Selling at Homeschool Conventions
Part 2: Guest Post by Amanda Trumpower
Speaking at the conference
If you are speaking during the conference, you will do so during Friday-Saturday.
As a fiction author for kids, I don’t have all the speaking topics a nonfiction educator would have. Therefore, I shoot for one talk per day. If you have a nonfiction product, you could come up with two or three presentations per day.
Please note the conference may not accept every topic you pitch. They will accept well-known speakers first and give you the leftovers.
Time slots are typically 50 minutes. Leave enough time for Q&A during your official time slot. The speaking schedules are usually tight. You will not be allowed to linger in your room.
Be prepared to provide your own laptop/projector cords, and be pleasantly surprised if they have a dedicated laptop in each room. You may also be assigned a tech helper, but it’s always best if you can be self-sufficient to solve your own tech problems. The gear/support you are provided with really depends on the size of the event, your room assignment, and how many people they anticipate will attend your talk.
Practice both speaking with a microphone and enunciating to reach the back of a room without one. No one wants hear you pop all your Ps as you blunder into the microphone for the first time. Conversely, people don’t want to strain to hear you in the back.
If you have the final slots on Saturday . . . oof. Most people are tired, overwhelmed, and visually overstimulated by now. This is less of a problem if your presentation is anecdotal or entertaining in nature. Tell your audience a good story and help them decompress from a busy weekend.
If you have a fact-filled, nonfiction presentation, provide great notes or a summary flier for people to look at again when they are fresher.
Expenses and Earnings
Costs for us to attend GHC Cincinnati in 2024
- Hotel: $800
- Gas: $100
- Booth: $600
We don’t count food against our sales. This part of the trip is a vacation for us. :)
Total sales
Just under $2,000! We covered our expenses and made a small profit. This was a huge improvement from Year 1 when we only had $300 in sales.
Is it worth it?
Due to the incredibly high cost of travel, it is an unfortunate reality that even for the most experienced authors, covering the mere cost of attendance is a huge win.
If you cover your costs, celebrate. Many of your fellow vendors cannot say the same.
If you cover the cost of attending and take profit home, this is an excellent achievement. You should be proud.
Given this information, you may wonder if selling at a conference is worth it in the first place.
I wholeheartedly say “yes.”
Each interaction with a customer does not end when they walk away from the table. People who purchased one book this year may return to purchase more online later. They may tell their friends about you. They may purchase books for a friend’s or nephew’s birthday later in the year. The trickle effect is real and it matters.
This is also a valuable opportunity to learn about your target audience. What features are parents looking for in books? What makes something an auto-buy? What unmet needs do they have that you could fill?
Learning the answers to these questions could lay the groundwork for increasing your profits next year.
Improvements we made in Year 2
I spoke, which greatly increased our visibility.
We bought a large vertical banner. This was the single most important improvement! It cost $325 in design fees, $140 in production, and it is worth every penny. I would go so far as to say don’t bother attending the event at all until you can afford to have one of these signs produced.
(Additionally, do not bother to produce the sign until you can afford to have a quality graphic designer do the work for you. This is not an item you can cut corners on. Your DIY skills are most likely not up to the task.)
We provided business cards and flyers with our critical information. I was, in fact, stupid enough to attend a major selling event without bringing business cards my first year. Live and learn!
We offered a prize wheel to draw kids (and their parents) to our table. This was also huge. You can only sell a fraction of the books you pitch. The more you increase your pitch numbers, the better chance you have of selling.
General tips and tricks
Consistency is key. Experienced vendors said their sales improve the longer they consistently appear in a location. Pick a location you can attend and do your best to go every year.
Have more than one title to sell. Most of our customers bought the entire seven-book set—including new customers! Having multiple books to sell is strongly preferable to only having one. Remember, people are here to buy months if not an entire year’s worth of books.
Quality art matters. I cannot emphasize this enough. Art and graphic design are expensive, so many people try to DIY it or pay cheap labor that is not up to snuff. If you pay top dollar for art, I guarantee you will stand out at a homeschool conference. Good art cannot make up for your bad writing, but it will get people to your table to begin with.
Offer free content. The first audiobook/ebook in our series is permanently free on my website. This risk-free trial encouraged hesitant customers to give us a chance. Some came back that weekend, some came back the following year. (Or bought online in the interim.)
Don’t pack up your table each night. The venue should have its own security and will lock up the building each night. Take your electronics and your cashbox, but leave your inventory and table gear. Less work for you!
Bring snacks! This really is a two-person job because you need the chance to eat and use the restroom. Most of the big conferences have some sort of on-campus food available for purchase. Snacks we bring to get us through:
A fun bottled drink for morale (I love flavored iced tea)
Cheese cubes, yogurt tubes, or trail mix for protein
Pretzels or crackers for carbs
Apples or carrots travel great, plus they give you a fresh hit of produce during a day with lots of processed foods. Bananas are too easily bruised when packed among your gear.
A travel sized bag of chips (the fat helps you feel full for a bit) or cookies (more morale food!)
Bring a large reusable water bottle. Staying hydrated is the most important physical need you’ll have for the weekend.
Dress in layers. Some exhibit halls are hot. Some are cold. Dress professionally in an outfit that can add or remove a layer as needed. Wear comfortable, supportive shoes. Ladies, do not wear heels. I don’t even like to wear dress flats.
Have a system to accept credit cards. About 80% of our sales were credit card, 20% cash. We used Square, but I hope to transition to Shopify to integrate with our online store.
Tailor your pitch to your audience. Kids want to know what the book will do for them: make them laugh, make them cry, keep them on the edge of their seat. Adults want to know content warnings and reading level. Don’t over pitch plot to a parent who cares more about whether the book has potty humor or if their kid can make it through the sentence.
State your book’s values boldly. My books do not contain any LGBTQIA+ content. I include that information in my opening pitch. Customers will either love me and buy everything, or hate me and walk away. I respect their opinion either way and save everyone some time. Be kind and polite about your book’s values, but be bold. If someone hates your work, they might as well find out now.
On to your first conference
If you made it this far, I’d say you’re invested enough to start researching homeschool conferences near you!
In addition to the raw sales and the salesmanship practice, connecting with families who share the same values as you in an amazing experience that I cannot recommend strongly enough.
I’ve been hugged by readers, asked for my autograph, and told that my books have delighted children in homes across the country. I got into this business to make kids laugh as they read a book, and to teach them a little about God in the process. The homeschool conference is where I get to see the fruit of all that labor (seriously, so much labor) hyper-condensed into one weekend.
It is humbling, encouraging, inspiring, and eventually . . . even financially profitable!
I wish you the best of luck at your first conference. Reach out if you have questions!
Bio: Amanda Trumpower writers for Jesus lovers who dig dragons, detectives, and droids. She's a homeschooler, twin mom, D&D enthusiast, and board game fanatic. She and her nerdy husband make a home out of their chaos in northeast Ohio.
Learn more about Amanda and here books: https://amandatrumpower.com
