The Signing of Books

We've all seen them in a bookstore somewhere --- lonely authors sitting at a table, trying to convince complete strangers that the printed and bound hopes and dreams stacked around them are worthy of the strangers' hard-earned dough-ray-me. Well, on Saturday, September 27th I spent five hours doing exactly that. I was that lonely author.

Now, I will admit right up front that if not for Rachel and Krista coming in to visit with loved ones, and Bart and Dan coming into Chapters by chance but still stopping by to say hi, it would have been a lonely five hours.

That's not entirely true because Craig from Starbucks and the floor staff of Chapters all came by to welcome me and chat and find out a little more about my 'baby', so I certainly felt like I belonged.

But what I wanted to get into here is the surprisingly varied denizens of a big=box, chain bookstore (this is a description, not an insult to Chapters-Indigo) who drifted past my station during the course of my time there. Right off the bat let me say that the visitors who brought the most joy were the children. My hat is off to the very pretty mother who entered with her young daughter and explained "Now, Sweetie, we're only buying two books today. One for you to read and one for me to read to you." Wow. In this digital world filled with freaks from the mePod generation, to find a mom who loves and respects her child enough to not only read to her and encourage her to read, but also to explain things calmly and lay out her expectations for their little adventure.
The there was the full-tilt excitement of the kids who cleared the stores double-door entrance , wriggled free of mom or dad's loving grasp and made a giggling bee-line for the children's book section at the back of the store. The unbridled joy as they galloped, loped or skipped past me was fresh air, sunshine and fabric softener all bundled up in Gap Kids-clothed packages. It makes me want to finish writing my children's books just so I can share in that joy.
Others observed during my meet-the-public time included those who smiled on their way past with a book-finding mission on their minds and the don't-talk-to-strangers strangers who avoided eye contact and in fact detoured around me and my wares. There were couples who separated briefly only to drift back together at one display or another to share their discoveries with each other, eliciting shock, surprise, pleasure, hesitation and even indifference. This last emotion was seen most when they were buying a gift for a third party and not really knowing much more about the person other than the fact that they once saw them read a book so they must love reading enough to love all books.

There were the magazine buyers who never even gave the books a second glance, the skulkers voted most likely to shoplift and the visitors most in need of the toilet facilities sort of behind Starbucks. There were cute faces that shone and cute souls that shone through; crying babies and pretty ladies; the lonely aisle wanderers for whom this was the highlight of their weekend, the just-here-for-my-Starbucks-fix passersby and there were the smart bibliophiles who got their half-caf-decaf-with-a-shot before making their way along the highways and biways in search of hidden literary treasures.

There were the meeters who were meeting someone and had time to kill so they wandered around for thirty minutes, waiting for a cover to catch their eye or their cellphone to ring out and tell them that rescue was at hand.

And finally, there was the mother whose three-year-old daughter asked what the glass wine decanter was for and was told by mom that "It's for putting yucky drinks into." Was mom a teetotaller who strongly disapproved of fermented imbibing, or was she being a bit of an alarmist and trying to discourage her three-year-old from trading her drinkin' box for an Andre's cellar cask? Whichever it was, it was all part of the entertaining experience of being a published author on display for public viewing at a bookstore. I look forward to the next time, which I believe is Saturday, October 25th, again at Dalhousie Station Chapters in Calgary, Alberta. Come on by and say 'hi'.

Ciao for now.

(By the way, I sold eight books that day. Not bestseller stuff, but eight more than if I'd just stayed home and cut the lawn.)

Cheers,

Tim Reynolds.
Author of Stand Up & Succeed
www.StandUpAndSucceed.com