Buy Into Reading: 12 Steps to the Perfect Book Signing Event

This resource was covered in my presentation “Buy Into Reading: 6 Bookstore Tactics to Create Lifelong Readers” for the Writing for Your Life 2020 Online Christian Children’s Books Conference, but I’m going to leave this list here because it is worth re-visiting.

Step 1 | Set Up the Details

Ideally, author events should be scheduled at least two months in advance. This allows the venue time to create posters, flyers, and social media graphics to advertise it properly. If a venue is too small to create their own marketing materials, authors can step in and create their own. With websites out there like canva.com, creating quality graphics is pretty easy and most of the time it’s free.

Step 2 | Tell Someone!

Tell your friends, fans and family about the event! Most authors are their own marketing machines. Even big name authors are expected to make some efforts to connect to their readers. If an event is happening, tell someone!

Step 3 | Show Up Early

On the day of the book signing event, show up at least 15 minutes before the event is scheduled to begin. 30 minutes might even be better. The goal of getting there early is to familiarize yourself with the space, use the restroom, and meet the people working the event. If parents come early, you can enjoy a bit of extra time with them before things start. Imagine how cool it would be if you got to hang out with a rock star before they played their concert. Now realize that you are the rock star.

Step 4 | Come Prepared

Technically, this should probably be step zero, but it’s too late for that now. Make sure you have a stack of your own books to sign. Occasionally, organizations run into trouble with the ordering process (the books weren’t ordered or didn’t ship on time), so it’s a good idea to have your own back up supplies on hand to sell on consignment. If you have bookmarks or activity sheets based on your books, bring them! You can always ask the venue to make copies for you.

Step 5 | Enter-to-Win Basket

Put out an enter-to-win basket to capture names and email addresses of attendees so you can add them to your email newsletter list. Make sure they know this will happen if they enter to win. Your book makes an excellent giveaway item, but you could give away other stuff too. The venue may also be willing to add something like a gift card to your giveaway too.

Step 6 | Sing a Song with Motions

As people start to trickle in, a good way to start the story time is by singing a song with motions. Obviously, this is best done for younger audiences. If you are writing a drama about a teenage protest leader with cancer whose parents mysteriously disappeared, song time may be a weird addition. But if you are writing a picture book, opening with a song is a great way to go. Author Glenys Nellist did this a number of times at Baker Book House and the audience always loved it. She would pick a familiar tune, then rewrite the lyrics to match the theme or message of her newest book. She’d always do songs with motions because it helps little ones get their wiggles out. Also, by opening with song time, you make it less awkward for parents who didn’t show up on time (and parents of young children are rarely able to show up on time). They can easily slip in while you are singing some songs.

Step 7 | Read the book

If you have more than one book, read a few. If you only have the one, read yours along with a couple of books you love or that influenced you in some way. Tell people why you love them or how they influenced you.

Step 8 | Do a Craft or Snack

This is an added bonus for families. Usually, the venue would be happy to supply this part of the event, but I’ve seen authors bring their own materials as well. This part of a book signing event is not necessary, but it makes it more memorable for the kids who showed up.

Step 9 | Draw the Winner

Draw the winner of the enter-to-win drawing you had people sign up for. This way, the people who didn’t win are encouraged to go buy your book instead.

Step 10 | Sign Some Books

Make sure you have some fine tip Sharpie markers or a good gel pen handy in case one is not provided for you by the venue. Ask parents how names are spelled. Maybe have a few stock phrases in mind ahead of time to write when you sign your name.

Step 11 | Sign Extra Copies

After the book signing is finished, ask if the venue would like you to sign a few copies to leave on the shelf. This makes it possible for parents who couldn’t make it to the event to still get a signed copy, even if it isn’t able to be personalized. Thank your venue hosts for the opportunity to come out, even if no one showed up to the event.

*Special side comment. I’ve hosted a few author events where, for whatever reason, no one came. The author and I would chat about writing and life and book sales, waiting for someone to come, but they never did. Was this a waste of time? No! If the author had a good attitude about it, it was a great experience because I was then able to tell shoppers how cool they were and any backstory stuff about their lives that would help me sell their books.

Step 12 | Send a Thank-You Note

Send a thank you note to the store. It’s a simple gesture, but a classy one.

Movies from My Childhood Are Not Okay for My Kids

I did it. I signed up for the free trial of Disney Plus.

