Book Signing For The Beginner – Is It For You?
As a new author, you will want to consider every available means to market your work, and book-signing engagements at the various bookstore chains, independent stores and libraries can provide important or even crucial contributions to that end. But much of the sales potential of this valuable means of getting your books out there is often lost through a lack of understanding of what it takes to make these sessions work. While there are many who regard book-signing sessions as a great opportunity, there are others who see them as unpleasant but necessary chores.
Let’s examine the pros and cons.
Procedures for book-signing sessions vary according to which bookstores and chains you are dealing with. Waldenbooks stores and most of the independents use the casual approach in which authors are provided with a table and chair near the front of the store and are left to make their pitch to individual customers as they pass by. Barnes and Noble, and Borders Books-and-Music Stores on the other hand, prefer to structure their book-signing events in a more formal manner. They publicize the event as a talk that will take place on a specific date and when the time comes they set up a table and several rows of chairs in a suitable area of the store. The author then gives a talk on the subject of his book, following it with a question-and-answer period and finally a signing-session for those who wish to make a purchase. The advantage of this method to the author is that he makes his pitch only once for that session. The disadvantage is that the success of the event is largely dependent on how many people turn up.
THE TIME FACTOR.
Time is of the essence of course, especially for those authors who are also mothers of young children and who seldom have the opportunity to spend long hours at book-signing sessions. For this reason, if a session is to be productive it becomes essential to make the most of the time invested. For structured sessions such as those at typical Barnes and Noble bookstores the entire event will take less than an hour and a half. To make the most of that time, advance preparation is necessary. This involves working with the bookstore to effectively publicize the event. If it is to take place in your locality, and you have a list of friends and neighbors or other acquaintances who might be interested in your book, let the bookstore have a list of their names and addresses.
Next, remember that bookstore managers are not always marketing experts.
Since, as a way of getting your message out, a card is more economical than a letter, The CRM (Community Relations Manager), will probably publicize your book-signing event by sending out a card to the stores own mailing list. The card will state your name and the name of your book, but it will seldom provide any information about the subject of the book or offer any clues as to whether the book is fiction or non-fiction, biographical or scientific. So unless the title is so explicit that it leaves no one in doubt about the subject of the book, there is no special incentive for potential attendees to turn up for your session.
By early discussion of publicity measures with the CRM of the store, this shortcoming can be remedied. There is usually plenty of room on a card for a brief but informative message about your book, and that can make all the difference. CRMs may counter that they have regular sessions each month and that their customers are accustomed to this and are regular supporters of the events involved. They deceive themselves. If you don’t let people know what they are in for, they don’t come, and you are likely to find yourself talking to no one but the CRM. It’s therefore not surprising that many of the major bookstores are coming to regard structured book-signing events as wasteful and unproductive, and are either discontinuing them, or are booking only established best-selling authors and requiring the publisher to share in the promotion costs of the signing event.
Book-signing sessions at Waldenbooks stores are a quite different matter. Since their stores are mostly in shopping malls, the book-buying traffic is transient in nature and would not support structured book-signing events. Instead, they provide the author with a table and chair, usually near the front of the store, where he or she talks to customers as they come by. But if authors just sit at their table and wait for customers to approach them and ask about their book, the session is seldom very productive and a potentially good opportunity is wasted. Waldenbooks store managers report that many authors just sit at their table and wait for something to happen. In many cases, not much does.
For authors whose time is precious, (and that includes most of us), and whose purpose is to sell as many books as possible in the time available, the whole book-signing process at Waldenbooks stores and the like must be proactive rather than reactive. That involves training oneself to approach customers as they come into the store and asking politely if they will permit you to tell them about your book. No one will be offended by your query and in most cases you will be gratified by the friendly and cooperative response you will get. Some may tell you that they’ve come in to look for a specific book or that they are in a special hurry. Others will tell you politely that they are not interested. But there will be a goodly number whose eyes will light up at your approach, and who will be glad to listen to what you have to say.
As you become accustomed to the pro-active method you will learn to assess your chances with most types of men and women and will approach only those who strike you as likely prospects. Pretty soon you will find that you are becoming an expert––and that you are signing more books.
