I was wondering if there are usually book signings scheduled at the cons or if it’s more a you-set-up-your-own-table-like-a-dealer kind of thing?

I did GenCon last summer, and that was a little different. More driving, but I crashed at a friend’s place. Not ideal, but it works for my more frugal approach.

The last con I did was ConFusion, which probably ran me about $150 for the weekend. Ad Astra in Toronto was closer to $300 or so, but that’s about as pricy as they get for me.

One of these days I’d like to get to more of the World SF and Fantasy Conventions though, at which point the hotels will cost more and we’ll be dealing with plane travel and such.

So glad you enjoyed the book!. :ww:

Complete tangent: I finished Jinx and really enjoyed it. The superheroes we’re meeting beyond the big name crew are really fleshing out the world more and more, and I’m excited to see who the lead will be for the next one!

I’m basing the travel portion on my experiences going to mainly romance events. For example, the annual Romance Writers of America conference in July (one of the major events of the year) has a fee of $425 this year. The hotel is around $200 a night, and the event lasts 4 days. So that’s about $1,200 right there — not including my gas and some of my food.

Some of the smaller regional RWA events have much lower conference fees — $100 or so or less. But your hotel is still going to run at least $75 a night. If it’s in driving distance, I can usually go to a smaller RWA (or similar) weekend event for about $400-$500.

Now, if you do a workshop at one of the RWA events, you usually get a discount on the conference fee, which helps.

I’m sure the big-name, guest of honor authors (like a Nora Roberts) probably get their expenses comped, but I’m just not that well-known. Most authors aren’t.

I’m not sure how it works at more fantasy/sci-fi oriented conventions. But even if you’re going to something like Dragon Con where the fee isn’t so high to get in, you’re still going to have to pony up for your hotel room, gas, etc.

Anyone care to chime in with some fantasy/sci-fi con travel info?

Are you including travel/hotel costs for book signings as well in that? Thank you!

But it is important that you sell enough books to “earn out” your advance — that you sell enough books to earn back that $10,000 you got to start with. That indicates that your book is doing well — or at least as well as the publisher expected it to. Publishers are more likely to stick with authors whose books earn out their advances than those who don’t.

Jim — Thanks for the link and stopping by. I thought your post was really informative. Stepsister Scheme is winging its way to me from Amazon even as I type …

Charlie — Every author is different in what they spend money on. It depends on your book and genre and stage of your career and a dozen other things. I was just trying to give some general figures.

For example, I’d say that postage is my single biggest expense. Whenever I have a new release coming out, I get bookmarks made, do promo letters, and mail them to bookstores and reader groups all over the country. I also give away a couple of books to my newsletter subscribers every month, mail manuscripts back and forth, etc. It adds up quick — much quicker than I’d like!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your info.

* I don’t get stationary and business cards printed — the nearest I’ll get to that is running off a few comp slips on the laser printer and guilotining them myself.

* I don’t advertise. That’s my publisher’s job.

* Website: I do it myself, but fork over about US $1000 a year to rent my own colo server. This doesn’t factor in the time cost of running my blog (which gets roughly 15-20,000 readers per article, and 75-250 comments — it’s a *popular* blog).

* Postage: I probably spend under £100 (that’s $130) a year on postage. Mailing out prizes? Weird!

* Convention travel: I do about six cons a year, four of them international — although I try to ensure that at least two of them are paid for by the convention (as a guest of honour slot). Actually I spend a *lot* on travel, probably around US $10,000 a year. Note: it’s a business expense and comes off my profit before the tax man takes his cut.

* Different promotional work: I aim to do two interviews a month, if not more (it peaks at around two a week when a new book is coming out). Every time I visit a city I try to hit the specialist SF bookstore (if there is one) and signstock. And so on.

Finally, the advance. My first novel’s net advance was $15,000 for North American rights only. Then I got half that again for UK rights. Foreign language translation rights eventually matched the North American advance, and finally the book earned out and payed a decent royalty in North America and the UK. The result is a revenue stream that is still delivering three-digit chunks of money five years after publication, and delivered more than triple the advance within 18-36 months of the initial deal. So if you’re successful, the picture isn’t as bad as it looks at first sight …