The Heart of Every Book Fair is the Readers

Growing up one of my favorite days in grade school was book fair day. I must admit I really wasn’t one of those kids that was always reading, I was typically outside playing with whatever ball I could find lying around in the yard. However, I absolutely loved our school book fairs. We were able to look at various books and if we were lucky, we had a couple of bucks with us to buy one. In my case that was usually a book on one of my many sports heroes. Fast forward twenty or thirty years, okay maybe a few more and I still feel that excitement around a good book fair. In fact, recently with the global pandemic ongoing that has become a challenge as all of us have been forced online for nearly everything. Not wanting to give up on that feeling of excitement and also seeking ways to promote my own book, I started searching for online book fair options and eventually even created an experience of my own that I will share with you toward the end of the article. In the meantime, I would like to focus on what makes a book fair great, the fairgoers.

Focus on The Benefit to Readers

In every case that I can imagine a successful book fair starts out with one basic premise which is how can one put together a collection of books that will help readers find books in genres they love that they might not find on their own. Given the millions of books that are available on Amazon and other online retailers the reality is that there are tons of books that readers might enjoy that they likely will never see just based upon the sheer volume of titles to wade through. Some ways to organize books for readers include:

• General Themes – Some readers love books about pirates, some love vampire stories, and some love romance novels. The beauty behind this is that with so many books and eBooks in circulation it is true that there are works out there to meet any type of reader preference. Organizing a book fair around a theme can be a great way to give readers a nice list of books on a subject they love to queue up on their kindle or other reading device.
• Genre Based – Along the same lines but widening the preferences would be to create a book fair around a genre of books. For instance, we might create a book fair for readers that love cozy mysteries. This type of focus around a genre allows the organizer to incorporate more books while keeping the overall theme of the fair tight and highly relevant to a group of readers.
• Age Groups – Another great way to organize books could be around age-appropriate books. It’s possible to create an online book fair just for kids books (picture books, coloring books, early readers, and many more). This is another great option because parents or whomever is appropriate for the books know what to expect but again this widens the type of book quite a bit compared to a theme or genre-based book fair. In this type of fair you would see a great variety that is fitting for a specific demographic.
• Cultural Groups – As yet another example of a type of fair that could be incredibly meaningful for a group of people. An organizer might choose to create a book fair around a specific culture like a Native American book fair that focused on books that are rich in the culture of Native Americans or maybe just books that were written by Native Americans.
• Broad Fairs – There are many readers out there that cross every kind of genre and theme with their reading and just want to explore as many options as possible. We should consider this group as well when creating book fairs to give them a chance to find a genre or niche that maybe they never even knew existed and certainly to find new authors for them to follow.

If the focus of the book fair is on helping readers find books that they most likely will be interested in reading, the chances of a successful and well-visited fair go up tremendously. What online book fairs want to provide is the same excitement of those traditional book fairs that many of us loved back in our school days or maybe growing up and visiting our local library book fairs. Currently there are group promotions that authors can participate in but they don’t have exactly the feel of a fair.

A New Platform for Authors to Create Book Fairs

There really isn’t a site that is specifically dedicated to book fairs that is available to all authors (self-published or traditionally published). There are sites like BookFunnel that provide group promotions in addition to other features, but they don’t have quite the same goal or nostalgia factor as a traditional book fair. Accordingly, we decided to build a platform that would be controlled by authors but also be focused on providing readers with themed book fairs that really resonate with them. This is the overarching vision behind eBookFairs.com. The best way to show what the fairs are like is to list a few of the recent fairs for your review.

• The Romancing the Night Fair – This was a fair that was dedicated to romance novels of any kind. So it was a fairly broad genre based fair. It had 28 books submitted and in total over 100 people voted for books in the fair until a fair winner was declared.
• The Pioneer Fair – This fair was a broad fair that featured all kinds of authors that were early adopters of the platform. It had 35 books in the fair and so far over 420 people have voted for authors in this fair.
• Kids Love Adventure Fair – This is a kids picture book fair so a fairly tight and clear audience for this one that was created by the very popular YouTuber, Keith Wheeler. This fair is currently still taking book submissions but is a great example of an age-specific and genre-specific book fair.

Any author can create an account on the platform, subscribe, and start creating book fairs so there are some creative fairs popping up every day that target different groups of readers. Since the organizer reviews every book that is submitted, they really do a great job of keeping the fair on point so that fairgoers know exactly what to expect when they attend the fair.

As the pandemic comes to an end, we may find that we are able to hold traditional book fairs again on a regular basis, but like many things about our lives, we now have more online choices than ever. We think the convenience of online book fairs will be one of those lasting changes and will offer readers a really great way to get excited about attending a book fair for different themes or genres they love. As long as we build every fair with the fairgoers in mind, we can create a win/win for both readers and authors to connect them in a new and rewarding way.