July 12, 2006
In the last week, I’ve attended two booksignings from well-known, best-selling authors. Both of them write books that are in a popular series, although they write in completely different genres.
Both authors were doing a “talk” as well as a signing because they were well-known (in their genre) and already had a readership established; thus it was a formal event with a session preceding the signing.
Each experience, from my point of view, was very different. One of the authors arrived on time; the other arrived 30 minutes late. One of the authors was dressed in business casual; the other much more casually.
At one of the bookstores, as soon as I walked in and approached the table (in the front of the store) where all the books by the guest author were displayed, the bookseller walked up to me. I hadn’t read any of this author’s books, but had driven especially to the store for the signing because I was interested in reading at least the first in the series.
I explained to the bookseller that I was looking for the first book in the series because I hadn’t read any of them. She helped me figure out which was the first, but then she handed me the author’s new book (a more expensive one than the mass market paperback of the first book), which was several books into the series, and informed me that “You can’t meet X Author unless you buy the new book.”
I was taken aback.
Apparently, I couldn’t sit and listen to the author, nor have her sign a book, unless I bought the one she was promoting.
It wasn’t as if it was crowded or standing-room only; there were maybe five or six people there. Lots of empty chairs. Like it would have hurt them if I sat and listened to her talk and had her sign my book.
I ended up not buying any of that author’s books, unfortunately, because that whole situation felt very uncomfortable.
I did speak to the cashier (as I was checking out and buying other books) and explained what had happened and asked if that was a store policy, an author policy, or a publisher policy–something that had never happened to me before.
The cashier didn’t know; but he said it definitely wasn’t a store policy.
So for some reason, this author lost a potential new reader because of the way the signing was handled. I felt snubbed.
On the other hand, the other author signing that I went to was very pleasant. I had been reading this author’s series all along, but there were many people who brought bags of previously-purchased books for her to sign, and while others bought the first or second in the series–and they were gladly autographed, complete with a personal conversation with the author, after a nice forty-minute Q&A session. (And dare I say with fair confidence that this second author is more well-known than the other one.)
So there…am I missing something here? Was I being too sensitive, feeling snubbed? Should I have bought the book anyway? Is there a point, when an author becomes “big enough” that they can and should put their own ground rules around a signing?
Usually, when I have to find (read: buy) something for a special event, I pick out the dress first.
