Author Events

We are having an author event at our store this weekend. I'm hoping it goes better than the last one we had. Here's why:

At the last author event, it was a local author. This means, she called us up and asked if she could set up a table with her books for a signing. It was NOT set up through her publisher's PR person. This means we are letting her come out of the goodness of our hearts. We are doing her a favor by allowing her to be there since we, the big commercial book store chain, aren't getting much out of it. If this is you, dear authors, please come ready to promote your own book and make sure to treat your booksellers with a lot of respect. If you do not, like this woman, then, well, we are not obligated to go out on a limb for you. If we like you, we'll do more for you than if we don't. We'll also do more for you if we've read your book. So, if we haven't received an ARC, then perhaps you should drop off a copy beforehand so we read it ahead of time. I know you don't get a lot of these, but come on, buy your bookseller a copy for pete's sake. It's for a good cause, believe me.

If you do these things then the bookseller is more likely to make announcements, letting their customers know you're there. In addition, if they know and have read your book ahead of time, they'll be telling their customers to look forward to your visit. Believe me, lots of good things can happen when you do nice things for your bookseller, like you could have people actually come to your signing! This author didn't do her research. She had no idea what to expect and was miffed that we didn't have a sign for her or anything. We only do signs for those events that are set up through your publicist, but if you were to bring your own, and we like you, then we'd be happy to oblige.

Now, if you are lucky enough to have your PR person at your publisher set up your visit then you get oodles of advantages. Usually there's a lot more press materials, you get a press release that sometimes can make it to the papers, you get signage and it's just a much bigger deal. We, as booksellers, are then obligated to put up signs, pass out your postcards, etc. etc. You should still be nice to your bookseller though :)

So, moral of the day:
If you can, have your PR person set up the visits and if not, be nice to your bookseller and become your own PR person.