Life looks a lot different for my family today than it did a month ago. Schools are closed for the season. Going to work became working from home. Working from home became collecting unemployment. Still, I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time together as a family and to pursue some of the writing tasks I was putting off until I had some time.

So why did I sign up for Disney Plus? Well, this is supposed to be Spring Break week for my kids, so we’re being a bit looser with the schedule than we might otherwise be. Since we can’t go anywhere (aside from bike rides and walks, which we are doing almost daily), we can tour other worlds through movies.

The catalog of movies and shows available through Disney Plus is impressive. Not only does it have brand new films that should otherwise be in theaters like Onward, but it has movies that were part of my childhood: Flight of the Navigator, The Rocketeer, and others.

Wanting to share a piece of my childhood with my children, I suggested that we watched The Rocketeer. It was rated PG, and I remembered fondly an adventurous tale of man with a rocket strapped to his back.

I didn’t remember the foul language.

Less than ten minutes in—and after exchanging some meaningful looks with my wife—we paused the movie to address the language being used in the film. We told our kids how we will often hear words in the real world we choose not to use ourselves, and that even though other people use them, that doesn’t make it okay.

I didn’t remember the inappropriate sexual scenes.

After an hour into the movie, there’s a scene where the buxom female love interest is at dinner with the bad guy and a joke is made where her breasts are the punchline. Shortly after that, she is drugged and wakes up in a locked room where her captor suggests she change into a see-through outfit.

We stopped the movie and had a family discussion about the fact that no one is allowed to do the things the bad guy was doing. Our bodies are our own and it is not okay for anyone to take advantage of us, threaten us, or use us for their own pleasure.

My kids are both under ten years old. I sincerely regret watching the movie with them. I’m glad we had a chance to address some topics that we need to address as parents, but I didn’t mean to blindside them with things they may not have been ready to see or hear.

Parents, use my mistake as a cautionary tale. Before you try to share a movie with your kids from your own childhood, preview it yourself. It doesn’t matter if it is rated PG or G or whatever. Times have changed since you were a kid. Stuff that was okay then isn’t okay now. Then if you decide to watch it anyway, be willing to stop the movie and talk through the things that aren’t okay with your kids.

On the bright side, my kids didn’t seem to be overly bothered by the things we talked about. The thing they were bothered by was the giant man with the wax-like face who killed people with his bare hands and with guns. That guy eclipsed all the other scary bits and inappropriate bits in the film for them.

Yeah, I forgot about that guy too.

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Have there been movies from your childhood that you won’t show your kids? What are they and why won’t you show them?

A Book I Wrote was Published. How Did That Happen?

It happened when I wasn’t looking for it. I got published.

My first book, 3-Minute Prayers for Boys, is not the result of months or years of manuscript shopping. In fact, it got through the system with nary a rejection. How?

I was in the right place at the right time with the right connections and the right publication history. Here’s the story, for anyone curious to read it.

For years, I have been a member of a writers group called The Weaklings. When we formed, we were simply a group of guys interested in being published someday. We wrote fantasy, sci-fi, flash fiction, and bizarre children’s books that were actually meant for college students (that was me). We participated in writing events like the 3-Day Novel Contest and NaNoWriMo. We attended and started to speak at writers conferences.

Then we launched our own writers conference, The Jot Conference, a one-night, free event for writers like us who were short on time and cash, but wanted to make connections with others in the industry. We invited speakers who understood that we couldn’t pay them, and they came anyway. The connections paid off. Within a few years, two of the Weaklings were working for a publishing house. My friend Andy was an editor. I worked in marketing.

Now that I understood how the publishing world worked, I started professionalizing my manuscripts. I submitted my work to agents. I wrote articles and stories for magazines and places where I had natural connections. I built my bibliography. And I received rejection after rejection for the books that I most wanted to be published.

And then I lost my marketing job at the publishing house. I understood rejection on a new level. I returned to the bookstore and applied my experience to the store in general and the children’s department specifically. I stopped submitting my work to agents and focused on building the best children’s department I could.

Then I got a call.

One of my editor friends from my former employee had found new employment at a different publishing house and he had a writing project for me if I was interested. I was floored. I had stopped trying to be published. Now an editor was giving me a book contract.

Thus did 3-Minute Prayers for Boys come to be. My editor gave me a chance–as well as the confidence–to write children’s non-fiction (not a genre I’ve ever written before), because he had read the side projects I wrote while I was trying to get published.

