novel « Robin Writes

Tomorrow, you can get your very own copy of The Provider, by Katie Lea Yates! Even if you’ve already downloaded the Kindle version, and you totally SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS, tomorrow the paperback is being released.

Katie has book events lined up, two in the Houston, Texas area tomorrow: Katy Budget Books in the afternoon and at The Gorgeous Gael in the morning. Check these out and arrive early—this book is flying off the shelves!

I could list numerous reasons why you should read The Provider, but mostly because It. Is. Phenomenal. And you know what? The sequel will be out in January 2015, because it’s just that good, too good to make fans wait longer that six months . . .

So get your copy—Kindle now, book event or online Saturday, July 19. Or both. Just do it. And read and review it—I can almost guarantee you’ll give it five stars!

Finishing eighth grade and getting ready for high school is hard enough. Finding out that you can jump into the pictures you’ve drawn and become ruler of thousands of people makes it just a tiny bit tougher.

Thankfully, I’m not alone. There’s a whole group of us. They’re very cool, and I love living with them.

But it seems that I brought back a little more than my memories when I jumped into that first drawing—now I’m able to create things, or bring things from somewhere else, or . . . well, it’s complicated.

And unfortunately, somebody might want us all dead.

Since I’m going to be speaking on this topic, and a few others, this coming weekend at the All Write! Conference in Cape Girardeau, I thought I’d touch a few sales practices for book events.

Yes, sales. If you’ve never had a sales job, particularly one that paid straight commission, you might be hesitant to actually attempt book sales IRL—in other words, somewhere besides the Internet.

At most book events, you’ll have a table and a couple chairs. You aren’t required to actually sit in the chair the entire time . . .

Let’s look at it this way:

You walk into a store, any store, and see someone sitting at a table with samples of . . . just about any product. What will make you walk up to that table and start a conversation or examine the products?

Anyone? Bueller?

Well, you have to be interested enough in the product to approach the seller, right? And/or the seller has to make some kind of eye contact, and smile, and appear welcoming, and maybe even start the conversation, yes?

That’s you. The product—your book—must have a great cover, and YOU, the seller, must usually initiate any interaction.

Naturally, you aren’t going to scream, “BUY MY BOOK! NOW!” but you can totally make inane remarks like, “Still hot out there?” or even “Looks like we’re in for a big storm, huh?”

In sales, there are direct and indirect questions to pose to potential customers. These two, above, are direct—they require a yes or no answer. But you can’t stop there; these questions merely break the ice. You have to follow up, a key principle in sales, and you eventually have to close the sale.

So you get a conversation going, you connect to customers, you find common ground, you make it personal. We’re talking books here, not a $2000 appliance. Make the connection, make it personal, a conversation just between you and the customer and, at the very least, they’re going to buy your $15 book because they now KNOW YOU. You are a friend. Who doesn’t want to help out a friend?

And just like your friends who already bought your book, whether or not they have or intend to ever read it, whether they like the genre or not, whether they think the book is terrible—it doesn’t matter, THEY BOUGHT THE BOOK!

You have another sale, and someone, someday, will read it and maybe even (gasp) review it!