Book signing post-mortem

Well, that was interesting. I arrived at 5:30 for my 6 p.m. signing, armed for bear. I'd printed a poster of the cover via Cafe Press and had it mounted at Hobby Lobby for display on the signing table. I had 10 extra copies of the book in my car in case the store's order hadn't come in. And I was wearing my Voices of Vision "golf shirt", also courtesy of Cafe Press. The table was set up and ready for me, right where everyone coming into the store would pass by. They'd printed up flyers in advance, and even had a lobby poster up in a kiosk. The Hastings crew treated me first-rate.


My fan club also showed up, as you can see in the photo above. Calista and Keela took the concept of "direct marketing" to heart, grabbing copies of my book and waving them in the air, encouraging passers-by to buy their daddy's book. They met with some degree of success, apparently, judging by the photo below:


Mission accomplished, the girls quickly lost interest and headed off for some Chinese and sushi, leaving me to face the crowds alone. And alone I was. After a spate of initial sales, people coming in began to avoid even looking at my little setup.

I went into the signing without any illusions. I knew I wouldn't sell a lot of books. That would be nice, of course, but the main reason I was putting on the show was to give the store employees a face to connect with the name, and to ensure copies of my book found their way onto the store's bookshelves after the fact. Any additional sales generated by my presence were gravy.

Hastings is an "Entertainment Superstore," with its stock divided equally among books, music and movies. Friday and Saturday are big business for movie rentals, and as there is a cinema in the same shopping center, there was an influx from there as well. I realized that the number of people coming into the store was increasing as the hour grew later, so instead of ending the signing at 8 p.m. as planned, I stuck around until 9. That didn't result in many more sales, but oddly enough, the people that came in during that later hour were a lot more talkative and interested in me and my book. I passed out a bunch of business cards, a lot more advice to aspiring authors and plenty of reading lists (more on that below). My signings next weekend at the Hastings in Round Rock and Seguin will definitely be 6-9 p.m. affairs now, after having seen how the crowds pick up later in the evening. I might even push it to 10, if the booksellers don't mind. I wonder how that Hastings dynamic will compare or contrast with Borders, which doesn't have that rental crowd influx to deal with.

Since I didn't invest in bookmarks or postcards (as I couldn't see that being financially viable with this kind of book) I still wanted something I could hand out as a freebie giveaway that served as promotional material as well. But I didn't want to be gauche and just pass out "Buy my book!" flyers. So I worked up a half-sheet "Suggested reading list." I went through my book and listed the authors therein, and beneath their names included the titles of either their most recent publication or a particular volume discussed in their interview. And I included the respective ISBNs. On the flip side of the flyer I had the cover of my book, along with the URL for this here blog. I passed out a bunch of these, to the handful of people who bought my book, and also to those who declined to pony up. I'm not sure if that will result in any sales for the folks on the list, or if anyone will follow the link to this blog, but I don't see it hurting (and can't imagine the authors listed having complaints about it, either). As an experiment, it'll be interesting to see if there are any tangible results.

I also experienced some of those infamous "signing horror stories," although mine, thankfully, don't quite rise to the level of "horror." Awkward, maybe. There was one guy that came up and becan talking with me about the book. Several folks walked up, then moved on, because this fellow was monopolizing my time and I couldn't very well cut him off to begin conversation with these other folks, could I? Of course not. So imagine my chagrin when he abruptly walks off, saying "I don't really like this science fiction stuff." Then there was the couple that grew quite excited when they found out that not only had I interviewed Charles de Lint for the book, but that I knew the man fairly well and count him and his lovely wife MaryAnn as friends. Guaranteed sale if ever there was one, right? Not on this night, I'm afraid. One junior high student wanted to buy a copy for his father, a high school teacher who was a big science fiction fan, but his mother refused, declaring the cover art "Too scary." Ouch. I got that comment a couple of times. And a couple of times people asked if it was me on the cover. Ouch again. Several times during the night I had folks come up and ask who I was an what I was doing, and then argue with me when I explained I was the author. They simply refused to believe that someone who'd written a book would do a signing in New Braunfels--or rather, they seemed to have a hard time grasping the concept of signings in general. Next week I'm going to print up some "Meet the Author" signs to hopefully nip that little problem in the bud.

But I did meet some wonderful people. Several high school students were genuinely excited by the fact that a writer--even one as unheralded as I--lived in New Braunfels. I saw my daughter's t-ball coach, who was genuinely surprised to discover I was a writer. And I met another fine fellow who buys and sells rare and collectable science fiction books--since he bought a copy and had me sign it, I can only hope he sees a future for me.

All in all it was an enjoyable, if wearying, experience. Someone with a more fragile ego than I might not have fared as well, nor someone with higher expectations. I learned a lot, and think my career benefited from the effort to a very modest degree.

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