Why I swore off book signings. . . pretty much
This is a cross post fromUncommonYA. Check out UncommonYA for authors of gritty fiction who tell it like it is!
“Hey, there!... How are ya?...Fine, thanks.”
That’s me.
That’s me, asking strangers how they are and, out of nervousness, answering myself in the same breath.
Because they ignored me.
That is me at an in-store book signing.
I go all George McFly...(see "Rejection")
I suppose it’s a rite of passage. It’s something I assumed all authors are supposed to do, and I know that many of my author friends are great at them.
But this is how it usually goes for me...
One of my daughters added the speech bubble to the above postcard at one of my early book signings. I keep it in a plastic frame on my fridge because every time I look at it, I laugh. It’s one of those “Oh, God, did that suck or what?” laughs.
This is what authors imagine it will be like:
From a Neil Gaiman signing... If you're not Neil Gaiman, the fantasy book signing, at least for me, is like this: the author shows up and sometimes they do a reading and everyone comes and they even have cake and punch and fête the author as the best thing since sliced bread and… and…they post pictures on Facebook of rows and rows of folding chairs with a bottom in every seat and people just dying to talk to the author about the book.
Right? Isn’t that the dream?
But how often is it the reality? Even the greats, like David Sedaris, have an off-day now and then, for example, this appearance at a Costco.
I’m thinking for an introvert like me, my experiences are much more common than many authors realize when they publish their first book and begin those all-important marketing plans.
This will come as a shock to people who know me as a gregarious person, but I am actually an introvert, particularly in situations where I’m supposed to be attracting people to stop at my table and talk . . . especially when said people came into a book store with one mission and one mission only and they have no desire to be interrupted by the Blob of Awkward sitting at a folding table at the front of the store. I practically choke on my own spit. It’s not pretty.
Prior to realizing how NOT comfortable I would remain in spite of repeated exposure to the experience, in 2008, when my first book, Courage in Patience, released, I filled nearly every weekend from September through April with book signings, many of them hard-won, after lots of verbal tap dancing for the store manager.
Why hard-won? Back then, prior to the Indy Author Boom, book store managers were skeptical as to why an author was booking her own signings. They’d never heard of me or my publisher, Kunati, which was a small traditional publisher in Canada. Oh, you never heard of them, either? I’m not surprised. They went belly-up within a year of releasing my book. My second publisher, WestSide, followed in Kunati’s footsteps, but that’s a story for another time.
With Kunati, it was made clear from the start that authors were expected to do most of their own local marketing, since the actual publishing house would be spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads in major trade publications.
All right, all right, fellow authors, I’ll pause here to give you time to mop up your coffee or whatever seeing as how it’s splattered all over your monitor. Go ahead, fetch a dishtowel and clean yourselves up. Yes. You.
Now…I know this is going to come as a shock, but…my publisher didn’t help me out with marketing except for designing a poster I could use for my signings. They sent a file, which I had made into a small poster.
Still have it somewhere.
I think.
So, I dutifully booked signings, and I pursued local media coverage to coordinate with every signing, and if you Google (or look on the media page on my website), you’ll find some archived interviews and articles from that time.
Okay, so out of the 2008-2009 Courage in Patience book tour, I sold maybe twenty-five copies at signings total, and that is so generous an estimate, mainly because of friends who showed up to support me and bought my book.
Could have been the topic, but I think it was a combination of the topic plus my connection to the topic: my Patience books are NOVELS about a teen girl’s recovery from childhood sexual abuse, and I drew a lot on my own experiences as a survivor to write them. They are NOT autobiographical. It took a lot of courage for me to initially identify myself as a survivor of same, and when people would ask me what Courage and Hope are about and I told them, it was like watching a curtain descend on their faces.
The few people who did not practically run from my table would ask questions like, “Is this a true story?” To which I would repeat my initial pitch of it being a NOVEL about a teen girl’s. . . ya-da-ya-da-ya-da.
Then I would explain what a NOVEL is. a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism. And sometimes I was asked questions like this: “Is it a godly book? I only read godly books.”
To which I sputtered, “N-n-n-o-o-o…I mean…um…” while thinking, “What the hell?”
To force myself to speak up at those first signings, my (now former) therapist (he’s retired, and it was planned ahead of time. I did not break him) and I came up with a plan that I would bring chocolate chip cookies to work as a conversation starter. That way, I could call out, “Hi, there! Would you like a cookie?”
I think I came across like this: I’ll be honest: all the cookies did was cause the figurative curtain to fall over chewing frowning faces instead of merely frowning ones. And, I watched a lot of grubby-handed little kids clean off my cookie plate while their parents read the back of my book cover before dropping it like it was hot and grabbing their grubby-handed children and heading for the hills.