We are told that the best book-buying prospects are educated women in their thirties or forties and my own experience supports this assertion. You will also find that women in this general category tend to be the most attentive listeners to the story you have to tell about your book, so those are the prospects you will favor in the early days of your pro-active book-signing sessions. Younger women are more difficult to judge. While most are objective and purposeful and will probably listen attentively to your pitch, those who are less mature or less confident may giggle as you begin your pitch. That is usually not a good sign.
Men for the most part will not be your primary targets until you become fairly experienced at pro-active signing. In general, men are not impulse buyers and are not as receptive to unsolicited sales approaches as women. Your selection process must therefore be somewhat more circumspect. You will become adept at making instant character judgment and will look for men who appear comfortable with themselves, who are not too intense or stern looking or macho. As you become more and more experienced with pro-active book-signing, selling to male prospects will become a more rewarding endeavor.
THE NUMBERS GAME
The number of book-signings you will achieve at any given event will tend to be inversely proportional to your book’s retail price and will also depend on its genre. For a soft-cover book retailing at $10 or less, the success rate will be higher than a case-bound version selling at $25.00, and a book in the ‘how to’ category will usually do better than most other non-fiction. For the present discussion we’ll assume you are promoting a virtually unknown hard-cover novel or true story that retails for $24.95.
Once you get into your stride with the pro-active approach, you will be talking to people almost all of the time. Allowing for the time it takes for the signing and personalizing when you’ve made a sale, you will typically deliver your pitch between forty and fifty times per hour. Depending on the traffic and the location of the bookstore it is reasonable to achieve an average rate of one signing in eight to twelve pitches. This equates to between four and six signings per hour or eight to twelve sales in a two-hour session. That’s probably twice the number of signings that would likely be achieved with a conventional reactive approach with the same book. In all cases you will find that the pro-active approach beats the alternative hands down.
Pretty soon you will establish a consistent rate of sale. In my own experience, it takes on average ten to fifteen minutes to sign and sell a typical case-bound book. When you’ve used the pro-active approach for a while, you will establish your own averages. By pre-determining the time you will have at your disposal and making allowances for the weather factor you will be able to forecast with reasonable accuracy what your total sales for any given session will be.
THE TIME FACTOR
What if, like me, you are one of the lucky ones. What if you have the freedom to spend as much time as you like at a book-signing event. It makes sense, then, to lengthen your sessions. Even if it takes you only an hour to reach the store where you will do your signing, that’s a two-hour round trip you’ve invested in to attend the event. That alone justifies a longer signing session. In fact, there’s a lot to be said for making it a whole day. Your feet will get tired, but with the pro-active approach you may end the day with between twenty-five and fifty books sold. An investment of eight hours per week of your time, in single sessions or split between two or three sessions will result in the sale of between one and two thousand books over a twelve month period from your personal signings alone, exclusive of sales made by the bookstores themselves. And if yours is a soft-cover or a ‘How-To’ book selling for ten dollars or less, you can expect to sign between three and four thousand copies over the same period. Those numbers begin to look more worthwhile, don’t they? And the store managers will love you.
THE ECONOMICS
When I started my signing rounds with Waldenbooks I was content to go anywhere that the very helpful New England scheduling chief decided to send me. I soon realized, however, that out-of-state excursions involving overnight stays and restaurant bills were costing me more than I could hope to recover from whatever book sales I would make. I then changed my tactics, limiting my signings to locations that would permit me to return home the same evening. When I had exhausted the list of stores located within that radius, I simply started at the beginning again, making repeat visits to the same stores. The area CRM supported me in this, and since each visit resulted in a goodly number of books sold, store managers have, without exception, welcomed me.
FREE RANGING
I don’t limit myself to standing at my table any more. When traffic slackens and few prospects are entering the store, I wander around and introduce myself to anyone who is not already engrossed with some other book. If there are not enough of those to keep me busy, I sometimes walk outside the store and chat with passers by. On the one and only occasion that I’ve been lucky enough to sign four copies of my book for a single prospect, it was for a lady who said she had not had any intention of entering the store until I walked outside and invited her in. It’s amazing how receptive people are to a polite and friendly greeting.
