The Very First Nook Signing Ever - Hudson Valley Romance Writer of America

Allie Boniface and Liz Matis

My indie titles, Love By Design and Playing for Keeps, have been selling well on Kindle but I haven't been feeling the Nook love. So when Elf Ahearn, President of HVRWA, arranged with the Barnes and Noble at the Palisades Center in West Nyack, NY for the very first Nook signing ever - I was, as the NY Giants say, all in.

This is especially timely - I think we've all been hearing that Barnes and Noble may open smaller Nook stores. (also, one of the employees talked to us about those machines that can produced a book in the store - though I'll say right now I don't think he was talking about Barnes and Noble doing it, but I did think it was odd?) Side note: Of the 10 of us I was the only indie.

We ten authors, armed with promotional materials such as rack cards, bookmarks, chap book excerpts, magnets, pens, and of course chocolate, impressed the management of Barnes and Noble. They hadn't known we would be bringing items so they had printed up sheets about our books. Also provided were slips of paper for each author with the book names, and ISBN numbers to hand to the customers in hopes they would go up to the register and buy the Nook Book in the store either for themselves or as a gift. The clerk would give the customer a gift receipt that would be put in a gift card envelope to present to their Valentine to be downloaded later.

Management encouraged us to approach customers. During the scheduled 2 hours the store made announcements about this first ever Nook signing and for customers to stop by and say hello.

                                                              So how did it go?

Elf Ahearn (back) Charmaine Gordon (left),
and Janet Lane Walters

It was a positive experience. Shoppers stopped by to say hello even the non-romance readers. A few men braved a hello. My favorite was a teen boy into Manga telling us we were cool.

When there was a lull our wonderful President Elf would bundle a couple of items (and chocolate) and wandered the store handing them out.

Did we sell eBooks? I sold 2 that I know of, which was 1 more than the day before. Like I said I get no Nook love. Kindle? Gangbusters!

Wendy Marcus and Jennifer Probst

Maybe we didn't sell many books, but we created buzz and made an impression. So much so that Barnes and Nobles wants us back right before Mother's Day! They've already thought of ways of improving the signing by placing us by the Cafe where there is more traffic and instead of the 10 of us at one time we will 'woman' the table 3 at a time.

Liz Matis, Heather Thurmeier, Gianna Simone, & Kathy Attalla

Hudson Valley Romance Writers of America are embracing the future. As the teenaged boy said - We are very cool.