The Ups and Downs of Booksigning in Bookshops

Visiting bookshops and signing books can be perilous for emerging authors. Claire Saxby shares the ups and down I this time consuming, but always rewarding endeavour.

Booksigning in the Early Years

I had a memorable booksigning about 20 years ago where not a single copy of the book I was there for was sold. Now there’s a challenging thing…how do you sit for two hours where your only two conversations are with a well-known non-book-buying chatterbox local and someone who tells you you’re folding your paper boats wrongly without feeling totally demoralised? (I was making the boats as a way to attract some…any…attention)

Try Again Days

I was in Port Melbourne, for a reading of ‘A Nest for Kora‘ in the independent bookstore, ‘Readings’. Judith Rossell was there too, with sketches and original artwork from Kora.

We only sold one book.

So was it a success or a failure? How do you measure?

Readings have a great mail-out, and website, both of which featured Kora. They have signs up in the store, lovely eyecatching signs advertising the reading. Athina, children’ book buyer, and our ‘looker-afterer’ looked after us royally. And there was a para in the ‘kids & activities’ article in the A2 section of today’s Age newspaper.

We had a good turnout and children and parents seemed to enjoy the stories (asking for more, so I read my other picture book, ‘Ebi’s Boat’). It was a fun thing to do, share the story with a new audience. A couple of parents lingered and Judith and I spoke about the process of a picture book.

Because we will be there again on next week, Kora stays front and centre in the children’s section of the bookshelf.

It’s all good.

There are Really Good Days

On another day Judith Rossell and I were at Mockingbird Bookshop in Mont Albert for a booksigning for ‘ A Nest for Kora’. Judith illustrated ‘A Nest for Kora’. The bookshop also had copies of some of Jude’s puzzle books and my ‘Ebi’s Boat’.

Jude had brought offcuts of the paper she paints on and was drawing/painting wonderful little animals for children (and a couple of adults) on bookmarks. It’s not quite as easy for a writer to provide something to go home with, but I tried. I wrote some silly limericks based on children’s names and then made some paper boats. We sold some books and had a lovely time. Evelyn Snow, owner of Mockingbird Bookshop and her staff, looked after us royally.

It was memorable…this time in a good way.

And there are Great Days

I signed some more books at Mockingbird Bookshop  (they’d not arrived in time for our gig last week) and had morning tea with my folks at Zimt, a wonderful patisserie around the corner. A friend of my parents bought ‘A Nest for Kora’ when it first came out and reads it to her grandchildren (thanks Margaret). She reports that one of her grandchildren loves Kora so much, she can’t visit without taking ‘the chookie book’. Her grandson knows all the words, has given all the chooks names and insists on multiple re-readings.

Now that’s what it’s all about.