Ideas about where to sell literature evangelism books

Street markets & Flea markets

• Many old time literature evangelists made a good living for many years working flea markets.
• These can be done in several ways:
• Lots of inventory - It depends on the traffic in the market, and the demographics. Some flea markets have a heavily hispanic attendance, so be prepared to show a lot of the spanish titles.
• Small inventory - Just one or two tables focusing on a narrow group of our books such as the health encyclopedias and cookbooks. If you setup three tables, the left table can be health, the right table bibles and childrens books, and the middle table message books like desire of ages, great controversy, etc.
• You may need to attend a market several times to find a mix of books that works best at that market. It may be a different mix than what works in other markets.
• Most attractive books seem to be the large family Bibles, red "Family Medical Guide" magabook, "Angels Among Us" magabook, "The Bible Story" series, and "Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories". Many people recognize the bible story books from when they were children.
• You may be tempted to mix in other items in the booth like hollywood DVDs, videos, religious icons, etc. You might hope to cross sell your books to the purchasers of the videos. In general, that seems to be very rare.
• Books to place to the front include the family Bibles, cookbooks, and the Encyclopedias of Medicinal Plants and Foods That Heal.
• For the magabooks: Childrens magabooks generate more interest than the adult message magabooks. "Fun With Kids In The Kitchen" catches several demographics. Bible Heroes, and Jesus Friend of Children also does well.
• Try to gather lead cards for later followup.
• Use an end of the season free drawing for a set of childrens books.
• Prepare a sales receipt for every customer and ask for their address and phone number as part of the receipt. Some will refuse, but many will share this information with you.
• Have business cards to distribute, although this will probably not be a huge source of phone calls.

• Camp meetings

• County Fairs

• Door to door work in apartment complexes - If you can get in to the complex, people are often willing to listen and you can quickly reach a lot of doors. I've seen 90% of the residents in apartment complexes allow presentations
• Door to door work in houses - takes more time, depends on the community whether it will be easy to get entrance to people's homes.
• Door to door work in malls - You can quickly reach a lot of businesses. But shop owners may not be real interested in being sold to, they are too busy worrying about their rent on an empty store, or too busy with customers in a busy store.
• Go door to door to drop off single copies of display books at homes to try the books out for a couple of days. Follow up a couple of days later to collect the books and perhaps sell them a set.

• Businesses may be willing to donate our health books to local schools and libraries
• Home Health Education Service Success In Getting Businesses To Donate Books To Schools In The Cayman Islands
• Home school conventions
• Sell display book sampler sets for a nominal fee ($20-$40 for a set of four display books), and follow up to see which set the children or parent liked best.
• Farmer's Markets - They usually want food related items, so focus on the cookbooks, vegetarian especially since most of the farmers are selling produce and they'd like to see . Encyclopedia of Foods that heal may be a good match too.
• One problem you may encounter is that some of the larger farmer's markets may be exclusively reserved for farmers selling their own produce. They may not allow resellers into the market.
• If this is the case, see if there is a free speech area where you can stand and loan out display books to people who are willing to try it for a few days reading to their children, and are also willing to give you their address so you can follow up with them later to collect the book, and perhaps sell them a complete set. Be careful to not engage in actually selling there or they will consider you a squatter: No discussion of price, no accepting money.
• Sometimes the freespeech area is a very limited area, so you may need to get to the farmers market very early.
• Free drawing for cookbooks - See if a farmer would be willing to collect names, addresses, and phone numbers for you in return for a set of your cookbooks. At the end of the summer, or season, or month, you give away a set of cookbooks to one of their customers. Supply them with a set of demo copies of the cookbooks, a clipboard and signup sheet, or signup cards and a free drawing box or basket.