And now that I’ve been published, new doors are opening. So for anyone who is afraid to get started or discouraged to continue trying, keep going. Write the next sentence. Submit the next piece. Surround yourself with other dreamers. Their success is your success. And then one day, it may happen for you.

It does happen.

Ginnungagap – or – The Blank Page

Before there is something, there isn’t quite nothing, because there is always the possibility of something. This is the blank page, empty but waiting to be filled. In Norse mythology, the blank page that waited to be filled was known as Ginnungagap.

Ginnungagap is the yawning chasm, the bottomless abyss, the primordial void. It wasn’t exactly empty. Strange mists flowed through the void. In the north, the mists gathered to become the intensely cold Niflheim. To the hot south, they became Muspelheim, land of fire and home to the demon, Surtr.

Deep within the mists lay the Well of Life, Hvergalmir, and ice was gathering over top. That grinding ice was filled with life and the first two beings came into existence. Ymir, father of all ice giants, great and terrible, was created alongside Audumla, the magic cow who licked the salt from the ice and in turn fed Ymir with her milk.

While Ymir drank from Audumla, the magic cow’s raspy tongue uncovered more beings from the ice. The first one to be released was Buri, first of the Norse gods and grandfather to Odin, who with his brothers would slay Ymir.

As time went on, the world tree was planted and the broken body of Ymir was used to craft the nine worlds of Norse cosmology, and the chaos of Ginnungagap found structure. Though in the final battle of Ragnarök, the fire demon, Surtr, will return the cosmos to a state of possibility, we can enjoy life today.

In writing, or any creative endeavor, we know this cycle well. In the beginning, we have little more than possibilities and a blank page. But as the mists swirl over our creative well, the ideas take shape and we give them life. To one end of our mind, we are tempted to burn what we have created and to the other extreme we want to lock it in a drawer and freeze it in time. But if we can find the balance to let the well do its job, we l’ll have a project worth crafting.

At first, our idea is a monster, a father of ice giants. But along with our Ymir, we have a magic cow slowing licking our good ideas to life. In time, those good ideas will triumph over the bad ones, allowing us to build a world from Ymir’s bones, skull-cap, and eyebrows (seriously, Odin and his brothers used every part to create our world), and a better story comes to life.

It all starts with a blank page, with Ginnungagap.

Next time, we’ll look at how to protect our creations during the final battle of Ragnarök, or as it is known to writers, the submissions process.

Your Writing & Tyr’s Sacrifice

What are you willing to give up for your writing?

In Norse mythology, there’s this story about Tyr, the god of war. The story actually starts with Loki, a recognizable name due to Marvel’s Thor and Avengers films, but the historic Loki was far more devilish than Tom Hiddleston’s onscreen version.

In the myths, Loki was a distant cousin turned blood-brother of Odin, the head of the Norse pantheon, and in the early days of the world, they would travel and have adventures together. But one day, Loki’s true nature reveals itself and he elopes with a giantess named Angrboda (literally “She Who Bodes Anguish”), leading to the birth of three monster babies: Hel, a half-dead witch who is placed in charge of the underworld; Jormungand, a sea-serpent large enough to encircle the earth; and Fenrir, a wolf that frightens even the most powerful gods of Asgard.

Once Hel and Jormungand are dispatched, the gods of Asgard decide they need to do something about Fenrir, but only Tyr, the god of war, is brave enough to go near the beast. In an effort to contain Fenrir, the gods challenge the wolf to be bound by a series of chains in order to show off his strength. Fenrir easily breaks all chains but the last one, Gleipnir, which was forged with magic by the dwarfs of Svartalfheim with incredibly rare ingredients (the beard of a woman, the sound of a cat’s footsteps, the breath of a fish, and so on).

But when Tyr approached Fenrir with Gleipnir, the wolf smelled a ruse. So before he agreed to be bound with the magic chain, Fenrir demanded that one of the gods place a hand in his mouth as a measure of goodwill. If the god in question breaks the wolf’s trust and truly binds him instead of merely testing his strength, then that god loses his hand. And in the time when these myths were told, it was equally dishonorable to be an oath-breaker as it was to be maimed.

For Tyr, the safety of all of Asgard was at stake, so he bravely volunteered, knowing that it would cost him his hand and he would be dishonored in the process. Thus it was that the Norse god of war lost his sword hand, but Asgard was kept safe until the final battle of Ragnarok.

As writers, we are gods of war against the blank page, fighting with our words to bind our story into a safe and marketable form. But if we want to make use of our magical chains, we need to be willing to make some sacrifices. Tyr risked shame and the loss of his hand to bind Fenrir. What are you going to give up in order to get your story into shape?

