Goddess Market Meltdown

Today was the Goddess Market in Greensboro, and fellow author and friend Pam King Cable and I took our books, our author pens and our party decorations to Wayneck Medical Center. It had stormed during the night but the sun was out in blazing force as we manned our booth from 1-5.

With "Goddess Market" being the theme, the vendors were all asked to come in their best Goddess Attire. Since I have a humor book on cats (Lessons In Stalking) and Pam has a book of literary fiction on Southern Women (Southern Fried Women), we came ready with a Southern Woman/Cat theme. On our table were signs. On Pam's side the sign read, All Southern Women Are Goddesses. The sign on  my side of the table read, Call Yourself A Goddess, Cats Still Know They Rule.

As you can see, we had fun with masks. I switched to cat ears early on over the mask because it was sweltering hot. Pam resorted to pouring bottled water down her neck and we both lost a few pounds to sweat. All of which would have been worth it if we'd sold any books.

Don't get me wrong, we sold a few. But not enough to cover the vendor cost plus the cost of our supplies not to mention our time. Festivals are always a crap shoot. Sometimes you can sell a bunch of books, other times it's like a wake.

We had lots of people stop by. Lots of laughing and exclaiming at the cuteness of our covers, the cleverness of our books, and most would tell us a story about their cats before placing our books back down on the table and saying, "Well, you girls have a good day."

I told Pam one thing I've noticed about my cat humor book is that people who come to my table and say they own cats rarely buy the book for themselves. My best sales are to non-cat owning people who have cat lovers for friends. They know their friends are cat freaks, just like me, and will love anything with a cat on it.  THAT's my market.

Now I just have to figure out how to reach them.