Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/literaryvanitieshell.mp3 or read on…
The Shopping Mall of the Literary Vanities is a one-of-a-kind destination point, at least today. Someday, it may be franchised and you’ll find them everywhere. Here at the Mall, you can stroll past storefront windows that display waxwork scenes of authors who are in the process of having what we call BOOK SIGNINGS. One window depicts Kurt Vonnegut puffing away and signing like crazy, as adoring fans are ignored and processed. Another window shows Rick Bragg kindly signing book after book for ‘Bama fans. Then, there are the windows of the Unknown Authors. Here, you’ll see one lonely writer after another sitting stiffly and staring ahead, pen poised, waiting for attention from invisible throngs.
Naturally, in order to properly represent statistics, you’ll find about 98 lone-author displays for every two busily-successful authors. It’s a big mall.
This might as well be a Gary Larson cartoon more properly titled The Shopping Mall of the Literary Vanities Hell that we writers often have nightmares about.
That was a dream. What follows is what happened today:
I’m driving into the parking lot of Little Professor, a book store in Homewood, Alabama, where, this very Sunday High Noon, I’m attending a book signing.
Not just any book signing. My book signing!
I’ve dusted off the last few copies of my title, Christmas Comes But Once a Day. Liz has decided it’s time I make myself available to the masses in order to sell off our “stock” before I add another handful of stories and publish a revised edition for next year.
So, here I am in the parking lot at Little Professor, about to spend two hours being The Author.
Why do I dread these events? Even more puzzling: why do I look forward to these events?
Any experienced author will tell you how wonderfully terrible and terribly wonderful book signings can be. Like many others, I’ve spent hours over the past decades, sitting in bookchain stores waiting for somebody—anybody—to buy my book and ask me to sign it, to no avail. Then, again, I’ve sat in stores where people have lined up to get my signature.
The fun part is having people ask.
The horrifying part is having nobody ask.
The even more horrifying part is never knowing in advance what kind of book signing event it’s going to be, till I’m already there, sitting nude at a table with a small sign over my head explaining what this geezer is doing in the middle of the store staring into space.
Today’s signing is pleasant, and I am relieved. A number of friends and strangers buy my book—as well as my writing book and my “Tweed Coat” book, and, better than that, some folks sit and talk with me and listen as I read a couple of Christmas tales to them. People can be so kind—thankfully.
I am relieved and grateful—and very glad that I don’t do this for a living. I’m a lot more secure in my old book shop, comforting all those long-dead authors who have been through many other book-signing hells…and I assume they, like me, are happier where they are than where they have been
(c) 2011 A.D. by Jim Reed