SEASONS AND CRITICAL MASS
It seems to be universally accepted that book-signings, like book sales, are heavily dependent on seasonal influences. Late fall is said to be the best. Winter and Spring are good. Summer is flat.
There is much truth in this assertion, but it doesn’t apply as strictly to the free-ranging book-signing method as it does to the structured approach. If one out of every two people who come into the store, strikes you as a reasonable prospect, and if the nature of your pitch is such that you can only talk to forty or fifty people an hour, you need a traffic flow of eighty to one hundred persons per hour to fully support your cause. Analysis of traffic flow patterns will show that these numbers are frequently achieved during the summer months as well as at other times. A significantly heavier flow doesn’t do anything for you, and a crowded store is not necessarily the best environment for your purpose.
I have also found that summer book-buyers tend (on average) to be somewhat more serious and more purposeful. If traffic is light in summer because people would rather be doing other things than visiting bookstores, then those that do, tend to have special motivation. So depending on the nature of your book your success rate in the summer months (books signed per number of pitches made), may well be somewhat higher than at other times.
My own book-signing experiences at Waldenbooks stores in New England tend to support the above theory. My book, a case-bound inspirational biography called the “The Thirteen Club” had only just come off the press when I visited the Stamford and Greenwich CT stores in mid-summer. In the course of a two-hour session, I signed and sold a total of twenty-one books at each store. Early in August, I visited the Chestnut Hill and Natick stores in Massachusetts. I had a two-hour session at each store and sold a total of twenty-two books. Later the same month I signed and sold fourteen books in a 2 ½ hour session at the Marlborough store. While those are not big numbers, they compare quite well with the signings per hour I’ve achieved at other times of the year.
As I gathered experience and put in more hours per visit, my signings-per-session increased in number, so that eventually my score was typically more than twenty five signings per visit, and later reached as high as fifty copies. Nevertheless, the average success rate per hour did not change very much from that of the summer months. I simply put in more hours.
THE DOWN SIDE
The signing rate, like most other phenomena in life, is far from uniform. There will be times, especially at the beginning of a session, when the better part of an hour will pass without your making a sale. One after another of your promising prospects will tell you that they will ‘think about it,’ or that they have to rush off now, but will definitely come back in a little while to buy your book. They won’t and they won’t––they won’t think about it and they won’t come back. You’ve lost the sale.
It’s easy to become very discouraged by this train of events. You will ask yourself what on earth you are wasting your time for. You will tell yourself that you are just off color today, and that it would be wise to go home to save yourself further frustration. But that’s simply not the answer. You must learn to take this type of setback in your stride and work yourself past the mistaken notion that all is lost. You must just hang on, and if you do that, the averages will come out right in the end. They always do. These barren periods are the book-signers equivalent of writer’s block and until you’ve weathered a few such dry spells, you haven’t graduated as the seasoned and successful book-signer that you aspire to become.
LIBRARIES
Library signing is a special case. Since, in this hallowed environment, authors can hardly wander the aisles and strike up conversations with the patrons, signing sessions must be structured as organized talks. And since attendance at such talks is often quite poor, many authors feel that library book-signing sessions are just not worth pursuing. This is almost true, but not quite. As Jerry Labriola (Author, Famous Crimes Revisited, and Murder at Hollings General), puts it: “What you do is identify those libraries that have ‘Friends-of-the-Library’ groups associated with them, because their staffs and Friends-Groups, working together, can better promote your presentation.” Another important difference is that at ‘Friends’ meetings, attendees don’t necessarily come just to hear your talk. They also come for lunch and whatever other social activities and discussions were planned for that occasion. You therefore have what amounts to a captive audience.
THE BOTTOM LINE
From this review it’s not difficult to see that depending upon your type of personality and point of view, book-signing can be looked upon either as a necessary evil or as a productive way to sell books. But even if you don’t enjoy book-signings as much as I do, pro-active sessions do serve as confidence builders. They tell you that when all else fails, you have at your disposal an infallible way to sell your books. It’s a time and energy consuming activity, but it works.
Howard M. Layton
