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portrait of the author signing someone else’s book

Guess which one I am.

This is a picture from a few years ago I stumbled across last night, taken at a signing at a Barnes & Noble in Columbus, Ohio, for the humor anthology 101 Damnations: The Humorists’ Tour of Personal Hells (St. Martin’s Press, edited by Michael Rosen (left rear)), to which I contributed two essays. The folks with us in the photo are three of the other ninety-nine contributors to the book (whose names I have, alas, forgotten, as I am sure they have mine).

It was a lovely evening, the only problem being that no one — no one — showed up (except various relatives, which is worse than no one).

As we were cooling our heels on the mezzanine of the bookstore while shoppers milled around on the main floor below, it developed that the reason no one had showed up for the reading and signing was that the store’s Community Relations Coordinator, whose job it is to publicize such events, had done no publicity whatsoever. Nada. Zippo. When I asked her, for instance, whether she had notified the Columbus Dispatch book editor of the event, she seemed genuinely struck by the novelty of the idea, and gave every appearance, furthermore, of being surprised to learn that Columbus did, in fact, have a newspaper. She had sent no releases to the local radio and TV stations. She hadn’t even put a leaflet in the store window.

I tried to rouse our small band to fling her over the railing visible in the photograph, but cooler heads prevailed and we all slogged home in the rain. I like to believe that she was fired the next day, but in truth, knowing Barnes & Noble, she’s probably a Senior V.P. by now.

Last updated on Thursday, January 3, 2008