This is a nervous time for me.
I’m used to being actively involved in my book. I tinker with it endlessly. I revise and edit, constantly trying to make it just a little bit better….
But now The Wise Man’s Fear is out of my hands. I’m helpless. All I can do is wait and see how things turn out. Will people like it? Will it get good reviews? Will people actually buy the book?
It’s nerve wracking. Normally I have pretty strong nerves. Despite this, mine are being wracked. Perhaps even racked. I’m not sure which.
For example: a couple weeks ago, I had a nightmare about my upcoming signing tour.
Normally I don’t worry about signings. I’ve done a lot of them over the last four years and, generally speaking, I really enjoy them.
If 5 people show up, we just hang out. I do a little reading and answer questions. I tell stories. We chat about books, or publishing, or writing, or the world I’ve created.
This was the end of a signing I did in a small town in England. Only about 8 people showed up, so after I signed books, we went to a nearby park and enjoyed the weather.
If 80 people show up to a signing, I do pretty much the same thing. Except then I do it while standing behind a podium.
This one is from Amsterdam. If you embiggen it, you can see Sarah sitting in the middle of the crowd, pretty as a flower. At this point, Oot was just a tiny little bump in her belly.
My expectations for signings are always pretty low. That’s because when I was first published back in 2002, I did a few signings of the Writers of the Future Anthology that had my first published story in it.
Now in some ways these signings were cool. They were my very first signings, after all. I was feeling pretty good because something I had written was actually in a book. I was really for-real published.
But mostly, those early signings were lessons in humility and desperation. I would sit at a card table in the entryway of a Waldenbooks in some local mall and try to smile for two hours while everyone avoided making eye contact with me. If I was lucky, one of my friends would stop by and chat with me for a while, helping pass the time. If I was really lucky, someone would buy a book out of sheer pity.
In 2007 when The Name of the Wind came out, things were a little different. My first reading/signing in Madison was very well attended, with almost 100 people. (Admittedly, a lot of those were friends and family.)
Then, a couple months later, I went to Chicago and four people showed up.
But it didn’t get me down. Why? Because four people up is a treat compared to sitting at a card table in the mall for hours while people avoid you. Four people is delightful compared to that.
What’s your point, Pat?
My point is this: Over the last couple years, all my signings have purely recreational. I’m just there to hang out with fans. That means it doesn’t matter if we get two people or two hundred. I’m still going to have fun.
But the upcoming signing tour is different. This is kind of a Big Deal. The publisher is paying to fly me around and put me in hotels with the hope that people will come out to the bookstores, listen to me, and buy the book.
This makes things more of a high-stakes situation.
Which is probably why I had a nightmare about my upcoming tour.
In my dream I was in Seattle, at the first stop on my tour. I was pretty excited, because it was the big day. March 1st. My book was about to come out, and we were expecting it to be a pretty big event.
In fact, it was such a big event in my dream that the bookstore had brought in another author to do a signing before mine. Sort of like an opening act.
The opening act author was a weird cross between Tobias Buckell and some guy I knew in grad school. He got a pretty good turnout for his signing, about 40 people. A respectable number.
But when he was done reading and signing books, all those people left. Nobody stayed around for my signing. None of my fans showed up. The store was pretty much empty. There was just a podium and ranks and ranks of empty chairs.
When it became clear that nobody cared I was there, I walked around the store for a while, more than slightly depressed and despondent. Then I found a quiet corner, covered myself up with my coat, and fell asleep on the floor.
When I woke up, the store was dark and I realized they’d forgotten about me and closed the store, locking me in. So I got up and wandered around the dark, empty bookstore, all alone….
Now admittedly, it wasn’t a scary sort of nightmare. I didn’t wake up in a sweat.
But still, you have to admit. It wasn’t exactly a warm snuggly dream, either.
So, moral of the story, I’m a little nervous about book two.
Maybe more than a little.
pat
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