Most people assume that book signings are a standard fixture of authorial life. You write a book, it gets published and whoosh, there you are behind a table in Waterstones. There are a number of problems with this, the least of which is getting published in the first place.
In fact there are three phases of an author's life during which they do signings. These are, in dramatic order:
PHASE TWO
FAME AT LAST
In this phase you have made it to the big time. Your publishers have had posters and standees made to promote your latest opus. You sit next to a cardboard cutout of yourself and look down the queue of expectant fans. You are pleased with its length although you're also slightly hungry. What happened to the promised catering? Still, you have come a long way and life is good. You cheerfully sign a hardback with the signature you spent an undisclosable length of time cultivating. Someone remarks that the cardboard cutout looks bigger than you actually do. You laugh nervously and think about this throughout the rest of the signing but daren't look at the standee in case it comes across as egotistical. Occasionally you sneak a glimpse. If anything it looks smaller. Your stomach rumbles. You wonder whether you really need to be doing this. The queue seems endless.
PHASE THREE
FICKLE FATE
I hope you enjoyed resting on your laurels because you're going to have to sell them and buy the following:
- One card reader (cash boxes are so last century, just like you.)
- Two felt-tipped pens (the second is a spare which you will never use.)
- A box of returned stock given to you by your ex-publisher in lieu of payment (as per the small print you glossed over in your contract.)
Your stomach is rumbling again, but this time there was no suggestion of catering. If you can sell anything you can treat yourself to something from Tesco later. The relative size of the standee is like a fever dream of another life. The only material difference between yourself and the homeless person on the pavement outside is that the staff at the bookshop let you use the toilet.
PHASE ONE
GOOD LUCK
This is where most authors start out. It could well be your first and only book signing, so you may as well enjoy it. If you are lucky, friends and family may have attended out of a sense of loyalty, or perhaps because you have heavily hinted there will be free drinks. Thank each of them for coming because without them the only people in the room are likely to be staff and one rando who has walked into the scene and feels it would be indecent to leave hastily.
Do not drink more than one glass of the cheap wine you have supplied. Nerves may lead you to lose track of your consumption and before you know it you have ruined Dave's copy of your book with a drunkenly executed signature and compounded the disaster by tearing out the defaced page. Try instead to save any thoughts of drink for after all five copies have been signed, even if that does mean the boxed sauvignon blanc is mysteriously above room temperature by then. Do not dissolve into hysterical laughter and crawl under the table. By doing so you may inadvertently knock it over, sending unsigned books and a plastic wine glass to ruin each other on the bookshop's horrible carpet.
You may, in a naïve pre-shadowing of phase two, be wondering why you are bothering with this absolute charade. There are two main reasons:
- Advertising the signing in the bookshop should garner some prominence for your book. There may be a display, or at least a poster. It increases the chances of people outside of your social circles seeing it. Even if they don't go to the signing, they may pick up the book and read the blurb. Then, if you're really lucky, they might buy it.
- The first week of sales of a book is usually the most important. This is when the biggest push can propel it into a chart. This is a numbers game and the more niche your genre the more chance there is of charting. But regardless of genre, the launch is the time you want to combine the forces of everyone within reach. Should you be lucky enough for this strategy to succeed, there is then the possibility of selling more because of the book's chart visibility. The dream is that this becomes a self-sustaining reaction, propelling your book into the orbit of phase 2.
The reality is that people will come, people will go, and the charts will remain untroubled by your name. In the meantime enjoy your moment. You have written an actual book that you can hold in your hands. More to the point, other people can hold it in their hands and read it. Friends can finally see that you weren't just doomscrolling Twitter all that time. They will ask you to sign it for them and you will jokingly ask who to make it out to but your timing will be off because of the awful wine and they will wonder whether you have genuinely forgotten their name. You will sign the book in awkward silence with an unpracticed spider scrawl because you so rarely sign anything anymore. Ninety-seven thousand words is apparently not enough, you think. They still want more. Your stomach rumbles, protesting the cheap plonk you've given it instead of food. This was probably not it. Chin up, you can always write another one.
If you do find yourself on the cusp of phase one, here are some tips for making the most of it:
- Sign Neil Gaiman's books. He does this all the time, especially in airports. There is a very real possibility of beating him to the punch, and if he can decipher your scribble he may post about it on social media.
- Sign on at the Job Centre instead. You can get money this way, and average more signings per year.
- Write a best-selling novel, thus guaranteeing a great turnout. It sounds so simple when put that way, but it's worth a shot.
- Suggest that you have a fatal illness. People will come out of sympathy and perhaps guilt that they've ignored your literary genius until now. The downside of this is that at some point you will have to unconvincingly recover or fake your own death. However the latter does have the further advantage of never again having to do another booking signing.
