On Twitter I see that you go to airports when you travel and do those book signings , but how did that start? I don’t see a lot of other authors doing that.
I was traveling somewhere years ago and I got in this habit. I guess you go way back to when I was first published and Elantris came out, not a lot of bookstores were even carrying it, right? And if they did they’d have like one copy. And I felt that one of the things I could do—because you can’t do a lot as a new writer—but one of the things I could do was get a box of paperbacks of Elantris that the publishers gave to me and drive to bookstores. And whenever I’d pass one I could go in and say, “Hey, who is your fantasy or science fiction reader on staff?” and they’d say, “Oh, it’s this guy.” And I’d say, “Can I sign a book for them?” I’d try to meet him or her and say, “If I give you this book will you read it?” They’d usually say yes. Now these were the days before the self-publishing explosion, and I think right now, they’d be more wary. But back then they weren’t nearly as wary. That kind of thing didn’t happen; people didn’t do this thing often. So I went in and I handed them all books, and I’d try to leave a book in every bookstore I passed.
So I got in this habit of signing the shelf-stock and meeting the managers, and I started seeing airport bookstores. I was like, “Well, I’m flying somewhere. I’ll just stop in and do the same thing.” And it became this thing where I didn’t ever want to pass a bookstore without leaving my signed books. Then one time I just left a tweet, “Hey, they’re here,” and Twitter exploded. People were like, “Oh my goodness!” And they all worked to go get that book and it was gone really fast. So I was like, “Oh, people care about this.” Now I go ahead and do Tweets—it’s become this thing. But I hide these cool things in the books and people try to anticipate where I’m going, try to get flights that pass through there so they can come in and get those things. It’s really fun.
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