T222.
Beyond the Signed Copy: Lessons from Writers who are also Booksellers
Thursday, February 8, 2024
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Booksellers have a unique understanding of how books sell. Author publicity efforts often focus on social media, but what should authors do to support sales in brick and mortar stores? How can they inspire booksellers to stock, recommend, and promote their books? The answers have everything to do with cultivating relationships and being a good literary citizen. Writers who are, or were once booksellers, some publishing with indie presses and some with Big Five houses, will share their wisdom.
Participants
Dan Wells is a bookseller and publisher, both at Biblioasis, an independent publishing house and bookshop in Windsor, Ontario. He is also the publisher and editor at CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, Canada's longest-running independent critical journal.
Josh Cook is a bookseller and coowner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder. His fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary publications.
Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, and A Safe Girl to Love. She coedited Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers and has written for the New York Times and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She is the publisher at LittlePuss Press.
Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast and El Dorado Freddy's, plus the chapbook Uncle Harold's Maxwell House Haggadah. His poetry has appeared in Diagram, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Mid-American Review, and other places. He owns the Raven Book Store.
Meg Reid is the publisher of Hub City Press and executive director of the Hub City Writers Project, a literary nonprofit that cultivates readers and nurtures writers throughout the South to foster an inclusive literary arts culture.
