Anyone done a Literary Festival?

[FlamedToACrisp]

I'm hoping to do a stand at my local Literary Festival (estimated footfall 5K) to sell my self-published books.

One is a 600-page WW1 non-fiction, £15 a copy with b/w illustrations or £35 a copy in colour. The other is a 100-page collection of short stories/poetry, £7.50 a copy with colour pics. They'll be on a stall with other books from my writers' group, with the WW1 book given a special promo space and A3 signage. Both are well-presented, with attractive covers. They do not have any local interest, but I hope to have published another book of local-themed poetry by then as well, similar size/price to the short stories.

How many of each do you think I should take? I don't want to overspend on the WW1 book as it costs a lot per copy (as well as being very heavy!) but I don't want to run out, either.

Any other guidance would be welcomed!

Unless the title and the littlest audience aligned (a specialist WW1 littlest!) then would it work to only take a few and if you do sell out, keep one back for potential buyers and take details if additional people want to buy so you could take payment then later have the book printed and post out. You could print a special postcard receipt with one of the book's images so they felt they were taking something away? Happy to be wrong but £35 for a spontaneous purchase by an unknown author might limit demand.

Good luck.

I would suspect for the WWI book you'd do better taking it to WWI events than a literary festival.
Why don't you do as Zilla suggests and take orders? I would expect people who are interested enough in WWI to pay £35 will be happy to order.

Quite agree, I wouldn't pay that myself if it was someone else's book! That's why, once I realised how much it would be in colour, I hastily brought out the black and white version.

Writer and occasional LitFest host here. My experience is that people mostly buy the books of the authors whose talks they've come to see. Is there any way you can take part in the events (rather than just having a stall)? This is by far the best way to generate interest from the festival-goers. Good luck!