With the setup behind us, today was the first full day of the convention for us, and we spent almost all of it in the dealer’s room, behind the table, selling books.

We didn’t have continuous customers, but we sold some. We sold out the soft copies of The Repossessed Ghost and we’re down to 4 hard copies. We sold quite a few of all the books on the table, and it’s getting easier and easier for us to describe all of the books, and not just the one I wrote.

Several of the other Water Dragon authors took some time at the table. It wasn’t just me and Melissa, though there was a short time this afternoon where Melissa handled both the Water Dragon and Small Publishing in a Big Universe tables all on her own. She did great! In that short span, she made more sales than I did the whole day.

At dinner, in the same Irish pub we visited last night, Melissa asked me something along the lines, “Is what we’re doing worth it?”

We had been talking about finances and such, and I said, “I don’t think of it along those lines?”

Melissa pushed the question again and I pointed out that if we completely sold out of The Repossessed Ghost, our personal profit wouldn’t be enough to pay for our meal. It probably wouldn’t be enough to pay for the hard cider I was drinking.

At this point in my writing career, most of what I’m doing is not financially sound. If you track my hours, or my mileage, or how much we spend on hotel or meals, or any part of it, and if you look at it only in terms of income versus expenses, we should not be going to conventions. It isn’t really possible for us to make enough to justify all of these costs.

I don’t think of it along those lines. I see it as planting seeds.

I’m meeting people. I’m putting my book in front of some people. I’m creating little, tiny ripples, not really significant to be noticed, but over time, they might amount to something. There’s more to it than money.

At least one other author I know has pretty much stopped going to events where they see no viable way to make up their expenses through sales. It’s purely transactional, for them. And I get it. If I lose my day job, I might start looking at events the same way.

In the mean time, I see myself drawing money from my job, and investing it into my writer career. I might be buying myself opportunities down the line. Or, I might be throwing my cash into a trash fire. We won’t know for a while.

Those are my thoughts and my justifications for going to these events. In the fullness of time, we’ll see if the seeds I’m planting today will bear fruit tomorrow.