Unfortunately, sacrifices are never easy. We often have to give up good things in the pursuit of something better. Just like Tyr was the only Norse god who could handle Fenrir, you are the only one who can write your book. So stick your hand in the mouth of the beast and don’t look back until you’ve chained yourself a completed manuscript!
Bio: Josh Mosey is an avid fan of Norse mythology and a member of the Weaklings writer’s group which organizes the Jot writers conference. Come see Josh’s presentation “Write Like a Viking: Fiction Writing Tips from the Norse Gods” at the Breathe Conference on Saturday afternoon.

Altar Call | My New Article at How to Pack for Church Camp

Have you ever refused the altar call at church camp? I did.

Read all about it over here.

KITT vs. KARR | The Ethics of Self-Driving Cars through the Lens of the Iconic Hasselhoff Series of the 80’s, Knight Rider

We live in the future. Don’t hassle me here. Yesteryear’s dreams of science fiction are today’s realities, including self-driving cars. But as technology vaults ahead, our ethics are struggling to keep up.

Watch this to understand the basic ethical issues at play.

Basically, who decides beforehand who has the right to live when an accident occurs? When people are behind the wheel, we react unpredictably. But when humans aren’t the drivers, those decisions belong to the car’s programming.

That brings us to Knight Rider. The 80’s saw this dilemma coming.

Back in the day, Wilton Knight and the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG) created artificial intelligence, plopped it into a 1982 Pontiac Trans-Am, and called it the Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT). Along the way, this self-driving car was partnered with Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff’s character) with the goal of preserving human life on the grand scale.

But KITT had a predecessor, the Knight Automated Roving Robot (KARR). The prototype was programmed with self-preservation in mind.

Here’s a clip from the episode, KITT vs. KARR, highlighting some of the issues that we’re talking about.

The options in programming between KITT (preserve as much human life as possible) and KARR (self-preservation at all costs) are the same ones that programmers face today with real-life self-driving cars.

So which one do real people think should win?

According to the work of Jean-Francois Bonnefon at the Toulouse School of Economics in France, people think that KITT’s programming is best when it comes to cars that they don’t drive, but KARR’s is best when they have to be in the vehicle. So, basically, people are always more concerned with self-preservation.

So, unlike Knight Rider’s optimistic conclusions, in real life, KARR wins.

What do you think about self-driving cars? How do you believe they should be programmed?

My New Favorite Subtle Slipstream Story for Kids | Stuck by Oliver Jeffers

A few weeks ago, I posted on the importance of the question “What if?” to Science Fiction, but really, that’s a question that pertains to all of Slipstream Fiction.

What is Slipstream? It’s a bit of an umbrella term that covers Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and everything in-between. If it isn’t quite possible in our world, it can be considered Slipstream.

As I think about the books that fit into that genre, I realize that probably half or more children’s books are built on a slipstream premise. What if animals could talk? What if toys came to life when you weren’t looking? What if there was a tree that everything got stuck in?

It’s that last premise that is the subject of my new favorite children’s book, Stuck by Oliver Jeffers (I’ve reviewed another book by Jeffers over here).

It doesn’t start as a slipstream book.

“It all began when Floyd’s kite became stuck in a tree.”

But when, instead of using a ladder to retrieve the kite, Floyd tosses the ladder up and gets it stuck too, I started to think that this book offered more than initially met the eye.

I don’t want to give away any of the bits that make this book my new favorite, so I’ll just say that you need to pick it up for yourself. Oliver Jeffers is a gifted illustrator, story writer, and master of the absurd. It was published by Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, back in 2011.

Go buy your copy from a local indie bookseller today!

Let’s Talk about the Tauntaun in the Room.

I haven’t seen Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I have no idea when I’m going to see it. I may not even see it in the theater.

Oh, I want to see it. No one needs to force me (see what I did there?), but I have reasons why I it isn’t the top thing on my priority list.

100 Word Challenge | It Has All Ended Well After All

It has all ended.

Well, after all, that is the point. Nothing lasts forever. If it did, we’d get tired of it. But I never even got the chance to get tired of him.

His chest stopped rising and falling a few minutes ago. I can’t hear anything but my own sobs now.

No more snuggles, no more kisses.

As I lay in the road, motionless by grief if not from the wreck, I hate the idea of living without him.

A car approaches. It doesn’t see me.

But now I see him.

It has all ended well after all.