So I got off my ass and stopped by the West Hollywood Book Fair. I have a hard time getting to events like this because in my experience the authors are mentally there but the publishers mentally aren’t. The few publishers who are there are drab and boring people who deep down want to complain about being there. This was no different.

Don’t get me wrong. I love visiting with fellow authors and running into serious readers. It’s great to talk with readers about their favorite bookstores. Or it's cool to hear readers from afar yelling, “Oh I love that store!” And it's pretty bad-assed watching someone walk through a crowd only to hear someone reading a book on stage and then immediately decide to stop what they’re doing to listen. Great stuff.

I even purchased a few books. I love PM Press.

I looked for P.I. Barrington but could not find her.

With all that being said, us authors have to work on our game plan when we do these public functions. You’d be surprised how many authors don’t know how to do this. They bumble around their themes and their points and can’t seem to figure out how to use their precious seconds with you. Or maybe I’m just intimidating with my jeans and sunglasses and bag full of recently purchased books. Just a note, us authors can probably do better with presentation. This includes myself. After today I realized how much work I need to do to separate myself from the average authors and their books. Let me tell you, there is some seriously average shit going on.

We need to do better. I’m not offended but better is what we need.

At this event, some of the panels could have used some mphh too. I don’t know, more entertaining, more informative. I’ll give an example. I left several panels because I was simply thinking, could you please just shut the ____ up! And then at others, the questions that were asked were insidiously boring. One moderator asked one of the authors this amazing question: Do you have any major influences? I answered the question in my head: I have a major influence. These nuts.

I did not drive all that way just to have an author be asked that lame question. But everyone else seemed to be having a good time, so it must have just been me.

But back to the publishers.

At several publisher’s booths that I walked up to, at least two or three people at each of them flat out ignored me. I mean nobody addressed me so I had to walk away. They literally talked among themselves, not even thinking about me. This happened more than one, two, or three times. Listen people. The whole thing about being in person is to be at least sort of charismatic and make an impression. Just to let you know, your independent book publishers are horrible at this. These people couldn’t sell cheese to a hamburger. I hope that makes sense. Independent authors seemed to be on it a little better. At least they tried and cared. Independent publishers? Meh. Once again, maybe it was my jeans, sunglasses and bag of recently purchased books that intimidated them into ignoring me.

Eventually, I went downstairs, sat in on a pretty good discussion on some new publishing company that was coming out soon, left there, went back upstairs, just missed being bit by an invisible dog (the owner pulled it away just in time), and then I decided to get out of there before I had to buy more books, or get ignored.



Feel free to check out U.L. Harper’s new novel In Blackness for .99 cents on smashwords or Amazon.com. He is also the author of The Flesh Statue, and the short story book Guidelines for Rejects. Don’t forget to follow on twitter @ulharper