Ok, I’m hoping some authors or editors or agents out there in SDMB-land can answer this one for me. I’m getting massively frustrated.
Forgive me while I go into Rant Mode.
I have a book out. I’ve gotten some good reviews, but they were in obscure journals. I finally got a good one in a major metropolitan newspaper this weekend (Yay!) But…
I can’t get any bookstore to let me read! Why is this so hard? It doesn’t cost them anything. It doesn’t require any special equipment, no refreshments, no tables, no security guards. I don’t tie up precious resources. I could walk into a Barnes and Noble today and pull down a book and start reading aloud, and it would be the same thing. So why do they give me such a hard time about it?
“We don’t have any openings this month.” “We don’t have any openings this year.” (and it’s only August!!!)“You have to guarantee you can get 50 people in.” (We went to see Ed McBain read – Ed McBain!!! – HE didn’t have 50 people!!)
Isn’t it good publicity to have authors read from their works in the store? Isn’t it a no-lose situation for the bookstore if it’s announced that a reading will be taking place? After all, it might bring in a few people, but it almost certainly won’t send any away.
So why is this such a difficult thing to arrange? Why is it that no one wants to do this? My book isn’t self-published or vanity press, it’s from Oxford University Press, for cryin’ out loud!
Heck, maybe I’ll just hijack a bookstore and hold everyone hostage until they’ve heard me read five paragraphs.
Thankas for the suggestion, but it’s the local ones that want a guarantee of 50 attendees! The chains don’t demand that – they just keep putting me off.
I’m being polite and socially acceptable. And I send them copies of my reviews to prove I’m for real. It just doesn’t seem to do any good.
Bookstores, especially the big chains, get all wrapped up in the business side of things. Bottom line: If they don’t think you’re going to get some money in their cash registers, they’re not going to encourage you to speak at their stores. And to be fair, it really is a little more than just letting you walk in and start reading. They promote it (you hope) and provide a space for it, etc.
I’ve had good luck with libraries. They’re seeking me out for speaking engagements and, though I first thought they weren’t so good as bookstores, I’ve found that you get a more “serious” approach. They aren’t selling stuff, so they’re really interested in the book itself and what you have to say. I’ve had some very stimulating disuccions and met wonderful people.
Local reading groups are fun too. I had so much fun with one group – an evening meeting with an all women reading group in the lovely suburbs – that my fiancee insists on going with me now.
– Greg, Atlanta (my book is at Laythisbodydown.com)
I thought you were talking about my reading group for a minute. We have had a couple of authors come to our meetings this year. It is amazing how many local authors are dying to talk to you if you just ask.
To be fair they do get to spend the evening with 15 women drinking iced tea and eating pecan pie.
I’ve been trying to find reading groups, but I haven’t been able to. Web searches don’t seem to turn anything up. They mostly seem to be small private groups, without any listings anywhere. Is there some sort of directory?
No directory that I know of. I’ve only found them through word of mouth. Libraries are a good place to start looking. You might chat up the library folks and see if they can point you toward any local groups.
– Greg
Thanks for the suggestions. The local library has said that they’d love to have me read, so I guess it’s time to call that one in. They picked up a reading group when a local bookstore closed its doors.
As for readings costing bookstores money – I still don’t buy it. What do they have to do? They add a line to their newsletter, remember to call the local paperr to add to the “reading” list in the Book Section, detail a staffer to set up some chairs and meet the author. That can’t cost much. The only way I can figure it is that the bookstore sees a reading as an opportunity for instant sales, so they order copies of the book to sell right then and there. If the author doesn’t draw a crowd big enough to sell most or all of them, then the store is stuck with the unsold copies. THAT, perhaps, is why they want a guaranteed crowd, and reject authors they don’t think will sell.
OTOH, one bookstore that’s holding me off has sold every copy they ordered. So why are they holding me off?
Somehow I thought everything would go so much easier once I got the book in print.
Oh, honey. You don’t WANT to give a reading. Trust me. When my first book came out, I was scheduled to give a reading at the Book Friend’s Cafe, on 17th Street. NO ONE showed up. “Gee, we’ve never had NO ONE show up,” the store owner told me. So we re-scheduled. This time, maybe half-a-dozen people showed, half of them friends I had begged and coerced into comimg.
I even had slides with me, to show lotsa neat-o pictures of Jean Harlow! Unfortunately, the slide projector was broken, so every time I hit the clicker the slide flew out of the projector and into the audience. It got to the point where I would hit the clicker and yell, “PULL!”
Oh,the Book Friend’s Cafe is out of business now, probably due entirely to me. You do NOT want to give a reading.
Hell, you can come over and read to me, Cal. I have your book. I’m sorry to say I’ve not read it yet, but it is getting nearer the top of the stack. Here’s a link to it at B&N for anyone interested. Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon
That is weird, Cal. I work for an independent bookstore, and we often have local authors read. In fact, those events are often our best attended. Perhaps if you sent copies of the reviews to the events coordinator you would get a response? Just grasping. How rude of the bookstores to put you off like that.
But as for time constraints, that I can believe. My bookstore issues a newsletter with all our events every season. Our events people are right now wrapping up the fall schedule, which lasts to the end of 2001. I can easily believe that some stores might have already filled their schedules.
Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. I’ve talked to the local library again, with some success, and I’ll keep plugging at the bookstores (especially non-chain ones).
I deliberately didn’t post my website, because I honestly wasn;t trying to plug anything. This post is born of frustration. Talking to the different bookstores and being constantly put off, I felt like Dave Barry’s wife trying to arrange transportation in Japan (as described in his book about Japan), or like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Tootsie:
Producer: “We want someone Taller.”
Hoffman: “I can be Taller.”
Producer: “We want someone Shorter.”
Hoffman:“I can be Shorter.”
Producer: “We want someone Different.”
Hoffman:“I can be Different.”
Producer(exasperated): “We want someone Else!”
Congratulations on the book. I do hope it works out.
[sub]Yanno, it might be funny if you showed them a list of guarantee attendess (dopers names). But then again maybe this has been so frustrating that it’s not funny at all.
I do hope it works out and you get to read.
Really? A major paper is reviewing a book from March 2000? (At least, that’s what B&N says the publication date is.) I’m kind of surprised. My editor (at a not-so-major-metropolitan paper) won’t let me go back more than 6 months without a REALLY good reason. I wish you’d have let me know about it when it came out, and I’d have reviewed it (I do more reviews of Oxford books than any other press, because they are so good at sending 'em to me). In fact, I’m surprised I didn’t notice it on my own.
Anyway, I know I’m not helping much in your question, but I did just try to deal with a Barnes & Noble store in getting a speaker to give a talk (not a reading) at their store. The woman was INCOMPETENT. I ended up having it at a library instead. Mind you, this was a speaker who came all the way from Italy and had a new book out, but because I didn’t contact her two months ahead of time, she couldn’t handle it. (I suspect that was an excuse anyway.)
