The Time Only 2 People Came to My Book Signing

How many of you heard of the famous writer Chelsea Banning? You haven’t! No worries, I'll catch you up. I wanted to share some insight around promoting and marketing to help you get perspective and also let you know you aren’t alone out there if things “fail” or don’t go as planned.

Around the first week in December an article caught my eye. A new writer, Chelsea Banning, tweeted about a low book signing turnout.

This totally caught my attention, so I continued reading - here’s the story. Chelsea was going to have her first official book signing at a book store. She expected over 40 people to attend - even the store owner was expecting a lot of folks.

When the book signing actually happened, only TWO people showed up.

How many of you can relate to this? You poured so much energy into a big webinar, class, or event and you barely have any attendance! It’s happened to me and many of my peers…

Chelsea had worked hard on writing this first book of a trilogy about King Arthur’s children. It was a lot of effort to publish it, let alone promote the book signing on social media (wink, wink) - feel familiar?!

So what did Chelsea do after the lame turnout at the book signing? She was pretty upset and on a whim, tweeted this, planning to delete it in a few hours: 

"Only 2 people came to my author signing yesterday, so I was pretty bummed about it. Especially as 37 people responded 'going' to the event. Kind of upset, honestly, and a little embarrassed."

Well, a few hours later, Chelsea went back to check the tweet and saw a massive response from other authors, really famous authors. Here’s some:

As a fan of the book "Good Omens", I can't believe this one!

Even Margaret Atwood, a very successful author has bad days....

What can we all take away from this? You are in good company if you don’t have amazing turnouts at events. It happens to the best of the best!

One thing you can do is let out your feelings, dust yourself off and try again, perhaps with a different angle (that’s where someone like me can help!)

Failure is giving up and not trying again.