Posted by Steph in writing life | 1 comment

Respect your booksellers

I was originally going to write a different post this week, but this story came up at the bookshop yesterday.

The shop was hosting a signing event for a couple of different authors. One writer, who shall remain typically nameless, but who is locally very well known and has his own television programme, arrived and went to the tables the booksellers had set up for him, with his books on display, and immediately started rearranging things to his liking, which included spreading the books out onto tables reserved for the other guests. He then decided to leave an hour early than previously agreed, and stood by and watched whilst the store’s manager, a very small, very slight woman struggled to load a trolley with his remaining books on such short notice, and then left. The booksellers were left to tell customers who came in later to look for him that he had departed – sadly, not in the Martin Scorsese sense of the word.

If you need a moral for this story, it should be clear: do not do this. Don’t be a diva. It confounds me as to why some authors have no sense of etiquette or respect for the people who are working to support them. Not all authors are like this, of course, but publishing being the competitive industry that it is, you’d think that none of them would be. One writer we hosted, an internationally renowned actress, was particularly and personally rude: a bookseller who was in line to get her copy of the book signed was told that she (the actress) was going out for a cigarette with some friends and that they should start packing up now. The bookseller never even got to ask for a signature.

The bookselling community is actually a very small one. Word gets around, and what that word is can mean the difference between a bookstore ordering no copies and ordering 20. Or refusing to you up for another event. Or leaving your books to rot under a shelf. Or returning the entire order as damaged. Potentially. I’m just saying. Respect your booksellers.

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