Mama to the rescue although I don't like doing it. She can't do it herself because she's in the green room. I had to correct the date on their website, make them order more books, make them get enough chairs and prepare an introduction for a clerk to read who was about to say. "Here is Megan Abbott". She was impressed enough with what she read, she bought a book.Of course I can only step in when she is in Detroit. But Indy book stores do a much better job of it because they know their customers and do it all the time. Barnes and Noble has been very good to Megan though. They did a great interview online. This store doesn't do many live events. But there were as nice as could be to the panicked Mom. Even when we tried to steal chairs from the coffee bar.
Mom to the rescue! Nice job. Looks like a good crowd.
ReplyDeleteWow. I remember how famously poorly things could go at the Borders where I worked for just under four years, running the back office (but not readings) for the latter two. In the DC area, there was the difficulty in getting as much attention as anything that was happening downtown or even in Alexandria vs. a strip mall in Fairfax Co., but it was notable that the only two events that really went well in terms of turnout and audience engagement were Barney Frank and Madeleine L'Engle, both with built-in audiences particularly their for his part and just about everywhere in the US for hers. The event-organizer for the store asked me, at absolutely the last minute, to introduce Marcia Muller, to what turned out to be an audience of about six who otherwise had no idea who she was.
ReplyDeleteGood for you in terms of getting them to do more of the job. Considering it was the hometown and all.
It was typical that the event organizer had not informed me, nor made enough effort for anyone even in the store to not know, that Muller was coming as a speaker on her tour.
DeleteWho's still waking up? Particularly *there*, as in the DC 'burbs, for a Barney Frank audience, when he was still in the US House. One of the shorter-lived newsstand SF magazines, ABORIGINAL SF, was published by a writer, Floyd Kemske (who signed himself "A Crazy Alien" in the magazine, for which he wrote a column, and referred to himself thus even on the magazine's masthead, which didn't help matters in any way) who had come through on a tour in support of his first or second novel just as the magazine was starting up and just before I started working at the store (and, typically, I had not heard that was about to happen, as a regular customer, either), and wrote one of his columns about his non-event event at our store for an issue of ABORIGINAL which our Borders carried on our newsstand, which did amuse me at the time; the event planner was considerably less amused.
DeleteAs it happens, the column that mentioned Kemske's experience at our Borders was published in one of the two issues of ABORIGINAL which is up at the Internet Archive, and this is the link to the page: https://archive.org/details/aboriginal-science-fiction-41-42-v-07n-02-1993-fall/page/2/mode/1up
DeleteInteresting, Todd. Most of their events are virtual now. Covid taught them how to do it. Although this store has Christ Whittaker next week. That should bring some people out.
DeleteNice work helping Megan! Patti, you're the best!
ReplyDelete