Book signings are fun ... usually. I just finished a signing with my coauthors on the new book Images of America: Oak Cliff. We did two signings in one day. The first was at a local bookstore (Dicho's). They had purchased 80 copies from the publisher, and they sold out during the event! We had people standing in line out the door. We loaned the store some of our personal books, and kept going. We ended up signing 100 books... a pretty good for any author.
The second signing that day also had a lot of people wanting the book, but when we got the the B&N, they only had 8 books available to sell. They'd only ordered 30 books and had sold 22 before we arrived. In the first few minutes we sold out, and they wouldn't accept any of our books to sell, so they took orders. Most people understood. A few were peeved.
Still, it was a good day for the authors. We were very pleased with the reaction to the book. The book, a pictorial history of the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, contains over 200 photographs dating from the 1800s to the present. As folks flipped through the books, we heard reactions about places remembered, people almost forgot, and heard stories we'd never heard before.
There are a lot of hours that go into the creation of the content for a book. When you get to see, in person, the reaction to your work, it makes the long hours worth while. That's the best part of a book signing event.
