ACTUALLY, HE DIDN’T. BUT PROMOTIONAL APPEARANCES OFFER YOU A CHANCE TO
BUILD PROFITABLE RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE
PEOPLE WHO SELL AND READ YOUR BOOKS.
1991 Yearbook
There we were, milling around on the second floor of the Broward County Library in Fort Lauderdale. We were, by all reckoning, a distinguished lot. There was M. Scott Berg, the distinguished biographer of Maxwell Perkins and Samuel Goldwyn, and Edna Buchanan, distinguished crime reporter and author of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. There was the distinguished novelist Anne Bernays and her husband, distinguished biographer Justin Kaplan. There was John Katzenbach, the distinguished novelist, and the distinguished playwright-turned-novelist Henry Denker. There was Kitty Carlyle Hart, the distinguished actress-turned-autobiographer. And there was me—feeling, I have to tell you, rather more distinguished than usual.
Earlier in the day we had each had a turn in front of an audience, rattling off some presumably amusing or instructive remarks somehow related to our writing. (I talked about driving around the country in pursuit of towns named Buffalo, and can only hope it was amusing; it could hardly have been instructive, or related to my writing.) After that we had been briefly available to sign copies of our books.
Now, this evening, we were to be presented to a select group of Lauderdalers who had paid a distinguishing price (all in aid of the library’s fund-raising effort) for the pleasure of our company, first at a cocktail party on the first floor of the library, then at eight small dinner parties scattered around town. Each of us would lend our presence to one of the dinner parties, playing Literary Lion and occasionally letting out a roar.
Our company awaited us now a floor below. And now a gentleman was calling us one by one and recounting our accomplishments at some length, whereupon we were to descend the great escalator in solitary splendor while Broward County’s haut monde greeted us with polite applause.
While we waited for our names to be called, I turned to John Katzenbach. “I don’t know about this,” I said. “Are you sure Raymond Chandler started this way?”
“No question about it,” he assured me. “But watch your step. Chandler fell down the escalator.”
Lest I (or Mr. Katzenbach) be accused of impugning his memory, please understand that Raymond Chandler never plunged down that escalator. He could hardly have done so, having died years before the library was built. More to the point, he did not start that way, or continue that way; Chandler was more than a little reluctant to give autographs, and would have shunned public signings. Consequently, autographed copies of his works are in very short supply, and command a high price.
Few of us these days seem to share Chandler’s reticence. At a bookstore in Los Angeles a while back a young woman handed me a copy of Out on the Cutting Edge; while I inscribed it, she said something about the likelihood of its being valuable someday.
“Don’t count on it,” I told her. “The unsigned copies are the rare ones.”
Sometimes it seems that way. Twenty years ago in-store autographing sessions were relatively uncommon occasions. An author might make an appearance at a bookstore in his home town, with his friends and relatives turning out to buy his book in a show of support. And a few stores would have celebrity signings with some frequency. But relatively few authors played the circuit, and there wasn’t much of a circuit for them to play.
Now, indeed, the unsigned copies are increasingly the rare ones. Some stores have signings almost weekly, often featuring several writers at a time. Sometimes the writer is expected to read something or give a little talk, while other stores require only that he be prepared to be charming and write his name a lot.
In addition to formal autographing sessions, writers find no end of other opportunities to scribble their names on fly leaves and title pages. On a recent visit to a mid-Manhattan chain bookstore, I noticed an even dozen new titles equipped with bands announcing that the book had been “personally inscribed for you by the author.” Each of these authors had recently made a hit-and-run assault on the store, autographing the store’s stock of his books in a furious assault, then rushing on to the next store for more of the same.
You get the point. A good many writers are scurrying around signing a good many books. How do you manage to do so yourself? And does it do any good?
Them that’s got shall get, Billie Holliday told us a long time ago. Well, it’s still the truth. The more successful you already are, the easier it is to set up a heavy schedule of signings.
This stands to reason. If you were a store owner, who do you figure you’d rather have show up at your shop, Stephen King or some earnest chap whose first novel has just been launched with an initial run of 5,000 copies? If you were a publisher, and if that first novelist and, say, Mary Higgins Clark were both on your fall list whose touring expenses would you be prepared to underwrite? For that matter, if you were a newspaper reporter and both writers turned up in your town, which one would you rush to interview? If you were the Today show, which would you book?
Precisely.
Accordingly, if you’re not Mr. King or Ms. Clark, you will probably have to hustle a bit in order to set up signing sessions for yourself. Your publisher’s publicity department will very likely be concentrating on booking their top authors and will not have time for you. (This is not the hardship it might appear; most publishers’ publicity departments are of such legendary incompetence that getting along without them is like getting along without psoriasis.)
Early in your career, you will receive a warmer welcome in stores and in cities where they know you. If you live in a town now, or if you used to live there, or if you have kin there, or if your book is set there, you have some local connection. A store has reason to expect some people to turn out to meet you. The store will have an easier time obtaining publicity for you, because local reporters will have a reason to interview you.
In my own case, the type of bookstore I approach is of more importance than its location. What recognition I have achieved has been primarily in the field of mystery and suspense, so when I booked myself on a 25-store tour last fall, I had the wit to call booksellers who specialize in mysteries, along with a couple of general bookstores that have a reputation for being mystery-friendly.