I usually booked a slot for a couple hours, and within the first thirty minutes, I found myself checking my watch to see how much time was left. When my daughters still lived at home, I usually recruited one or more of them into going with me by promising them we’d go out to lunch or a movie afterward, and they’d sit next to me or go troll the YA section and try to talk up my book to patrons. I even tried walking around, handing out my postcards and attempting to not be a Blob of Awkward.
When my second book, Hope in Patience, came out, I hired a publicist, and then she booked signings for me, which I thought would make a difference in the turn-out, like, book stores would be invested in promoting my appearance because I had an actual publicist AND I even appeared on a couple of local morning shows. I didn’t bother booking my own signings, since, hey, I was paying someone else for that, and didn’t that make me more of a legitimate author?
But I just did fewer signings, and I sold maybe five books all together.
In spite of blowing my advance on a publicist, having a professional vouch for my authenticity as an author made no difference in book stores’ doing anything to drum up enthusiasm in my “appearance”. One fine Saturday, I drove 3 hours each way to an indy book store in a large metro area, only to find that there was NO sign in the window promoting my appearance, the owner had forgotten I was coming, and he seemed pretty pissed that I bothered to show up. It was December. I had baked a tin of Christmas cookies to share with ALL the people who stopped to talk to me about my book.
Just before cutting out thirty minutes early, I handed off the tin to a store employee, not because I was so grateful for the outstanding reception I’d received, but to prevent myself from inhaling two dozen cookies within thirty seconds of fastening my seat belt.
That day, I sold ZERO books, although I did engage in two conversations: with a woman whose cousin wrote a book and wanted to know how much I paid to publish mine, and another woman who was thoroughly pissed that the store was sold out of the Mark Twain biographies. After giving two consecutive “book tours” everything I could, I swore off book signings unless I am invited, or unless it’s part of a bigger event, such as the YALSA Convention or the Texas Library Association’s Young Adult Round Table or something--anything (!)-- other than me, at a table, by myself, forcing myself to engage strangers who are seemingly on a mission to be Anywhere But At My Table.
My strategy worked. I found my comfort zone by placing myself in situations where there are generally open-minded people who love YA fiction. It's not my fantasy signing, since I have not created a scenario involving a reading and a bottom in every folding chair, but I don't have to beg people to talk to me or bribe them to stop at my table by offering pastry of any kind.
That said…I have signed up for the East Texas Book Festival in September, in Tyler, Texas. With no on-site book seller, I will be selling copies of my newest book, Big Fat Disaster, as well as Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience.
I hope I will be selling them. . .
It's possible I will be selling them. . .
And I swear I'm going to give people a chance to answer how they're doing before my nervousness answers for them.
I’m telling myself that I’ll meet people. I live in East Texas. I'll be less of a hermit. I’ll network. I’ll go in with no expectations, but I will be on the lookout for the author I met at the first book festival I ever attended, whose shirt, book cover, and chocolate M & Ms were all color-coordinated. We watched him eat his entire bowl of fuschia M & Ms while waiting for someone—anyone—to wander up to his table.
It's pretty much what I feared I'd do with those Christmas cookies... So. . . come see me in September, would ya? Mention this blog post and. . . I'll give ya a cookie. Maybe even two.
In addition to writing Young Adult Contemporary Fiction, Beth Fehlbaum is an experienced English teacher who frequently draws on her experience as an educator to write her books. She has a B.A. in English, Minor in Secondary Education, and an M.Ed. in Reading.
Beth is the author of the Kirkus Starred Reviewed Big Fat Disaster (Merit Press/F+W Media, March 2014); Courage in Patience (Kunati Books, 2008); and Hope in Patience (WestSide Books, 2010). Hope in Patience was named a 2011 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Truth in Patience, which rounds out The Patience Trilogy, is as yet unpublished.
Beth has a following in the young adult literature world and also among survivors of sexual abuse because of her work with victims' advocacy groups. She has been the keynote speaker at the National Crime Victims' Week Commemoration Ceremony at the Hall of State in Dallas, Texas and a presenter for Greater Texas Community Partners, where she addressed a group of social workers and foster children on the subject of "Hope".
Beth is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, like Ashley in The Patience Trilogy, and the day-to-day manager of an eating disorder much like Colby's in Big Fat Disaster. These life experiences give her a unique perspective, and she writes her characters' stories in a way meant to inspire hope.
Beth lives with her family in the woods of East Texas.
