Selling Paperbacks

“Well,” as one wit in our cohort concluded, “that’s six hours of my life I’ll never get back again.”

Which reminded me of what we used to say in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: “Of all the concerts that I ever played, that was one of them.”

It was my very first attempt to sell paperbacks in person. And I’d chosen an artisan fair at Royal Tunbridge Wells, because my novels are Austen-inspired, of course.

And, without bragging, it’s not everyone who could have excelled as I did, and from the “off” as well, missing the Tunbridge Wells turning off the A21 due to singing along with Haydn on Radio 3, lol.

I fixed this little misstep and swanned into Tunbridge Wells but, despite being assured by my Satnav that I had “ree-eeched my destination,” could spot no hotel. I screeched my car to a halt alongside a young guy and his nine or ten-year-old, enjoying their weekly father-and-son jog before the promised tempest arrived. “I wonder if you could help me?” I asked.

“No probs!” the jogger assured me.

“I’m looking for –” but could brain-of-Britain here remember the name of the hotel? — “a, um, largish hotel,” said I.

“But which?” asked the guy, while his kid looked as if he’d never seen a more fatheaded author in all his puff.

“Maybe Windsor or Winchester?” I hazarded, feeling sure that “W” featured somewhere.

The guy kindly suggested the Warwick Hotel — which was correct — “about a hundred metres ahead”. Swear to God, the kid was still shaking his head in disbelief as I drove past them.

I found the hotel, and very pretty it turned out to be, though all of Tunbridge Wells is notably green and pleasant, and though its only sign was minute, almost as if it was vaguely ashamed of being identified as a hotel, rather than being, instead, one of the stately homes of England. The weather felt vaguely stormy as I wandered up the road from my parking space to the hotel, for the first of many (many) times.

Why so many? Because the bumpf from ye organiser of ye artisan event had warned us we’d be disembowelled by the pious Church of Englanders sharing the car park, should we even think about unpacking our gear at the conference facility.

Now I had two goals for the day: (a) to shift books and (b) not to get lost, to which I mentally added © to avoid disembowelment. (Remember, I’d already got lost.) Thus, I parked along the road and had a go at arm Pilates before hoisting a box of twenty books.

Now, my husband had nobly offered — not to assist with the gruelling task of selling — but still to help me carry the books into the conference hall, after which he’d take a hasty train back home. This generous offer I had refused — though secretly hoping that a knight in shining armour might possibly volunteer to assist a blonde too dumb to recollect the name of her destination.

No such knight appeared, though a couple of harassed-if-arty types were already wandering around, manhandling oil paintings, hoicking boxes of jewellery etc. My new comrades.

So I got going with goal (a), shifting books. Though, after manhandling eight heavy boxes four hundred blinking yards, I decided that I’d already shifted plenty. “I can always come back to the car for the rest if I sell out,” thought I. (Bless my optimistic little heart!)

Inside the capacious hall, I met said comrades. Opposite me was a stunning twenty-something Asian, selling skincare products which she, personally, needed like a hole in the head. Also opposite was a dashing redhead of maybe thirty-five, whose handmade silver designs were so attractive that I missed several prospects due to ogling them. To my right was a gung-ho mother-and-daughter act selling artsy dog products and to my left a bubbly designer of hand-painted shoes and stunning tiaras called Caro. There were about sixteen other artisans, including a morose fellow who did glasswork, a potter, a crystal healer sporting full-on tie-dye, a balding painter of feistily modernist art etc. There were no other authors.

My own selling method was pathetically simple, but not ineffective.

Many moons ago, I scribbled a book for fun — one I never even attempted to get published. (For a start, it was far too short. There was never enough profit margin for any publisher to take it on.) This slimline paperback, All Risks Musical, an Irreverent Guide to the Music Profession, is light and breezy, with cartoons by the gifted Noel Ford. I proposed to give copies away, as a freebie and a lure.

This little scheme worked a treat, so much so that the Asian beauty and the jewellery artist opposite probably wished they’d scribbled something similar. As every author on Amazon knows, punters can’t resist freebies. The word “free” draws them like a magnet, and while the worthy Tunbridge Wellians were inspecting the cartoon festooned on my freebie cover, I generally found time to mention having decorated the Royal Philharmonic and BBC Symphony cello sections.

