What's the point of book signings?

Strictly Come Dancing's Tess Daly has had a tough time lately. First her husband, Vernon Kay (er, right - who?) owned up to some sleazy shenanigans. Now the Daily Mail has jeered at her 'disastrous' writing career. Her book, The Baby Diaries, about life as a new mum, is apparently a flop - because when the Daily Mail looked at Amazon, it ranked a mere 351.

Oh no! 351? And there's me feeling pretty happy if my book's at 351,000. What's worse, according to the Mail, is that Tess did a signing at a Dublin bookshop and there were 'less than (sic) 30 people' there!

While I don't give two hoots about Tess's (or anyone else's) experience of motherhood, I do sympathise with her about this snide coverage of her supposed failure.

Selling 30 books at a signing is brilliant, and the photos show Tess quite rightly smiling. For losers like me, the shops only order about 25 copies in the first place (which is good, because I can say 'I sold out!' and people are more impressed than they really ought to be.) Some authors and publishers are ambivalent about the value of signings because of the time involved for relatively few sales, but the number shifted on the day is only a minor measure of an event's success.

The main benefit of a book signing is the publicity surrounding it - for most of us this is at a

rather more local level than for celeb writers, but is still not to be sneezed at. You can't exactly keep firing off press releases titled 'Book came out last year, author still begging everyone to buy it,' but a release about a specific event has a good chance of attracting interest. Often the papers will not only mention the forthcoming signing but also send a photographer on the day, so you can grin like a gormless hamster from the pages of next week's edition too.

If you live near the venue, you can ask local shops to display posters - all helping to make the cover art familiar to readers next time they see the book. At the signing itself, you can give out bookmarks (see here for instructions on getting them cheap) or postcards with your web address. Only a really miserable sod will refuse a free bookmark. Any of this publicity can lead to someone picking up the book at a later date, and you can be spotted by festival organisers, local reading group members, librarians - anyone who might be in need of a friendly author for an event. My first ever signing resulted in an invitation to speak at a literature festival; the next got me a county reading groups event and a couple of library talks... which meant the library authorities had to buy a few copies, which have been constantly out on loan ever since (yeah, I do check the online library catalogues, I'm that sad.)

A signing is also a great opportunity to meet the booksellers who talk to your potential readers every day. Make a good impression on them (i.e. by being an average nice person – anyone who has ever worked in retail will know that's rare enough) and maybe they'll recommend the book to customers - maybe even put it face-out on the shelf.

Though the Mail's unpleasantness about Tess Daly is all we can expect from the tabloids, I hope she isn't too disheartened. A signing's success isn't down to the number of sales, but to the sometimes surprising opportunities that can result - and perhaps even the negative coverage will bring The Baby Diaries to the attention of people who will appreciate it.