Let’s face it. As self-published authors, setting up our own book signings sucks! Of course we can hire a family member, college student, retired person, or an upworks.com professional to do the job. But it’s a money thang, right? We don’t want to spend it! Instead, we thrust aside the next book we are itching to work on, and commit tedious hours per week to securing speaking gigs on our most recently published book.

We force ourselves to sound bright and cheerful on the phone as we pitch our book signing events, via phone and email, to dozens of book stores, organizations, associations, fancy restaurants and bars, religious sites, retirement villages, conferences, and arts & crafts fairs. (How’s that for the longest run-on sentence in history? Not!)

Of course we’ve kept an Excel sheet or notebook on who we spoke to (the manager or event coordinator’s contact information), name and address of venue (book store, etc.), and dates we contacted them (including their feedback).

Way to go! We’ve landed four gigs over the next three months, which we’ve dutifully written down and yellow-highlighted in our monthly calendars. Our phone calendars are a nice back-up, but printing our  view our upcoming gigs on a nice big calendar pad!

Now we have to get the word out. Even the most extroverted of us find it scary as hell to market our own wares. Stay tuned for Part 2….