6 Red Flags From Book Event Organizers

6 Red Flags From Book Event Organizers

There's one terrible thing about us authors; we walk around with a heart full of hope.

We drop a book and hope with no promotion, advertising, or marketing our book will become a number one bestseller.

We hope a Hollywood producer will stumble upon our book and turn it into a movie franchise.

We hope we get a million readers from one social media post.

We are full of hope sometimes unrealistically but it's there.

Sometimes our hope dies or is reduced, then we must do the hard work of marketing ourselves.

The reduction of this overwhelming hope is what finally forces us to get out of our writing caves or the coffee shops, and we start trying to do events.

My first event was a local market in the New Orleans area around 2021. I had just watched a contemporary of mine go viral and blow up on social media.

A friend was going to be vending at the market and I, in a fit of despair decided I needed to sell books face to face because obviously social media wasn’t working for me (Truth is, social media still doesn’t work for me; I’m terrible).

Turns out I love doing in-person events! I get to do the things I do best talk my ish.

These events could be anything from our local farmers markets to holiday markets, craft markets or even comic cons but the hardest events of them all is the author specific reader event.

I know for me I was almost scammed by an event organizer, and it was simply because I was trying to get out of doing events in the South.

I felt like I had over saturated this area by doing the same events year after year. It wasn't that my sales at these events were bad per se; it was just I was seeing mostly the same people.

I wanted to meet fresh readers, so I started searching. There are many groups where organizers and authors can post upcoming events. I found one that was in a part of the Midwest I'd never been too.

Here Are 6 Ways To Spot A Scam Event

 Red flag #1 ~ The venue or days and time change multiple times.

This event was in its initial planning stages so there was a Facebook group for authors and nothing else. At least two times that event location changed from one hotel to a different hotel, which meant that the times of the event changed too.

Back in the day, I worked at an event planning company, not as an event planner. I saw how they dissected hotels in spreadsheets comparing the tiniest differences in pros and cons.

Red flag #2 ~ The event organizer has no connection to the city or there is a one-person team.

Yes, professional organizers can plan multiple events in multiple cities, but a first-time author organizer doesn’t have that experience.

For this event, the author who was the organizer lived on the East Coast and as I mentioned this event is deep in the Midwest.

Which meant that the organizer would need to make multiple trips to the event site, and they never mentioned having a team of people working to make the event happen. There are stages to event management from Pre-event to On-site Operations to Post Event and all the steps in between.

Red flag #3 ~ The event logo (graphics) looked handmade.

When I say handmade I mean literally it looks like something children would create or leftovers from Microsoft Paint.

If they are not going to invest in professionally done graphics and logo then they aren’t going to spend your money wisely on the event and improving the readers’ experience.

Graphic design is the first impression readers will have of the event!

I let this logo go for the time being as I was assuming this was just a placeholder, but the longer the planning went on for the event the worse the graphics got.

I mentioned the graphics in the event group and the organizer ignored me.

When I mentioned my concerns via email, the organizer ONLY told me that “you can keep your opinions about graphics to yourself. I have been doing events for decades, and I do work with two graphic designers.”

Red flag #4 ~ The organizer will not share sales numbers for VIP or General Admission.

As I mentioned, I live in New Orleans, and I was going to the Midwest and not only that I was driving!

So, I sent a message asking simply, “Hey! What are the ticket sales numbers? I'm trying to plan how many books to bring.”

This is a very simple question! Most events/organizers will happily tell you “We sold half of our general admission tickets and ALL of our VIP tickets!”

OR

“We've sold a fourth of the tickets so far, but we have eight months left before the event. I’ll be running ads on social media channels starting six weeks before the event.”

OR

“We're five tickets away from fully sold out!”

However, this organizer didn’t say any of those. Instead, they went on the defensive. When they tell you nothing about sales, take it as a glaring red flag.

Red flag #5 ~ The organizer depends on you to spread the word via social media.

There is no push or ground game.

No website.

No social media accounts.

Nothing to direct people where to buy tickets or get information on the event other than a poorly filled out Eventbrite page.  

You never see ads.

There is no local coverage via radio, television, or print (or no plans to try to get that coverage).

Book influencers don’t know about the event.

I initially forgave those shortcomings because I incorrectly assumed that those accounts would be forthcoming.

The number of authors trickled in slowly; I think at the height of planning there were only twenty something authors. You can have an amazing event with 20+ authors but only if you’ve packed the event with readers.

If the organizer is always hyping the event in the event group and encouraging you to do the same; but you never see them posting on social media themselves. RED FLAG!

Red flag #6 No sponsors.

Many of the big-name corporate sponsors are increasingly cutting back on their discretionary spending but there are plenty of ways to get sponsors for your event. As I mentioned before, I worked at an event planning company and there were people whose sole job it was to find sponsors both big and small.

If there are no big corporate sponsors, they can lean on book-ish vendors who sell book adjacent items.

Give me a few days and I’ll post another blog about questions you should ask your event organizer later. (This blog took months to finish and post, so I need a few days.)