These are absolutely a thing that happens, sooner or later, to every writer who signs.
Signings with no more than two or three people. (Often these seem to insist on happening in particularly large settings, so that you and the couple or few nice people are isolated in the midst of a kind of howling book-wilderness.)
Signings with nobody at all. There you sit while you and your bookstore liaison and your publisher's support person stand and sit looking at each other in horrified fake-smiling embarrassment, watching the clock and begging the passing minutes either to send you some passing human being, or to just pass faster FFS.
Signings where you show up at the venue but none of the associated promotional material (buttons, bookmarks, bookplates, etc.) from your publisher has shown up. You sign as best you can and apologize repeatedly to the people who show up and were hoping for swag: then sign the remaining books "for stock" and slink away.
Signings where you show up at the venue but the books you're supposed to be signing haven't shown up. (Unusually frustrating, as there's not even stock for you to sign after the fact. And needless to say, the would-be paying customers are less than pleased.)
Signings where you've accidentally been double-booked with some far better-known writer, so that all their books, etc, have shown up, but none of yours haveâbecause your publisher's rep knows nothing about this cock-up. (And the bookstore staff are routinely both horrified and mortally embarrassed to see you.) Shared frustration ensues... sometimes with you and the other writer winding up afterwards in some nearby bar, telling each other horror stories and consoling one another, so that you very possibly become BFs forever.
The flip side of this situation is when you have a dual signing where everybody's books show up, all right, but where one of you has a long string of people waiting for signatures, and your table-partner has nobodyânobody whatsoeverâfor the entire agonizing scheduled time. These are excruciating, and the only thing you can do for the other person is try your best to cheer them up. ...I had one in the US somewhere, years back, where I had a long line of people, and my table-partnerâwho in the great scheme of things is now far better known than I amâwas in the I Got Nobody situation. They spent the whole time wearing the bravest face they could; and I spent so much time between signatures trying to entertain them into feeling better that my face hurt afterwards. Nor did I grudge it, for it's a terrible situation to be in. Sometimes I wonder if they even remember the event... and if they don't, I'd find it hard to blame them. It's the kind of thing you'd really rather forget.
Top of the frustration list for me, though, was the one time where the bookstore forgot they'd booked me in to sign. Somebody neglected to make a note in the store's (admittedly busy) calendar. And the publisherâor the publisher's rep involvedâhad also forgotten: which meant that nobody from [REDACTED PUBLISHER] had contacted the bookstore to follow up about posters and so forth. So that no one, even at the support end, showed up there half an hour or so before the appointed time but the writer; and there were no books, and no publicity, and no pre-publicity, and no posters, etc etc. Which meant that the entire rest of the planet, it seemed, was ignorant of the thing I'd just flown into [REDACTED CITY] on my own dime to do.
(sigh) So you'll understand why it isâwhen you tell one of us that what you most want to do when you're a writer is experience the joy of public events where you sign books for your adoring readersâthat your local writer gives you kind of a dry look.
(While hoping you get lucky and never find out about the downside...)
