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Readings, anyone? Jacqueline Carney said...

Hi Caroline.

Can't post anything embarassing because I haven't had the privelege of being published yet. I know that is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...but I look forward to just holding it in my hands!


December 10, 2008 at 4:17 PM Leora Skolkin-Smith said...

Though I wasn't at the reading, I really admire her book which I began today. Powerful work indeed.

December 10, 2008 at 4:57 PM Katharine Weber said...

For my second novel I was scheduled for a reading at a suburban B&N at which exactly ONE person showed up, a woman who seemed quite fascinated. One is worse than none. None means you sign some books and leave. Because she was there, I had to do something, but I wasn't going to read from behind a lectern to a sea of empty chairs plus this one smiling woman sitting in the middle of the front row, so I pulled up a chair and read to her knee to knee, for maybe ten minutes at most. Then I asked her if she had any questions about The Music Lesson, a novel about a plot to steal a Vermeer from the Queen by an IRA splinter group, which is written in the form of a journal kept by by the American art historian who has become involved in this dubious scheme because of her confused loyalties to Irish freedom and Dutch Seventeenth Century art which have been stirred about by a passionate affair with her alleged and much younger Irish cousin.

She nodded enthusiastically, and then asked, "Do you like horses?"

December 11, 2008 at 7:09 AM Clea Simon said...

Oooh - I'm with Katharine in that none is better than one (although I've never had that one particular horse fan). I have driven more than two hours along dark windy roads to no readers. Perhaps worse, I scheduled an event with a writer who had to drive at least that long to meet me -- and no one showed up! So on top of everything, I felt guilty. She was most gracious about it though.

December 11, 2008 at 8:38 AM 
I love these stories, but wait, I have another mortifying one. This was a call in radio show. It is no longer in existence and this was about 8 years ago. I was so terrified no one would call in that I asked my friend Bonni in Wisconsin if she would call in. So I got there, and the guest before me had a million phone calls, and then I was on, and the moderator took my novel and turned it into a discussion about death. (Great, right?) NO ONE CALLED. Not a single call. She even had a psychiatrist on who was also going on and on a bout death while I felt sicker and sicker.

Then, Bonni called and it turned out she couldn't get this particular station so she had no idea they were talking about death, so she asked, "So, is there a movie planned for the book?" The moderator gave me a look filled with razor blades and said, "Bonnie, we are talking about death here. Do you have anything to say about death?"

Bonni said, "Um...no, I guess I don't," and hung up and no one called after that. NO ONE.

When the show was over, I went to shake the moderators hand and she refused. She said icily, "Bonni, from Wisconsin."

The show went off the air two weeks later, and I insist I was not the reason.

December 11, 2008 at 8:51 AM 
I one read at the Miami Book Fair opposite Dave Barry. I saw lines around the block for him--just hundreds of people, and forty people came to see me. Okay, I lied, it was more like 30.

December 11, 2008 at 12:08 PM 
It's really Margot Livesey's story to tell, but on the subject of such contrasts...a few months ago I accompanied her to a reading in Connecticut at a certain renowned independent bookstore east of New Haven. As we turned the corner at the end of the street where the store is, we were astonished to see a line of people going into the bookstore and stretching down the block as fas as we could see. Like, 400 people or more. But they were there for Bobby Flay, who was in the store signing his latest cookbook. The Margot Livesey reading scheduled upstairs? Top secret. Not a sign in the window, not a sign at the cash register where each of these people was buying GRILL IT!, not one store staffer telling the crowd about the Margot Livesey reading beginning soon upstairs. The blackboard with store news heralded future readings, and the Flay event TODAY!

I asked a staffer guiding the Flay fans about the Margot Livesey reading. The what?

Margot and I went across the street for a fortifying, pre-reading drink. The restaurant was packed with people holding copies of GRILL IT!

There were 11 people at her reading, including me and some staff.

If you meet Margot, a lovely, even-tempered, charmoing person, a brilliant writer and one of my favorite people, I reccomend that you do not mention the words "Bobby" or "Flay."

December 11, 2008 at 1:29 PM 
Oh my God, I know and love Margot and she is a brilliant writer, too. This is too horrifying and shame on the bookstore!

December 11, 2008 at 2:19 PM Virginia F said...

Hi-- I worked for many, many years arranging book signings for a once-famous independent bookstore. The events were publicized pretty much the same way, with the store paying for a small ad in the local arts newspaper, (a larger one if the publisher would pay for it), press releases to all the area newspapers, emails to our large list, and postcards to the author's list. Signage was top-notch. But the turnout was mysterious. We could never figure it out. We did learn that fiction writers don't draw as well as non-fiction writers (even Pulitzer Prize-winning authors sometimes failed to draw a crowd.)The best turnouts? A local author with a lot of friends was the most likely to draw a crowd and sell books! Beyond that, we could never predict.
What stung was when the author blamed us for the lack of turnout.

December 13, 2008 at 7:54 AM 
Thanks for the response, Virginia. God, I would NEVEF blame a bookstore for a lack of response, and that is actually good to know the store didn't blame the author (I always worried about that.) Do you think readings sell books? (And can I read at your store?)

December 14, 2008 at 7:00 AM