Had they yawned and buzzed off, I’d have discarded this tactic, but they mostly didn’t, and then I added the spiel about my Darcy having been honoured at the last London Book Fair, as one of the seven best indie novels published in the UK in 2023 — or else mentioned Publishers Weekly’s quote (“McVeigh echoes the master herself” since you didn’t ask) about my Susan.

Still, I’m not pretending that my booth was even remotely a hit, because I’d apparently chosen the crappiest gig of the year for my selling debut. (Two of my comrades sold nothing at all: zero, zilch, rien. Caro, the friendly tiara merchant, did little better.)

In fact, the hoped-for legions failed to materialise to such an extent that ONE quarter of one hour went by — roughly two p.m. — when there was not a sound in the place beyond the two dog-lovers gossiping about what “Pete” was really up to and  gusty sighs of boredom from Caro’s long-suffering hubby, with even these half-drowned by the rain pounding on the roof and trailing disconsolately down the windows. (When I went to the loo, Caro quipped that “she’d hold back the hordes for me”, lol.)

Still, I did better than most. I arrived at Royal Tunbridge Wells with seven boxes of twenty books each and returned home with six boxes. (Though, because a couple of tennis buddies popped in and I gave each of them a book out of untrammelled gratitude, it wasn’t all profit, either.) In other words, I’d undoubtedly have made more had I brought my cello and busked on the sodden High Street.

So, why was it such a frost?

Opinions on this were pretty unanimous: “It’s the blinking rain, innit?”… “Who’d come out in all that?”… “These aren’t punters. This lot ’ave only come in to get out of the rain.” Even Caro’s loyal spouse finally said, “And at this point, love, I’m off to the pub” after staunchly supporting her all the way from ten to two. And there were some who came inside only to shake their umbrellas, disdaining to glance to left or right as they strode through our ranks, those even resistant even to the allure of a free book, lol. I can’t fault the exhibitors themselves for, though there was rather a lot of jewellery, it was quality stuff, and mostly designed and created by the seller personally.

A few of the punters were pretty odd, though. One woman was affronted by my books. “Surely it isn’t legal to write about Austen’s own characters?” she cried — nor did she seem convinced by the irrefutable evidence that Austen has been dead over 200 years, or by the fact that there are, at conservative estimate, zillions of Austen variations already, including Pride and Prejudice with Zombies, of which Austen would never have approved.

My pal Caro, too, was earnestly engaged for about twenty minutes with another lady, who “simply adored” her work and, in my own hearing, described her as “a genius”. However, when I later congratulated Caro upon what I’d presumed was a dead cert, she snorted, “Sale? She didn’t buy a single thing! She was only complimenting me in hopes of discovering my trade secrets — which oil I use, how I waterproof the wedding shoes… I mean, honestly!”

I thought: At least nobody wasted twenty minutes of my life trying to learn the secret of how to write like Jane Austen.

And at least my expensive costume worked, because a local sporting a neck-breaking camera of the type popularised by travelling Chinese, politely asked if I could step outside — “Will hold back the hordes for you,” said Caro — predictably — to take a photo of me against an ancient door (as it wasn’t actually flat-out tempesting that second).

This, assuming one of his photos comes out, gaining me half a page next year in his Kentish Faces coffee-table hardback. (Yours for £19.99. Beautifully produced books, his Dorset one especially. Steve Vidler, check him out!)

A certain restlessness became manifested as the moment of our freedom approached (half-three) — we weren’t supposed to abandon ship before, though, believe me, as the rain continued, some of us considered it. As I changed back into my jeans in the bathroom, the modern artist confided that — though the car park was in the disembowelling zone — one could briefly park on the double yellow lines and manhandle unsold stock onboard, without getting a parking ticket. This I did, being the first out of the blocks at bang-on half-three in hopes of getting the closest double-yellow-line place. (Well, hey, my unsold stock was probably heavier than everyone else’s put together, and there was plenty left over.)

The moment I drove away was worth almost everything. “Of all the artisan craft fairs I ever sold at,” I told myself, “that was one of them. And yet, on a sunny Spring day… well! Who knows how many I might have sold?”

Because hope, like spring itself, will spring eternal…