lydamorehouse | Saturday and Signing (Reply)

Image: Me, at Dreamhaven, with cake. So much cake.

So, the majority of my Saturday was occupied by thinking about my upcoming book launch at Dreamhaven and the usual worries that every author has, namely: will anyone show up?

However, despite the looming anxiety, the day started like most Saturdays. Shawn and I have this strange little habit we do. I call them our alliterative errands (should really be alliterative a-rrands, but English be like this.) We often have a lot of large cardboard that needs recycling that doesn't easily fit in our bins. St. Paul is very stingy about recycling. They insist that they will not pick up anything piled next to the bin. It has to fit or you just have to deal with it on your own. So we do. There is a recycling center that is, quite conveniently, most of the way to my favorite coffee shop on West 7th, Claddagh Coffee. So, our alliterative journey begins always: "Cardboard, coffee." Then, depending on our mood, we might stop at Brake Bread, which serves these absolutely amazing cardamon twists. Then, it becomes, "Cardboard, coffee, cardamon." Sometimes we have errands that are less easy to fit into this alliteration, but we have been known to get very clever (or lazy, depending on your point of view) and might say "commerce" if we need to go to the bank or "cart" if we just need to do some shopping.

So, yesterday, since our road trip left us without the usual cardboard stockpile, we did "Coffee, cardamon and curation." The curation part being picking up a couple of items that Shawn had scored us for the little free library off the Buy Nothing Group. We could not think of a good c-word for Menards (a local hardware store), but since they didn't have what we wanted, I am retrospectively calling that errand, "crap."

Then I settled into my anxiety.

Somewhat heightened by the fact that David L. emailed me wondering what kind (and how much) cake to bring for the book launch. I told him that cheap would do (though I am partial to chocolate) and that he should prepare for NO ONE to 6 people. I always have high hopes for signings, but as Twitter has discussed, the worst can happen to the best of us:

Image: A screenshot of Neil's tweet, "Terry Pratchett and I did a signing in Manhattan for Good Omens that nobody came to at all. So you are two up on us." Which he wrote in response to a new author's lament about two people showing up to their book signing.

I have done a lot of these events and low to no shows is actually far more typical than I think most non-writers realize. Of course, it becomes less so when you're a Big Name (which I am not, having been a mid-lister my whole career), but clearly if it can happen to Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry, it can happen to anyone.

There is, too, I think a kind of diminishing returns (perhaps counterintuitively) when an author has multiple books out. EVERYONE and your grandma shows up when your first book hits the shelf because they are so stunned that you amounted to more than a hill of beans. All your English teachers, however, have to show up and tell you that They Always Saw It in You, even if you remember clearly how Mr. C. was annoyed as f*ck that you sat in the back of the class and made bad puns.

However, as book 1 becomes book 7 then book 12... people are very ho-hum about the fact that surviving twelve books in this publishing industry is actually way more of a success story than even breaking in (which is hard enough!) Welcome to Boy. Net is my sixteenth published novel. It does represented a return to science fiction after two decades, but, you know, that's not always enough to draw much of a crowd, especially in a town where people are pretty sick of seeing me on panels, etc., etc.

As you are all well aware, even if you only follow me here, I did a LOT of advertising for this event. I opened box after box of this book, filmed it, and posted the videos EVERYWHERE. I even sent out reminders the day of on Facebook, like a right pest, as my UK friends might say. According to my friend

tallgeese . Minnesota Public Radio even ran an announcement of my launch about an hour before we were set to start. EVEN so, I worked really, really hard to keep my expectations very low.

Because I was so nervous about this, however, I asked my family to come. That way there would for sure be at LEAST two people (which is better than Neil and Terry! Haha) As we sat in the car before heading in, Shawn very seriously said, "I know you're worried, but what does success look like? How many people will it take for you to feel like it was a good event?"

I thought about this for a long time. I weighed all the times I've sat in food courts outside of B. Daltons (yes, that long ago!) literally throwing my book at passers by and the fact that, maybe, MPR was kind of big deal? I decided that my answer, as unreasonable a high number that it seemed to me, especially given my past experiences with these things, I said: "Twelve. A dozen people will make me feel like a superstar."

If you count some of the people who had to be there, including me, Shawn, Mason, and the two people who run Dreamhaven (Lisa F and Greg K), we had 21.

GODDESS.

This was a goddess-level success of a book signing. Lisa F. told me afterward that the only signing/event bigger than mine was Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher. I mean... that is some seriously amazing company to be in!

Even so, we had still too much cake. Not only did David not listen to me (he brought two cakes, plus cupcakes, and cherries for anyone vegan or gluten free--but to be fair to him, he was being very generous not only with his money, but also his estimation of my worth as an author) Lisa F. had spontaneously also decided to bring cake. You might think there is no such thing as too much cake, but that was a LOT of cake.

We brought some home, but at least we aren't drowning in it, so I take that as a win.

Reading (out loud)