Book Signing with Whipped Cream (and Nuts)

Standing in the darkened gallery space taking down Ed Briant's exhibit of illustrations from Don't Look Now, I had to stop and look.

Had my plot worked? Had I managed to but a bit of whipped cream on the melting bowl of bookselling ice cream--a.k.a. the dread book signing.

Let's start at the beginning. Ed Briant came to me wanting to do a book signing for his candy-colored picture book / graphic novel, Don't Look Now (Roaring Brook Press). In the near wordless panels, two boys jealous over the perceived sizes of their respective bowls of ice cream begin a tug of war that splits their world and drops them into a land of monsters.

Choose a Location. As I like to play with story, we held the book signing at a local ice cream shop rather than a bookstore. The ice cream store, we postulated is a bit busier on a Friday night than to local bookseller. Good.

Add an Extra Component. We needed another attraction, so Ed agreed to print out 11 x 17 spreads from the book and pop them into simple gallery clip frames. We now had a books signing and gallery opening. Good.

Anticipate Low Turnout. But what if we still had a poor turnout? Well, we did. Despite our books signing cleverness about 25 people came the night of the signing and 12 books were sold.





Reward People for Marketing. But one other addition allowed this book signing to have a nice dollop of hot fudge. I invited libraries in the area to invite their patrons to the book signing with a bit of a carrot. We would ask people to sign a guest book noting not their name, but their favorite library. The top three libraries mentioned would win signed books and a print. I provided the school and public libraries with color posters to hang and B&W flyers to hand to patrons.

So standing there in the darkened gallery (and ice cream shop) this morning, I cracked open the guest book. Pages and pages were filled with library names. Young (and not so) patrons from 25 regional libraries had declared themselves.

So what? How does that sell books?

Exposure is King. Well, it may or it may not, but every school and public library in the state was exposed to Ed Briant's new book on their listserve three times and patrons across systems went home with flyers featuring Ed's creations.


Create a Takeaway. And every visitor to the ice cream shop over the month of the exhibit got to see Ed's work, read the book left there, and take away an activity sheet featuring the book.

A little more effort and the book signing evening of 25 people was expanded to include a broader community of readers. (I can come up with no ice cream analogy here. Anyone?)

VIEW pictures from book signing and visit by King Middle School librarian and readers.