My First Book Signing At Book Expo America 2009 [Video]
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Book Expo America 2009 was a BLAST! It is quite an amazing thing to go into an airplane-hangar-sized conference hall, and be surrounded by others from your own world of writing and publishing. I met countless authors and got a stack of books (including an advance copy of Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, a signed copy of the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and loads more).
My book signing for The Farfield Curse started at 11:00 AM, and there was already a short line formed. Once the time hit, people began to come from everywhere, and the signing didn’t really stop! There were so many people, we actually ran out of books, so that by the time the signing was over I simply couldn’t sign any more because there were none left to hand out. Hopefully this is a good sign for how it will do in stores 😀
I was interviewed for Borders Media by the one and only Pel from the Twilight Lexicon. It was a bit odd since it was my first film interview, and I had never been in a studio set up like it. There were five cameras, all set up at different angles, and they wired me up with a microphone and had lighting hanging all around. I also had to get film makeup put on — a first for me, and a bit itchy (it had to be explained to me that you actually have to wash it off afterward, ha ha). After BEA we headed over to Books Of Wonder, where I saw Tiger Beat play. Tiger Beat is a rock band entirely made of YA authors, with my editor Daniel Ehrenhaft on lead guitar and Libba Bray doing vocals. YES they were very good.
Even more exciting was the nearly-half-page article about me, TwilightGuy.com and my Twitter/Youtube stuff in Publishers Weekly. As with the opening of pre-orders and the signing of Brandon Dorman, publishers generally tell their authors nothing until after we’ve read about it in the papers: I learned via the article that Bran Hambric will have front-of-store placement at Borders bookstore and a 75,000 copy first printing! There are no extra zeroes in that number. It was easily 4 times what I was expecting!
Here are some photos from the event (special thanks to my friend Becka for taking them!)