A Formula for Successful Book Signings

How to best take advantage of an in-person introduction to readers.

For well-established, successful authors who enjoy a large following of readers, book signings operate almost like an assembly line. Their publisher or agent schedules and coordinates the event well in advance, and on the day of the signing, the author walks into the building, takes a seat at a table in front of a long line of people, and exchanges a little small-talk with each reader as they present their copy for a signature. There’s no real sales pitch at that point. The fact that these people showed up, and are standing line with a book, means the sale has already been made.

But as we all know, the vast majority of published authors are not well-established. They have limited representation, and they don’t have (or at least start out with) a huge following of readers. If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, you probably fall into that category.

For you, book signings (which you’ll likely need to schedule yourself) are largely about meeting readers for the very first time, and hopefully intriguing them enough about you and your book to get them to purchase a copy of it.

Sure, some of those who show up will be friends of yours (to show their support). Others may have seen an ad for your appearance, possibly on a community-event calendar or social-media, and will come out of curiosity. (Make sure you hype the event on social media). But most people whose eyes and ears you’ll have that day will be regular bookstore customers — shoppers who will walk in through the front door of the building having no idea who you are, or even that there was a book signing that day.

And that’s okay. Those are the people, believe it or not, that you should be primarily interested in. Word-of-mouth promotion of your book among friends is a good thing, but word-of-mouth promotion among strangers is a great thing. It can advance your readership-base to a whole new level.

A lot of authors are naturally uncomfortable with self-promotion. They find the idea of engaging total strangers, to talk about themselves and their book, artificial and even kind of frightening. That’s certainly how I felt as an author, when I started doing signings several years ago. Prior to the release of my first book, my background was in software development. I had no experience in marketing and sales. I was the guy who sat behind a desk in a small office, far away from the public, writing code and glaring for hours into a computer monitor.

But as things got going with the book, I listened to the advice of bookstore managers, paid attention to the behavior of customers, and tried various things. Before long, I came up with a strong, effective formula that helped me take best advantage of such appearances. In fact, by the end of my first book tour, some bookstore managers were telling me (to my surprise) that I had set a store record for the highest number of in-person book sales. Some would later invite me back for additional signings during the same tour.

Here’s what worked for me, and can just as easily by applied by you…