Writers know where they belong.

Bookstores. Libraries. Literary festivals. Conferences with lanyards and coffee urns and panel discussions that run ten minutes over. These are the sanctioned spaces. They are safe. They are familiar. They are, in many cases, crowded with other authors hoping to be noticed by the same small group of readers.

What we are not taught—and might feel faintly rebellious—is that books sell very well where no one expects them.

A gun show. A car show. A county fair. An antique market. These are not environments most authors would circle on a calendar with anticipation. They sound weird or at least a bit odd. What would people who came to buy spark plugs or quilts or hunting gear want with a novel?

I didn’t expect to sell books at a gun show.

That sentence alone would probably get me politely escorted out of most publishing conferences, but it happens to be true. I set up my author table between vendors selling knife sharpeners and boxes of ammunition, fully prepared for an afternoon of awkward smiles and polite disinterest. What I got instead was conversation—real conversation—with people I would never have met inside a bookstore.

By the end of the day, I sold ten books. I also met a former shop owner who bought a novel because she loves to read, a man who quietly admitted he wanted to write a novel, and a local business owner whose card I slipped into my pocket because, as it turns out, I need a handyman. I made my table fee back and then some. But that wasn’t the part that stayed with me…