Last night I attended a book reading with New York-based author Mingmei Yip. I first learned of Yip when I stumbled across her second novel, Petals from the Sky (Kensington, 2010). I enjoyed the Hong Kong, Paris, New York, and mainland China setting. In my blog review of this novel, I wrote: Mingmei Yip dished up exactly what I was looking for: a fun, thrilling novel. Her writing is flowery and poetic and rich with humor.
So it was a great honor to meet her last night. She read at an indie bookstore in Chicago in front of a small audience, mostly made up of my family and close friends.
Speaking about her latest novel, Song of the Silk Road (Kensington, 2010), she showed slides of her own trip down China’s famed Silk Road.
Yip read from each of her four novels, including Skeleton Women (Kensington, 2012), which is set in 1930s Shanghai and will be published this June.
I enjoyed speaking to her about writing, Hong Kong, and catching up about people from my alma mater that we know in common. I’d also like to send a huge thank you to the friends and family who joined me for this reading.
As a side note, I’ve attended quite a few book readings and always come away with some lessons about how to hold a successful author event. When we arrived at the bookstore, there was no indication that they would hold an author reading that evening. Even the window display of recent and future readings didn’t indicate an event for Friday night. And there was no sandwich board sign outside the shop advertising it.
I prefer to shop at independent bookstores and certainly bought my fair share of books last night. But when I see missed opportunities like this, I have to scratch my head in wonder.
Bookstores – their own worst enemies.
Sigh.
Still, look on it as a learning experience… and don’t organise another one there.
Pick somewhere that’ll actually help themselves!
It’s hard enough for most authors as it is to get any publicity, let alone with actual point of sales places failing to order or sell their books, or promote the event.
Oooh, I’m cross now.
It was a learning experience, although the last time I organized a reading I thought that was a learning experience, too! Book readings aren’t very lucrative unless the author has a ton of friends in a particular city. So many people are unemployed here, you’d think there would be some who would do anything to work in a bookstore, promote books, learn about new ones, etc.
Thanks, Susan, for the review of the reading event with Mingmei Yip. I enjoyed reading the surprise in her “Song of the Silk Road” and had the pleasure meeting her last month at the Association for Asia Studies conference in Toronto. While not the most well known American Chinese author (see my latest blog), she is the most versatile, being authors for adult and children books, prforming the Qin music and expert in Chinese caligraphy. Wishing you and your hsuband a safe trip to Hong Kong and come back with many stories and observations.
Thank you so much! That’s so great you met her, too! I agree–she’s a Chinese renaissance woman. The bookstore didn’t order her children’s books, which was a disappointment. She spoke very highly of the Association for Asian Studies!
That’s a real sod, that so few people came – you’d think that the bookstore would have thought it was in their own best interests to promote it just for the sheer sake of selling some books!
Reading all the stories lately about how Amazon is killing bookstores, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not self-sabotaging on the part of the independant stores…
At least you still had some people there, which is a start.
Mingmei Yip sounds like someone I should definitely try and talk to at some stage.
Yeah, I still don’t understand why the bookstore wouldn’t advertise the event. People who walked by the store had no idea there was an event going on. It was such a lovely night–good weather, the start of the weekend, lots of people walking around–so it really was a missed opportunity.