Hand-to-Hand Selling

Francis Hamit, in “Street Level Views of Book Marketing” at SelfPublishingReview.com, uses stories from his latest Shenandoah Spy book tour to teach that if you want to get paid to write, then you have to get out there and sell:  

I engage most of [the customers at my book signings] with a friendly greeting and a pitch line. This is something I learned in 1988, the year I was a Factory Representative for the Hoover Company, working in department stores. Most people did not come in to buy a vacuum cleaner, and most are not at a signing specifically to buy your book, no matter how much advance publicity you have done. Most have never heard of you or your book. You have to introduce yourself, and even if you don’t close right then, have a bookmark or other sales tool to hand them. It’s not the books you sell that day but the number you sell afterward that really counts and keeps your book on the shelves.