Thursday, March 08, 2007

Literary Crowds

I have to admit that I was nervous about my readings. I was fortunate enough to get signings at three of LA's most literariest book stores: Skylight, Vroman's, and Book Soup. I knew I could get a good crowd at Skylight--I'd been hosting events there for 7 years. I was worried about the other two. I wanted to have a good showing. The last thing I wanted was to get there and have two people at the reading--which happens more times than people know. There's egg on my face and the bookstore ends up shrugging their shoulders, losing money on the event. I mean, they do pay for having the books sent and to have a staff person set up the reading and deal with the author.

I know that Vroman's and Book Soup were taking a chance on a relatively new author still buildling a readership. I did every marketing trick I could muster. I e-mailed, sent out invitations, made announcements on list-serves. I personally talked to dozens of people making them commit to one of the three signings.

Fortunately, press worked out where interviews were published that also announced the readings. The LA Weekly "Pick" also put me on the radar.

All of it led to three packed readings! I was pleased. The book stores were pleased. Whew!

Crowd at Skylight Books in Los Feliz.






Crowd at Vroman's in Pasadena.






Crowd at Book Soup in West Hollywood.






5 comments:

Cephas said...

Congratulations! You deserve it. Wish I could've been at least one of those places. Come back to Atlanta!

And yes, Captain America is still dead. (But we're talking comic books... he'll be back.)

Cheers
Peter

http://peedub.com

Sundry said...

Congrats! That's such good news!

ernasty said...

congrats on great turnouts at your readings.

on the last photo, is the man sitting down with the red shirt peter corpus? just wondering.

Don Cummings said...

ROCK ON!

The book IS a CROWD PLEASER!

Liz Dwyer said...

Oh, I'm so lame that I missed all of these. The last one, I came home from work and went to take a nap and never got up. You deserve the best though and I'm sure I was sending you good vibes in my dreams though.