve read that they might enjoy… and sometimes I get an idea for a new story, whether a flash fiction or something longer.

And now I’m in my fourth year of doing these fairs, I’m part of the family. We had various ‘family’ problems last time: news of one of the organisers who is seriously ill, but one of the other organisers had a baby – and you’d think he’d done it all himself, was his colleague’s comment! Later we heard that one of our cohort of stall holders was seriously ill, so we put a collection together to send her flowers. It’s just normal everyday stuff, but when you’re a writer, you can miss being part of a community – and I suspect you can also get blinkered if the only other people in your community are also writers.

I had limited my bookings for this year, but I’ve decided to fit in a few more. It’s good for me, it helps my mental processes, and I think I’ll continue for another year. Although I might talk about that again in the autumn!

Question of the Month

In this constantly evolving industry, what kind of offering/service do you think the IWSG should consider offering to members?

IWSG June 2024

Given the sheer volume of advice for writers (often from other writers, who may be reissuing things from other writers, or (worse) from their creative writing courses)… I have no idea.

If the IWSG can give us authoritative guidance on new publishing or marketing developments, that would be good, but such information stands in danger of obsolescence.

But one thing I would welcome is the opportunity to put our work out in a recognised, curated publication. I’m talking abut the IWSG Anthology, which has been dropped in recent years, presumably because it was too much work, or maybe there were issues I have no knowledge of. But I had fun working on things to submit for them, and beta reading for others, and finally reading the anthologies themselves. I suppose another problem is marketing the publications. But that’s no reason not to try – is it?

Yes there are other anthologies, and plenty of calls for submissions around the web (beware of anything that asks for a submission fee). But this is the only one branded IWSG. And that’s surely worth it!