Currently listening to: What he wrote by Laura Marling

A couple of weeks back I went to a local author faire.  I didn’t go to buy books, which I felt a little guilty about.  There are “should’s” involved in authorship.  There are “should’s” involved in an event like this.

Support the self published author, support the artist, support the little guy or gal that goes it alone. That determined figure who paves their own way without any help.

And then when the product is done, the money spent, the marketing begins.  Up go the posters, and out goes the reclusive author.  “Stand up” the articles advise.  Sell the product. However, when your audience is also reclusive authors that quickly becomes difficult.

So for those quiet types out comes the food.  The candy bars, the fortune cookies, and the mints.  To lure that quiet mouse of that timid customer, to wiggle his or her whiskers and approach.

The artists faire is next door, strange that authors and other artists are separated.  The artist faire is lively and full and warm with the scents of good food and homemade soap.  Their booths seems like an actual house, a little hut.  One with walls and a counter and a space that one can enter like a home.

The authors are given long tables covered in black cloth.  Posters and books and treats have to make up for the homey feel.  The books have to speak for themselves (pun intended). However, books are not art pieces.  All their gifts remain hidden inside.

And the art of selling the book becomes cheap.  There is a humility in authorship.  So many are written, so many are published, and almost all are meant for the used bookstore to be sold for 1 or 2 dollars.

But the work, the process, should somehow be compensated.

However, I come into this place.  Figuring out my advertising angle for my one book when others have 10 or 15.  Posters, stickers, something.  I too am lured in for my place in this.  All the while knowing that compensation should not be the goal. That the goal was in the journey and the birth.  That is all.  The creation.