I’ve read books about author tours and heard stories from people far more experienced than me. I’ve been told to prepare for those book reading/signing events where three people show up and one of them is sleeping across several chairs because it is cold outside. My tour so far (events in Washington, D.C., Duke University, Bristol, Rhode Island) have all been quite well-attended. With an estimated 40,000 people attending the Sundance Film Festival I anticipated another great event at The Spotted Frog Bookstore in Park City, Utah.
I handed out 400 flyers at the screenings of Traces of the Trade. The appearance has been on my website schedule for several weeks. My publicist at Beacon coordinated with the bookstore owner and the Spotted Frog communicated with their extensive list of customers. Everyone did all the things that have resulted in such great turnouts at previous events.
And nobody came. Scratch that, several of the Traces of the Trade team came, but no one else showed up. Having adopted Doris Day as my patron saint of “accepting whatever happens” (Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be…), I’ve decided that this was that one event that was just not meant to be. One member of our group happened upon another “author appearance” at Dolly’s Bookstore on Main Street in Park City. The author was sitting on a chair, alone, reading a book.
Note to self: Sundance is a film festival. People here are focused on movies (as am I, truth be told)…
It's true: Sundance is a film festival, and despite the many enthusiastic questions we received about the book at the film's screenings, it seems that there just wasn't anyone focused enough on books to haul themselves all the way out to the bookstore (which was not convenient to the theatre venues).
But, Tom, I really enjoyed your positive attitude about the whole thing, and your sense of perspective, despite the contrast with your appearance on C-SPAN just days before ….