Book signing, media, more

Soooo, my first book signing was on Saturday. The day before Father's Day. There were a bunch of authors at tables located next to the cafe at the Barnes & Noble in Manchester, NH. Outside it was beautiful, but there were a lot of people in the store.

I got there and was assigned a spot and set up my books and the oversized poster my publisher had sent me.

I sneaked some looks at the books and authors near me. Most were self-published through a place called Author House and other vanity publishers. The guy next to me, Mark Okrant was the only one that was professionally done. His publisher, John Greene was actually there to help promote his books.

The woman next to me had her sci-fi books (done by Author House). They were about a female race car driver who has a rock star boyfriend and time travels. Seriously. Then there was the fairy lady who sprinkled us all with glitter. Yes, I am so serious.

It turned out the store didn't promote the event at all, not even on their web page in the calendar section. Plus the fact that we were at the back of the store, all in a long row, meant we weren't in foot traffic and honestly I think it scared customers to see a bunch of authors with books at tables.

It would have been better to have us sit separately, or at the most two together, throughout the store, but closer to the front.

I sold a whopping two books - one to a friend and one to John Greene, who has shown interest in publishing Gil The Gecko. He's a really small publisher, but he's local and I'd have more control over the whole process. So some good did come out of it.

The only author who sold a bunch of books was a high school student who had self-publshed a book of poetry. All her high school friends showed up and she sold almost 40 copies of her book.

Pfft.

Even Chris (my hubby) said I was out of their league and didn't fit in with any of them. Bless him for being so supportive.

Media complaint: So, I get a call from NECN on Friday that they want me to be on the Wired show, hosted by Jim Braude weekday afternoons from 4-5 pm. They were very hot to get me on the show right away. It would be live, I would be the only guest and we'd take calls from viewers. Very cool! They booked me for this afternoon and said a producer would call me Monday with final instructions. Directions were emailed to me and I set my time aside to go to the TV studio today.

Well, yesterday I get a phone call from a very flustered woman, not the male producer I was told would call me. She told me they had to cancel my appearance and I would get a call from their booker later in the day to appear on a different show or another date.

Huh?

What happened?

So I called the person who originally asked me to do this and left an email and voicemail message with her asking what happened. No reply yet. And no booker called me back yesterday.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. I posted about how a Dallas Fox affiliate was all hot to trot to interview me for a story about cyberstalking. He said he'd call back and never did. I called and emailed him a couple of times to find out what happened. No reply.

Then there was Jay Jones from the Tyra Banks Show. He was all excited about bringing me on the show and wanted a copy of my book, etc. Then nothing. Again, I emailed and called him, leaving messages. No reply.

I'm beginning to think that someone (who will remain nameless here, but for those who know me well, you know who I am talking about) is blacklisting me with the media. There is no reason to not use me.

I am an expert in my field - cyber crime. I am a published author on the subject, twice now. I am president of two organizations that solely help online victims.

So what is the deal? It is really and truly frustrating that if my suspicions are correct, that someone could be so damned petty and mean. The world is big enough for more than one cyber crime expert. And there are more experts than just the two of us, so grow up.