u/DropsofStarlight

First time having a booth as a vendor somewhere! I had a goal of $5… I did not make that lol. This event was technically a 2 hour book signing event with some other venders so I’m attributing that to part of the reason why I didn’t make any money. Not the right type of event or crowd, everyone had already spent their money on books to get signed. So I’m disappointed obviously but not necessarily surprised? I did get people stopping at my booth and offering compliments, along with taking business cards at least.

Anyways, off the bat one thing I know I need to change is my signs bc they are TINY. I was in a bit of a rush putting this all together so it didn’t receive as much thought but I know signing is super important for easier interactions.

But since I have no experience with this sort of thing, I’m hoping for some advice on what else to work on next!

I need to increase my inventory and narrow down what I want to do in the future. I’m doing some more research on certain things in that regard.

So I am going to a have a booth at an event next weekend in Utah and have been preparing a number of different things to sell. Among them are these journals. The event is for writers and readers, as well as general public so most of my stuff is going to be book themed. I am still what would probably be considered intermediate to beginner at bookbinding. I took a class in college on it and discovered that I liked it! These small notebooks are not a traditional size (5.5 x 4 something). They’re made using some thick cardstock recycled material for the base instead of book board. The parts of these that I think have the most flaws would be the end pages, where the cover meets the pages.

I do have some larger versions that I plan to sell that are more around the A5 size.

The trouble is the pricing. I want them to be a low enough price that to the consumer, it seems worth it, but for me, enough money for my time. I plan to price the designs differently based on time it takes to make them. I do have plain versions with not intricate designs that will be lower than these more creative ones.

I was thinking $15-20 for the plain notebooks? I’m not sure if that’s too high though since I’m still not perfect at it. Some of the books have small cosmetic flaws like wrinkling or some white creasing in the paper from folds.

The heart designs takes me roughly 3 hours to make, though it might be faster now that I’ve made several.

The price of materials is something I’ve tried to calculate but it seems to come down to not very much per book. If anything, the most expensive thing is the glue. Although some of the first ones I made were made using some Elmer’s glue I had, which is not as good quality I’m aware. Signatures are made up of just printer paper because it was the easiest thing to access. So the major thing to calculate the price is time. I don’t want to charge too much though because I want them to sell.