Book stall success

In early December 2023, two writing colleagues and I shared a book stall at our church’s annual Christmas fair. Rachel Weston writes children’s picture books, Karen Cossey writes Middle Grade adventure and fantasy books, and I write YA fantasy fiction.

It was a fun few hours, where we all sold enough books to make the effort worthwhile. However, there were a couple of things I learned in the build-up to this event that I wanted to share:

Charge stripe (and no, I’m not getting any commission for promoting this product!). If you’re an indie author (like me) or have your own business, then you’ll know that it can be quite challenging collecting payments from your customers. It’s quite pricey hiring an eftpos machine, and a lot of people don’t carry cash these days. So I was really excited to discover this app that allows you to accept credit card payments. You set up all your merchandise as a list along with prices & deals, then link it to your bank account. This app can recognise someone’s credit card number (using your phone camera) then they enter the CVC. They can also enter their email address & it will send them a receipt. So cool! There was a small processing fee, but it worked like a charm.
QR codes. Now, I know these are nothing new, but I was quite chuffed with how I used them. One thing I did was create little business cards with a QR code to my website on the back – and of course, my website has purchase links.
I’ve also added QR codes at the back of all my books to where to leave a review, or purchase another book. Because people reading the paperback version can’t click on a hyperlink, can they? And it’s annoying having to type in web addresses. A QR code is the logical choice.