Did you hear that popping sound? That was the sound of me traveling to Boise Book Fest and popping my book signing cherry as an author! Book signings are a real thing. They happen all over the world and readers flock to them to see their favorite authors or to discover new ones. As a reader, I have been to a few (remember my meeting Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher?) and it is at these book signings that I actually met an amazing group of people, some authors and some not. It didn’t matter. They are totally my tribe. It was through the authors in this amazing group, that I found out about signing up for book signings as an author. And I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of popping my book signing cherry with a group of these authors (some of whom I had only met online and my Seester included) at Boise Book Fest.
I was so nervous. I don’t even know if the word nervous even begins to cover it to be honest. I had a lot of anxiety over the signing. What if nobody came over to my table? What if I didn’t sell any books? What if people didn’t want to read my books? It gave me such anxiety but knowing my BFF was coming with me made me feel so much better. We over packed per usual and caught a very early flight to Phoenix where we met up with Seester and BIL to catch the same flight to Boise. I am sure we were annoying to the poor lady who was stuck with us singing and poking each other through the rows in the plane and yelling “Peek-A-Boo” but we had fun.
After finally getting to our hotel in Boise, we chilled out a bit before setting up for the signing. Setting up was full of shenanigans as most of my author friends were there and we all helped each other in setting tables, putting up banners and table displays. I was super excited to see Teagan Hunter there as that girl is my #soulmate and I might have tackled her and her Marine hubby in the hallway pretty hard. BFF proceeded to start biting people as is her way and lots of laughter ensued at dinner later.
Then the day of the signing was upon us. I woke up super nervous with all those doubts floating around in my head. BFF told me it was going to be just fine and also bit me (she bites pretty hard) I think for good luck or just because she could. Either way it hurt and might have left a bruise. We put on our sweet new Fat Girl Running T-shirts and headed down into the room. Thank goodness I had BFF with me for this first signing as we all know I do not like to people. But people I did! Who knew doing a book signing would be so tiring and energizing at the same time? I met so many readers and guess what? I SOLD BOOKS! Yup, dear fans, there are now new readers with copies of my books in their hands and wearing my shirts! Can you believe it? I actually sold quite half the shirts I brought with me so I call that a success. Boom! First large book signing in the bag! I loved networking with other authors and hanging out with my favorite book people of all times. Poor BFF was stuck putting up with us for the weekend but luckily she loved most of them (as witnessed by the bite marks. Is she part vampire?).
I flew home satisfied that I had not only a fun weekend with other authors, but I sold books! I wasn’t sitting by myself at a table waiting for people to come by. I actually talked with readers, engaged them and got them to take a chance on me. Score! Also, now I have that ABBA song in my head….my head is a weird place.
Oh yeah. I didn’t die today. I was so anxious I thought I might die, but I didn’t. I am Fat Girl who popped her first book signing cherry Running. The experiment continues…
