When my best friend and I attend events as vendors, we often find ourselves criticizing our failure to predict human behavior. At first we were, perhaps, too enthusiastic and hopeful. When a potential customer said he or she would return later, hope surged. We soon learned to disregard that polite rejection: they almost never return later.
We still find hope rising when a potential customer lingers over the books and/or paintings. We get lots of compliments on the paintings. When a potential customer expresses particular interest in one or two paintings, we become even more hopeful of a sale. Disappointment all too frequently ensues: “I thought for sure she/he was going to buy a painting.”
That statement is followed by “We gotta stop thinking. We’re obviously not good at it.”
I understand that carrying around a large canvas might be a bit cumbersome, but we provide shopping bags to make the carrying a lot more convenient. We also understand that our artwork might not be to everyone’s taste. That’s OK. We have attended other events where other artists showcase their work and decide that, no, we don’t particularly like this artist’s paintings or that artist’s sculptures.
Art is subjective.
Consider a recent article I came across about Hunt Slonem’s bunny series. Slonem is an internationally acclaimed artist whose leoprine paintings strike me as … childish. Not childlike, but childish. I look at those and think any five-year-old kid could do the same … with finger painting. I’m not impressed. But then, contemporary art really isn’t to my taste.
Artwork pops up in my Facebook newsfeed. Some of the posts are by artists whose work in colored pencils, oil pastels, and paint amaze me with their precision and exquisite, photorealistic detail. I will never be that skilled. My work is rather more along the lines of Impressionism. I like to call it channeling my inner Monet.
My expectations aren’t confined to selling paintings.
When it comes to books, I have expectations, too. Going to Oddmall’s Emporium of the Weird last year, I expected to sell more fantasy and science fiction romance than anything else. My titles in those genres did sell well to that audience. However, my best-selling title at events is Focus. (It certainly doesn’t sell online.) I’m not entirely sure why, beyond the fact that the book is not part of a series. A customer can try out my work without committing to reading a series. However, I have several other books that aren’t series-oriented and difficult to sell.
It must boil down to appeal. Books with more niche appeal don’t sell as well as those with broader appeal. Focus is what I call romantic suspense. It spans romance, mystery, and suspense. Another book I thought would do well and didn’t is Hogtied. It’s an “MC romance” (“MC” meaning motorcycle club). MC romances tend to be really gritty with lots of foul language, violence, crime, sex, and a hefty dose of misogyny. My story tones down the profanity, misogyny, and sex, but goes full-bore on the violence. However, MC romances are a niche product—a popular niche in which my story didn’t quite hit the mark.
When participating as a vendor at events, I am learning that different areas have different preferences. For instance, I have already participated at three of the Second Saturday street fairs in Urbana, Ohio this year. The third, which enjoyed beautiful weather, yielded the most disappointing sales. I was at the Urbana Fireworks Festival at Grimes Field last weekend … and left early. Not only were book sales disapppointing, but we didn’t sell a single painting. Despite Urbana being less than 20 miles north of Springfield, the population has proven to have distinctly different tastes in literature and art than the crowds who attend the Clifton Gorge Arts & Music Festival or the Tipp City Mum Festival, both within a 20-mile radius of Springfield. In Cincinnati, a city where we expected more cosmopolitan tastes and worldly attitudes, we did poorly there, too.
I haven’t yet figured out how to gauge the preferences of potential customers in different regions before expending the effort and expense to offer my wares for sale. This weekend, we’re heading to Art on the Hill in Mantua, Ohio. The festival gets good press as an event with lots of eclectic offerings and an open-minded crowd, but we’ll have to see if the event meets our expectations.
That being said, making a profit isn’t the sole purpose of these excursions, although it’s a main consideration in our decision whether to return. Some first-time experiences don’t meet our modest expectations for sales, but merit a return for other reasons. Others don’t merit a return regardless of sales. Regardless, we are constantly adjusting our expectations in an attempt to better judge the events that suit us best.
So, even though we indulge in self-deprecating humor that thinking isn’t our strong suit, we do a lot of thinking. Perhaps it isn’t thinking we do poorly, but prognostication.