Romantastic 2026
Albany, OR
This was my BEST EVENT YET!
Oregon, y’all SHOWED UP for this event. I was so impressed with the number of people passing through. Not only did I nearly lose my voice from hurling my pitch at the people coming up to my booth, but also watching others walk by that weren’t a fit for my genre. We had NUMBERS. Whew.
This was the second event where I had my husband by my side. I highly recommend picking an event buddy… the way we streamlined things from one event to the next was a game changer. He understood how things were packed. It made unloading the car, setting up the display, and packing things away so much easier than last time. I can only imagine how the next will go!
Romantastic was also the first event where we brought extra swag that fit the theme but wasn’t necessarily related to the books. Shadow Mommy swag! We had water bottles, crossbody bags, and cute little espresso cups. Those things were a hit!
Okay, let’s crunch some numbers…
The booth cost me somewhere between $100 and $200 (I honestly can’t remember). The drive was only 1.5 hours away so that was nice. No hotel costs to factor in. Not much for meals. Just adventure!
We sold (roughly) 40 books! FORTY! AH! Between that and the handful of espresso cups and water bottles we made almost $700. Not net, of course. We have to factor in the cost of the books and making the swag,
None of that takes into account the number of people who scanned my QR code and saved my book to their TBR. I’m equally grateful to those readers!
I would say in the end my profit was about $300, excluding future Kindle reads. That is HUGE! Definitely my best event so far.
Did I learn anything this time around?
Honestly? Very few things. It went well. I did forget my square card reader which meant I could only accept tap to pay or manually enter numbers. So, next time we’ll make sure to snag that. I also wish we had inventory built into square. I resisted paying for the upgraded features, but next time, I’m going to take the leap. Live inventory sounds like a dream.
The only other thing I would change is having better signs for pricing. The sign itself was nice. The “Menu”. But I want the individual table signs to be more clear.