Looking at the Funny Side

Today I’m in the mood for a little humor. I think, in the writing business, you have to look at the light side or else you’d go crazy (like Scarlett was always saying.) Whether you enjoy book signings or not, I’d like to tell you about my first one.

To start with, we have only a couple of bookstores in town, none of the biggies like Barnes and Noble or Powells. The bookstore I’m talking about shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, namely me. So a few years ago, I marched into the store, my first print book in hand, all giddy at the thought of signing my book for the thousands of readers that would stand in line for hours to buy it. Hahahaha.

The first problem: for some reason, the store could not order the book from their distributor. I didn’t understand that because my small indie publisher uses the two major distributors as well as several other smaller ones. Okay. No big deal. The really, really nice man in charge said I could have my signing anyway. Just bring the books. They would not even take a cut. Wow! What a deal. Such a nice man. So we set the date, a week or so before Christmas when shoppers would be doing their last minute shopping.

The Saturday arrived. I loaded up my books in my little suitcase on rollers and headed for the store. When I approached the man at the counter and said, “I’m here for the signing,” he looked sort of blank. Then he groaned. He had forgotten all about me. I could understand. They were very busy. He said, not to worry. He’d fix me up a table in a few minutes. While I waited I wandered around the store, pulling my little suitcase behind me. Finally, I got tired and decided to make my own spot. There was this nice little table piled high with The Lord of the Rings and all of those books. I was sure the author would not mind sharing his table, so I scooted some books to the side and proceeded to add my book, along with the cards I’d made with packets of hot chocolate to give away. Several people actually stopped and let me tell them about the book. They took the hot chocolate, but no books. Ah well.

The nice man finally caught up with customers, came over, set me up with a table and even sat down and talked with me for awhile. I ended up selling quite a few books. So the story has a happy ending.

Now, I’d love to hear your stories about your book signings.