My Book Signing at ALA in Chicago: a Huge Success

I have just returned from the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago, where I did my first book signing for Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. It was a huge success, thanks to the hosts for the event, the great people at Ingram Publisher Services, the distributor for my publisher, Berrett-Koehler. I signed 150 books in one hour at the Ingram booth, for librarians and other information professionals. Because it was such a whirlwind, I couldn’t talk for very long to each person in line. But I quickly learned the ropes about the protocol, such as to find out if the person you are signing for wants a personal inscription, or just signature and date. There was quite a variation of preferences. Some also wanted it inscribed to them personally, others to their library. It was nice that I could sign on a lucky date, 7-11-09. Although I had never met most of the people, some friends were there, including Duane Webster, the recently retired executive director of the Association of Research Libraries. That was really meaningful to me, as I started seriously studying Drucker’s works in the summer of 1986, for a library management course Duane taught at the Catholic University of America’s School of Library and Information Science. For more on that back story, see the recent guest post I did for the Government Info Pro blog. Marydee Ojala, the editor of ONLINE, also did a wonderful post, complete with a photo of me signing books, on the Infotoday blog. When I left the conference, I found out that the book is now in stock on Amazon, a major milestone for my author journey. Starting tomorrow, and for at least the next couple of days, I’ll blog about what I learned and experienced at the sessions and exhibit hall.