14 Tips – How To Do A Book Store Signing – Miss Write

7. Make sure you have use of a table. Obvious, perhaps, but let the store know you will be needing one so they ear-mark you one for the day. You don’t want to be bringing your own with all your other paraphernalia. Also, take a plain table cloth, and try to put your stand in the appropriate area of the shop (e.g. fiction, non-fiction, genres even, if the store is big enough).

8. Create an eye-catching display – use signs, put a lot of copies of your book on the table, make pretty fans with bookmarks, get some ‘on theme’ helium balloons, have some flowers in a vase – all to make it look more pretty, approachable and friendly.

9. Don’t just sit there. Work the room. You never know where offering someone a freebie and an opening line may take you. Hint – be able to summarise your book in one sentence!

10.   I also found it useful to have a laptop with me. People may be reluctant to disturb you, but if it goes quiet you can work on your next project and look professional at the same time.

11.   Don’t hang about your table all day. I found that people approached it more freely when I was off ‘working the floor’ talking to customers. They might have felt a little intimidated with me guarding the stand, so I recommend leaving it as a display stand and get off your bum and circulate.

12.   Is there a coffee shop in store? If so, put fliers on the tables.

13.   Leaving the place tidy creates a good impression. Out of courtesy to the book store, I also took a quick look around the store and toilets 30 mins or so before I planned to leave to see if any of my fliers had been dumped or dropped… Then I gave them out again to more customers before I left! That’s recycling initiative for you!

14.   Finally, make sure you ask the Manager if it would be possible to leave some copies with the store at cost price. They will be happy to hold some books in stock if the event went well.

If you’ve not got an event booked in for the near future, why not approach your local book store? They’re normally quite happy to help, and if you don’t ask you don’t get! Planning the event takes some doing, but it’s worth it in the end.  

Best of luck with any events you have coming up – let me know how it went!

Lou x

www.facebook.com/louise.gibney.writer

@misswriteUK