You can find Beth online at http:www.bethfehlbaumbooks.com, on Facebook, and on https://twitter.com/bethfehlbaum.
“Hey, there!... How are ya?...Fine, thanks.”
That’s me.
That’s me, asking strangers how they are and, out of nervousness, answering myself in the same breath.
Because they ignored me.
That is me at an in-store book signing.
I go all George McFly...(see "Rejection")
I suppose it’s a rite of passage. It’s something I assumed all authors are supposed to do, and I know that many of my author friends are great at them.
But this is how it usually goes for me...
One of my daughters added the speech bubble to the above postcard at one of my early book signings. I keep it in a plastic frame on my fridge because every time I look at it, I laugh. It’s one of those “Oh, God, did that suck or what?” laughs.This is what authors imagine it will be like:
From a Neil Gaiman signing... If you're not Neil Gaiman, the fantasy book signing, at least for me, is like this: the author shows up and sometimes they do a reading and everyone comes and they even have cake and punch and fête the author as the best thing since sliced bread and… and…they post pictures on Facebook of rows and rows of folding chairs with a bottom in every seat and people just dying to talk to the author about the book.Right? Isn’t that the dream?
But how often is it the reality? Even the greats, like David Sedaris, have an off-day now and then, for example, this appearance at a Costco.
I’m thinking for an introvert like me, my experiences are much more common than many authors realize when they publish their first book and begin those all-important marketing plans.
This will come as a shock to people who know me as a gregarious person, but I am actually an introvert, particularly in situations where I’m supposed to be attracting people to stop at my table and talk . . . especially when said people came into a book store with one mission and one mission only and they have no desire to be interrupted by the Blob of Awkward sitting at a folding table at the front of the store. I practically choke on my own spit. It’s not pretty.
Prior to realizing how NOT comfortable I would remain in spite of repeated exposure to the experience, in 2008, when my first book, Courage in Patience, released, I filled nearly every weekend from September through April with book signings, many of them hard-won, after lots of verbal tap dancing for the store manager.
Why hard-won? Back then, prior to the Indy Author Boom, book store managers were skeptical as to why an author was booking her own signings. They’d never heard of me or my publisher, Kunati, which was a small traditional publisher in Canada. Oh, you never heard of them, either? I’m not surprised. They went belly-up within a year of releasing my book. My second publisher, WestSide, followed in Kunati’s footsteps, but that’s a story for another time.
With Kunati, it was made clear from the start that authors were expected to do most of their own local marketing, since the actual publishing house would be spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads in major trade publications.
All right, all right, fellow authors, I’ll pause here to give you time to mop up your coffee or whatever seeing as how it’s splattered all over your monitor. Go ahead, fetch a dishtowel and clean yourselves up. Yes. You.Now…I know this is going to come as a shock, but…my publisher didn’t help me out with marketing except for designing a poster I could use for my signings. They sent a file, which I had made into a small poster.
Still have it somewhere.
I think.
So, I dutifully booked signings, and I pursued local media coverage to coordinate with every signing, and if you Google (or look on the media page on my website), you’ll find some archived interviews and articles from that time.
Okay, so out of the 2008-2009 Courage in Patience book tour, I sold maybe twenty-five copies at signings total, and that is so generous an estimate, mainly because of friends who showed up to support me and bought my book.
Could have been the topic, but I think it was a combination of the topic plus my connection to the topic: my Patience books are NOVELS about a teen girl’s recovery from childhood sexual abuse, and I drew a lot on my own experiences as a survivor to write them. They are NOT autobiographical. It took a lot of courage for me to initially identify myself as a survivor of same, and when people would ask me what Courage and Hope are about and I told them, it was like watching a curtain descend on their faces.
The few people who did not practically run from my table would ask questions like, “Is this a true story?” To which I would repeat my initial pitch of it being a NOVEL about a teen girl’s. . . ya-da-ya-da-ya-da.
Then I would explain what a NOVEL is. a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism. And sometimes I was asked questions like this: “Is it a godly book? I only read godly books.”
To which I sputtered, “N-n-n-o-o-o…I mean…um…” while thinking, “What the hell?”
To force myself to speak up at those first signings, my (now former) therapist (he’s retired, and it was planned ahead of time. I did not break him) and I came up with a plan that I would bring chocolate chip cookies to work as a conversation starter. That way, I could call out, “Hi, there! Would you like a cookie?”
I think I came across like this: I’ll be honest: all the cookies did was cause the figurative curtain to fall over chewing frowning faces instead of merely frowning ones. And, I watched a lot of grubby-handed little kids clean off my cookie plate while their parents read the back of my book cover before dropping it like it was hot and grabbing their grubby-handed children and heading for the hills.
