I don’t usually get too excited about signings in book stores. Aside from when I did a signing in my hometown a few years back (I signed books from 7:00 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. nonstop that night!), I’ve never done real well at book store signings. The last one I had, only ONE person came.
But the signing I had yesterday at the Cedar Rapids Barnes & Noble was different. First, it wasn’t just me…my friend Carol Gorman was there, too. So we figured we could keep each other company if nobody came. But people DID come! Our signing was part of the kick-off for their summer reading program. They had things going on in the store all day long. I THINK I heard the mayor was coming later, too, and that she’d designated the day “Children’s Reading Day” or something like that in Cedar Rapids.
I was just so impressed by this event. The people at the store (mostly Amanda?) had obviously put in an incredible amount of time and enery. For one thing, they arranged to get a bunch of corporate sponsors and they invited kids in from two different facilities (20 kids from one facility, 15 from the other), and they bought one of Carol’s books and one of mine (and these were HARDCOVERS, not paperbacks) for each of those kids. What a neat thing!
And then they also made Carol and me part of the scavenger hunt that was going on, which automatically drew people to our table.
In general, I think my time is better spent writing or doing school visits than it is doing a book store signing, but signings can be fun when people actually come!
That’s terrific!
Yes, I’ve had good signings and, er, not so good ones. Glad yours was a success!