What to do when no one shows up to your event

🎶 All byyy myyyyyseeeeelf 🎶

Imagine this: your book has just come out and you’ve got a launch event lined up at a nearby bookstore. At the appointed time, you gather up all your book-signing stuff and head over . . . and when you get there, ten minutes before the event is scheduled to begin, all the chairs are empty.

Come 7pm, no one is there except the bookstore people, the author you’re “in conversation” with, and another author friend who came to support.

It’s not a great feeling.

But I promise, if this has happened to you, you’re not alone. I mean, yes, you were alone in the bookstore. In spirit, though, there are a lot of authors right there with you.

Including me.

If you’re expecting a lot of people, obviously this is a real blow. Heck, even when you aren’t expecting a big crowd, it’s tough to stare out at a sea of no one.

But what do you do? How do you deal with this kind of disappointment?

I’m not your therapist, but I do think it’s a good idea to take a breath and feel whatever it is that you’re feeling. Ask to take a moment a back room or the bathroom if you need privacy. And when you come out, remember that you’re at work. The booksellers are at work. Everyone is just trying to do their job, even when it isn’t going as planned. So that’s what you do: you get to work.

If you have preorders to sign, go ahead and sign those. Chat with the booksellers if they’re not taking care of other tasks. Offer to sign any stock they have.

Honestly, you getting to work is going to help the mood in the store a lot, especially if the booksellers there don’t know you. (Are you cool? Or are you going to yell at them? They might not know! And it should go without saying, but . . . don’t be the author who yells at the booksellers for a no-show event.¹)

Thank the booksellers for their time and efforts, consider getting a little treat² for yourself if the registers are still open, and then go home and continue feeling your feelings.

If you want to tell your agent/editor/publicist about it, I’d suggest giving yourself a little time before you hit send on that email. Sleep on it, maybe. It helps to have some distance from the disappointment.

I’d also suggest resisting the urge to look for someone to blame. Because — in general — there’s no one to blame. Maybe it was raining and people just didn’t want to travel in unpleasant weather. Maybe something else was happening in town. It’s hard to know.

But sometimes events just don’t go as we hoped, and there’s nothing we could have done about it.

I know it’s disappointing. I know.

And I’m sorry.

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All I have is anecdotal data, but I’m hearing it from a lot of authors, big, small, and everyone in between: it’s harder to fill out signings these days.

I have many thoughts about why this might be: general busy-ness is a big one, of course. There are also a lot of signings and people can’t go to all of them. Some weeks are harder than others. And frankly, seeing authors in person might not be as special as it used to be; many authors are easy to chat with on social media, so the need for live events to get that interaction is less.³

But that’s not the point of this letter. The point is . . . it happens. It stinks. And remember, when you’re blasting “All By Myself” to sing-yell-sob the chorus, you have a whole lot of authors singing backup with you. <3

And just to prove it, my friend

Erin Bowman

(independently — we didn’t discuss this!) wrote her own post about events. Read it here.

1. Honestly, the booksellers are probably just as disappointed as you. It might not feel quite so personal, but they worked hard to organize the event. They might actually be working late for it. And I imagine there’s some embarrassment on that side, too.

2. Particularly if I’m at an independent bookstore, I like to buy a book no matter how the event went, assuming luggage space isn’t an issue. Buying a book a little prize for doing my job, and it always makes me feel good to support an independent bookstore.

3. I’m not saying this is bad, necessarily. It gives more readers an opportunity to interact with their favorite authors, particularly those readers who live in places authors don’t regularly visit. But the online availability might be a factor in this overall trend.