On Friday I had the pleasure of attending a book signing that ended up being much more than that.
The event, organized by St. Louis bookstore The Novel Neighbor, was for author Fredrik Backman. I was introduced to his works via the Beartown trilogy, followed by the Anxious People Netflix miniseries and the move A Man Called Otto. Backman recently released his latest book, My Friends, and over 500 people showed up on Friday to hear him talk about it.
I’ve been to a handful of book signings, and my general experience is that the author talks for a few minutes about the book, reads a passage, answers a few questions, then signs books for attendees. I’ve enjoyed those signings, but the Backman event showed me a new way that I’d love to see applied to future author events.
The fee to get into the event included a pre-signed copy of the book. This was crucial, as it took pressure off of the 20% or so of attendees (including us) to wait in line at the end of the event. Many people did this anyway, as they got to briefly speak with the author and have their book personalized, but we all still walked away with a signed copy of the book.
I don’t know the host of the event, but she did an amazing job. The entire event was her asking questions to Fredrik for a little over an hour. Some of the questions were her own, and others were written down by attendees on cards before the event began. There was no reading. The result was intimate, personal, and entirely seamless–I loved it. It was so well run, in fact, that I signed up on the Novel Neighbor’s website to attend more author events in the future.
What’s the last (or best) author event you attended?
My last was Alton Brown. It was really cool to see the person I watched and learned culinary info from for decades in person!
That’s wonderful!