Note that I called the stores. You can’t expect to handle this sort of thing through the mails. When you call, explain who you are and what you’ve written (unless they happen to recognize your name) and be prepared to offer a choice of dates. Find out, too, if they would prefer you to give a talk or reading, or if they’d rather you just come prepared to write your name. Some stores will be considerably more eager to book you if you’ll read or speak, because you’re more of a draw that way; a reading or a lecture is viewed as a cultural event, while a signing is just a crass attempt to peddle books.
As you and the store manager work out the details, you may be offered the opportunity to share the spotlight with another writer. Your ego will interpret this as a way to cheat you out of a full share of riches and fame. Tell your ego thanks for sharing, and go for it. When two or more authors make a joint appearance, more customers are drawn to the store and both writers sell more books than either would sell separately.
Remember, don’t listen to your ego. If you are asked to share a signing with a more successful writer, you’ll fear that your little book will get lost in the shuffle. If you’re the prominent one, sharing a table with a first novelist, you’ll feel you’re not getting the special attention you deserve. Nonsense, all of it. Two pens are better than one, and you’ll both profit from the joint appearance.
And you may get a friendship out of the deal, or at least an acquaintance. And, if it turns out to be one of those signings where nobody shows up, you’ll have somebody to talk to.
How much good does it do?
Well, that’s a hard one to answer. If you are hoping to see your time and expenses offset by the royalties for the books you sell, forget it. It’s not going to happen.
Suppose your book is a hardcover edition with a list price of $20. Suppose you sell 50 copies, which would make the day a great triumph. Your royalty at 10% of list would make your earnings for the day around $100. If you traveled any distance to get there, if you put up overnight in a hotel, and if you figure your time as having any value, you have obviously run at a loss.
Well, suppose you’re really hot stuff, a writer for whom they’ll line up around the block. Suppose you unload not 50 but 500 copies of the work. In that case your earnings would be more like $1,000—but if you can draw that many folks to a signing, you have reached a level of success at which you can earn a whole lot more than $1,000 by staying home and writing something.
And let’s face facts. If this is a first book—or a second or third—and if you’re not packing the house with friends and relations, you’re not going to sell 50 books, let alone 500. You may have to work to sell five. Even if you didn’t have to travel, even if you came by subway, you can hardly manage to get comfortably drunk on the proceeds.
So why bother?
Well, some people will argue that you shouldn’t bother, that it really is a waste of time and energy. Others will hold that there are benefits to autographing sessions that don’t show up in immediate sales.
The most valuable thing a signing does, in my opinion, is build relationships. The most important relationship you build is with the store and the people who work in it. The same signing that means $100 in royalties to you puts $1,000 into the store’s cash register, and they haven’t had to travel to do it. Even more important a signing brings new customers into a store, customers who have never patronized that store before but have been drawn there to meet you. Some of them will return to buy other books by other writers.
The store is grateful to you for this. More to the point, the store personnel are aware of you not just as a name on a title page but as a human being. They will be more likely to keep your backlist paperbacks in stock, more likely to display your new books prominently, more likely to recommend your titles to customers who ask them what’s good. (This all presupposes that you have been a personable and amiable sort during your sojourn there. If you’re an obnoxious clod, personal appearances will do you more harm than good.)
Similarly, every time you sign a book for a reader you are creating a relationship with that person. Say you sign five books during a two-hour stint at a store, exchanging a few words with each of those five customers. Each will leave the store with an almost proprietary interest in you. For the next several weeks he will start a good many of his conversations with the words, “Guess who I met the other day.” There’s no guarantee that he’ll buy your next book, but he’s likely to—and likely to show up again at future signings.
In any number of ways, your efforts and the store’s will combine to get your name around and make the readers that much more aware of you. Notices in the press, displays in the store, all get you attention you wouldn’t get otherwise. My own seat-of-the-pants research convinces me that this sort of promotional effort has more of an effect on future sales than on those of the book you’re promoting, but I think that’s true of most book advertising and promotion.
There are any number of ways you can keep the costs down and make optimal use of your time and energy. While it may not be worthwhile to travel in order to do a signing, it can pay you to schedule signings to coincide with travel you’re going to be doing anyway. And, for stores where a signing is not in the cards for one reason or another, it’s always appropriate to drop in unannounced, make yourself known to the store manager, and sign whatever copies of your book he happens to have in stock. (If you can call a few days in advance, he’ll be more likely to have books in stock.)
Chandler didn’t start this way, and he seems to have done fine without it. Thomas Pynchon doesn’t sign books or give interviews or even allow the reading public to know what he looks like or where he lives, yet his books seem to find their way into readers’ hands.
Do you have to go through all this yourself? No, you don’t, and if you hate it you’re better off staying home writing the next book. Even if you like it, you have to learn to live with the afternoons when nobody shows up, the bookstore owners who never heard of you and haven’t ordered your book, the readers who ask you things like “Have you written anything I’ve read?” But if you enjoy it, and if you’re reasonably good at it, you can probably do yourself some good.
One thing, though. Someone may have told you, or you may have figured out for yourself, that any book you autograph is a book the store cannot return to the publisher, that a book signed is a book sold.
Don’t count on it.