Convention Recap: Kelly Workshops and Local Author Book Fair 2024
TRANSPARENCYEVENT RECAP
Yesterday was a busy day for me! I taught two workshops and took part in a local author book fair!
General Thoughts
So I started the day presenting my workshops at The Kelly Fitzpatrick Center for the Arts, which is really rad art center in Wetumpka. They are currently doing a theme of 'Fiction and Fantasy' so dozens of local and regional artists have submitted art to be shown/sold there. I am legit blown away by how good these artists are. So considering the theme, they decided to bring in the literary arts a bit, so I was contacted to help throw some workshops together.
"So You Want To Write A Book," was up first. I talked about some common craft issues, as well as giving lots of strategies to help people finish that first book. I had a lot of great questions from the audience (about 10 people I think), and I think it went really well. Next I presented "I've Written a Book...Now What?" which talked a bit about traditional versus self publishing, touched on marketing, went in a bit about social media and newsletters...really just a gamut of things authors need to be thinking about. Both workshops were scheduled to be an hour and half each, but both ran long due to me being a chatty sumbitch, and having some really great questions.
At 1:00 I sprinted to my truck so I could race to Montgomery to get to New South Books (a 30 minute drive) in time to be loaded in and set up by 2:00 for the Local Author Book Fair. It was the first time they have held an event of that type, and I had a lot of fun!
Small Thoughts
There wasn't a lot of time to think haha, so this section will be shorter than usual.
I had the thought that I need to make a workshop geared towards teens writers that I can present to classes.
I got to use my banner for the first time. I am still fairly happy with it, I just need to get some dowels to put in it. That, and add more pins of course haha.
Panels
I already talked about the workshops, so....
Sales
Alrighty, lets dive into the meat of things: the money! So I am going up on my prices after Dragon Con I have decided. So being proactive, I updated my square to reflect that...forgetting I had these events. So I ended up just manually punching in everything, which was annoying, but what can ya do! Also, I kept things stripped down. To the workshops I only brought book 1, Southern Saudade, and both omnibuses. To the book fair I added zines to the mix, but not dice.
I was paid 200 to put on the workshops, 100 dollars each. And I had to pay 50 dollars to take part in the book fair. So here we go:
Items sold:
5 Bringing Home The Rain
2 Omnibus 1
1 Omnibus bundle
1 Southern Saudade
1 Zines
Total Sales: 230.00
Total Payment: 200.00
Expenses: 50.00
Total earned: 380.00
