My First Book Signing...Er, Fun?

Okay, so this is the tale of the first book signing after my book launch.

The launch party was awesome. Friends came, family came, a few strangers came and a few of my stranger friends came. Everyone had a blast (or at least pretended to) and that was that.

Last Saturday I had my first real “Book Signing.”

For any of you that may not know, this means that an author sits near the door to a book store, behind a nice table with a display of their novel and waits for curious people to come talk with them about their book.

Because, let’s face it, the books become your babies, of course people want to talk to you about them.

Yeah…uh…no. Not actually true.

I decided a while ago to be honest here, so you guys get the real deal.

I suck at pimping my own work. I get all embarrassed and shy and I’m like, “Just read the sign or the back of the book.” Under no circumstances will I run out from behind the table to drag an unsuspecting patron over and proceed to talk them into buying my book.

Not going to happen. It’s really not me.

There’s a REASON I’m not a salesman.

But this is all part of being an author, so as I sat there smiling at people who came by (but not too big of a smile, so I didn’t seem desperate) I started wondering how in the world I was going to get through the next six weeks of book signings.

Lucky for me, a fellow author and his wife stopped by and showed me a few tricks that will help.

What I think I need to do is bribe some friends/family members to come to the signings for an hour or whatever and give away book marks to the innocent passerby. Then they can pimp my work and I can sit and look non-desperate.

Volunteers? Lunch will be in it for you. J

I supposed this is also an incentive to write more books, even better than this one, so people will WANT to come say hi.

There’s the real plan folks.

Let’s go!