I usually booked a slot for a couple hours, and within the first thirty minutes, I found myself checking my watch to see how much time was left. When my daughters still lived at home, I usually recruited one or more of them into going with me by promising them we’d go out to lunch or a movie afterward, and they’d sit next to me or go troll the YA section and try to talk up my book to patrons. I even tried walking around, handing out my postcards and attempting to not be a Blob of Awkward.
When my second book, Hope in Patience, came out, I hired a publicist, and then she booked signings for me, which I thought would make a difference in the turn-out, like, book stores would be invested in promoting my appearance because I had an actual publicist AND I even appeared on a couple of local morning shows. I didn’t bother booking my own signings, since, hey, I was paying someone else for that, and didn’t that make me more of a legitimate author?
But I just did fewer signings, and I sold maybe five books all together.
In spite of blowing my advance on a publicist, having a professional vouch for my authenticity as an author made no difference in book stores’ doing anything to drum up enthusiasm in my “appearance”. One fine Saturday, I drove 3 hours each way to an indy book store in a large metro area, only to find that there was NO sign in the window promoting my appearance, the owner had forgotten I was coming, and he seemed pretty pissed that I bothered to show up. It was December. I had baked a tin of Christmas cookies to share with ALL the people who stopped to talk to me about my book.
Just before cutting out thirty minutes early, I handed off the tin to a store employee, not because I was so grateful for the outstanding reception I’d received, but to prevent myself from inhaling two dozen cookies within thirty seconds of fastening my seat belt.
That day, I sold ZERO books, although I did engage in two conversations: with a woman whose cousin wrote a book and wanted to know how much I paid to publish mine, and another woman who was thoroughly pissed that the store was sold out of the Mark Twain biographies. After giving two consecutive “book tours” everything I could, I swore off book signings unless I am invited, or unless it’s part of a bigger event, such as the YALSA Convention or the Texas Library Association’s Young Adult Round Table or something--anything (!)-- other than me, at a table, by myself, forcing myself to engage strangers who are seemingly on a mission to be Anywhere But At My Table.
My strategy worked. I found my comfort zone by placing myself in situations where there are generally open-minded people who love YA fiction. It's not my fantasy signing, since I have not created a scenario involving a reading and a bottom in every folding chair, but I don't have to beg people to talk to me or bribe them to stop at my table by offering pastry of any kind.
That said…I have signed up for the East Texas Book Festival in September, in Tyler, Texas. With no on-site book seller, I will be selling copies of my newest book, Big Fat Disaster, as well as Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience.
I hope I will be selling them. . .
It's possible I will be selling them. . .
And I swear I'm going to give people a chance to answer how they're doing before my nervousness answers for them.
I’m telling myself that I’ll meet people. I live in East Texas. I'll be less of a hermit. I’ll network. I’ll go in with no expectations, but I will be on the lookout for the author I met at the first book festival I ever attended, whose shirt, book cover, and chocolate M & Ms were all color-coordinated. We watched him eat his entire bowl of fuschia M & Ms while waiting for someone—anyone—to wander up to his table.
It's pretty much what I feared I'd do with those Christmas cookies... So. . . come see me in September, would ya? Mention this blog post and. . . I'll give ya a cookie. Maybe even two.
In addition to writing Young Adult Contemporary Fiction, Beth Fehlbaum is an experienced English teacher who frequently draws on her experience as an educator to write her books. She has a B.A. in English, Minor in Secondary Education, and an M.Ed. in Reading.Beth is the author of the Kirkus Starred Reviewed Big Fat Disaster (Merit Press/F+W Media, March 2014); Courage in Patience (Kunati Books, 2008); and Hope in Patience (WestSide Books, 2010). Hope in Patience was named a 2011 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Truth in Patience, which rounds out The Patience Trilogy, is as yet unpublished.
Beth has a following in the young adult literature world and also among survivors of sexual abuse because of her work with victims' advocacy groups. She has been the keynote speaker at the National Crime Victims' Week Commemoration Ceremony at the Hall of State in Dallas, Texas and a presenter for Greater Texas Community Partners, where she addressed a group of social workers and foster children on the subject of "Hope".
Beth is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, like Ashley in The Patience Trilogy, and the day-to-day manager of an eating disorder much like Colby's in Big Fat Disaster. These life experiences give her a unique perspective, and she writes her characters' stories in a way meant to inspire hope.
Beth lives with her family in the woods of East Texas.
You can find Beth online at http:www.bethfehlbaumbooks.com, on Facebook, and on https://twitter.com/bethfehlbaum.
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