There has been a lot in the news about an American author who held a book signing and only 2 people came. They tweeted about it and lots of famous authors like Margaret Atwood and Stephen King shared their own stories of book signings gone wrong.
One of my favourite books is "Mortification" edited by Robin Robertson, who in 2003 asked lots of authors for this kind of anecdote. There are some great ones, usually involving staying over in a librarian's house in the middle of nowhere, or the drunk man asleep in the front row.
But my favourite, which I present in its entirety, is about a poetry reading by poet Simon Armitage, and encapsulates every horror and torment undertaken by an author in the quest for self-publicity.
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I am met off the train by an extremely nervous woman in a hire car who is generating a thermo-nuclear amount of heat and cannot locate the de-mist function on the console. In a cloud of condensation we drive to a local café, where she restricts my choice of meal according to her authorized budget. I have forgotten to bring any books. I visit the local bookshop to purchase a copy of my Selected Poems and am recognised by the man at the till. He says nothing, but his expression is one of pathos.
The venue is a portacabin in a car-park. The PA system is a Fisher-Price press’n’play karaoke machine. I am introduced as, “The name on everyone’s lips: Simon Armriding.” A well-intentioned youth doing voluntary work for the aurally challenged (of which there are none in the audience) has offered to “sign.” He stands to my left all evening, giving what is a passable impersonation of Ian Curtis dancing to “She’s Lost Control” and eventually passes out. Five minutes before the interval, a nice lady from the Women’s Institute goes into the kitchenette at the back to begin tea-making operations. My final poem of the half is accompanied by the organ-like hum of a wall-mounted water-heater rising slowly towards boiling point. There is no alcohol but how about a cup of Bovril? Following the break, an old man at the front falls asleep and farts during a poem about death/suffering/self pity. Afterwards, there are no books for sale but some kind soul asks me to autograph her copy of John Betjeman’s Summoned by Bells.
My designated driver, the radioactive woman, transports me in her mobile sauna to an Indian restaurant on the high-street. She is allergic to curry (for fear of meltdown, perhaps) but waits for me in the car while I guzzle a meal of not more than five pounds in value (incl;uding drinks) paid for by food voucher. I am staying with old Mr Farter in the suburbs. He has gone home to give the Z-bed an airing and to prepare a selection of his own poems for my perusal, the first of which, “The Mallard”, begins, “Thou, oh monarch of the riverbank.” I “sleep” fully-clothed under a picnic blanket next to an asthmatic border collie.
Ungraciously and with great stealth I leave the house before dawn and wander through empty, unfamiliar avenues heading vaguely towards the tallest buildings on the skyline. It is three hours before the first train home. I breakfast with winos and junkies in McDonalds. Killing time in the precinct, I find a copy of one of my early volumes in a dump bin on the pavement outside the charity shop. The price is ten pence. It is a signed copy. Under the signature, in my own handwriting, are the words, “To Mum and Dad.”
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