Robin Agnew
Recently, the New York Times ran a piece about book stores charging for author events to help meet their costs. I shared the link on my website and got quite a few comments, but one of them was simply "I don't understand - how do book signings work?" Probably all of us on this blog could tell how a book signing works from their point of view, and I often blog about the "day of" result, but there's obviously lots of work that goes into an event before it ever happens, which is unseen by the public.
Let's take our recent event with Julia Spencer-Fleming. Back in December of 2010, I got an e-mail from Julia's publicist at St. Martin's, wondering if I'd be interested in hosting Julia in May of 2011. As I had been bugging my sales rep about this very possibility, of course I was delighted. Not only do I love Julia's books, but I consider her a friend.
In fact, in AUGUST of 2010, I had heard from Julia herself, asking me if I would mind (mind?) reading her manuscript so I could write a blurb for the ARC, but she needed it done quickly. I was of course delighted, I loved the book, and this led to me bugging my sales rep which I imagine helped produce the December e-mail from the St. Martin's publicist.
OK, so in Deember, I said yes to St. Martin's who was busy setting up Julia's tour. While I don't work on that end of things I know it involves figuring out where to send the author, how to get them there, and where they should stay. I have picked up authors at the airport, dropped them off, and had them stay at my home (including Julia on early tours when she wasn't as well known).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Ann Arbor, I had a few other irons in the fire. But I'd read Julia's book, I was delighted she was coming, and I put the date on the website and on facebook and started getting incredibly early pre-sells. Pre-sells, obviously, are books sold ahead of time, and getting a pre-sell a few months ahead of the event is a sure sign of a good turn out. (Usually pre-sells arrive a few days or hours before an event.)
All well and good. I realized, when it came time to put together my April newsletter where I would be running a review of Julia's new book, that I would need to re-read it since I had last read it in August. This was not a hardship and I breezed through it a second time, crying just as much as I did the first read through, and was able to write a coherent and positive review. That was probably mid-March.
I also placed an order for books with my St. Martin's rep, trying to parse just how many copies we would need, something that's always tricky. While we didn't sell out the night of the event, we sold out the next day so I was wishing I had ordered a few more after the fact, but a sell out is always ideal. Left over books mean returns which aren't so hot either for the author or for your own hopes of landing future events.
By this point I had notified the calendars of the remaining print media outlets in Ann Arbor and Detroit, making them aware of Julia's visit. This is done a month out at minimum. I also mail in the neighborhood of 500-900 postcards - in Julia's case, the full monty of 900 - which need to be printed, labelled and stamped, as well as mailed on the optimum date. Not too early, or people will forget, and not too late, or people may have already made plans.
I also send out e-mail reminders to book club members, and in Julia's case, I blasted it on facebook, posting the review and reminders of the event. Facebook has become as an effective an advertisng tool as anything else. The day of the event I had a large pile of pre-sells and Julia, bless her, showed up early to chat and signed her pre-sells ahead of time.
The day of the event I picked up 50 chairs, cleared that the borrowed space we use in the back of the building would be open, and made sure my crew of strong teenagers was standing by to set up chairs and get the room ready for Julia's talk. The night of everything went smoothly, I enjoyed dinner with Julia and a few other nice folks after, she dropped me off at home in her rental car, and I breathed a happy sigh that all had gone well. An event lasts a few hours, but as you can see, this particular one in one way or another was about 10 months in the making.
Not all events are planned so far ahead of time. Some are set up by the authors themselves, who rarely give you that much notice, some are for less well know folks that I have to figure out how to market, but all of them require thought and effort, which brings me back to the New York Times article. The stores charging for events are dismayed that people are buying the book online, or downloading it, and using a bookstore as merely a "book museum". That model, obviously, doesn't work for bookstores.
I guess time will tell if folks still want to meet an author and talk to them about their book, exchanging ideas in real time instead of in virtual time. Those are the moments that, as a bookseller, I feel can't be replaced. But it's up to the public to decide what they want. And only time will tell.
