When nobody showed up to their book signings, authors say they found support from an unlikely place: social media

Suzanne Young was thrilled to have a chance to promote her latest novel, In Nightfall, at a book launch event in Tempe, Ariz., last month. After all, she'd spent nearly a year writing it.

“I even picked up little gift bags for readers with fun items from the book,” Young, who writes teen and young adult fiction, including New York Times best-seller Girls With Sharp Sticks, tells Yahoo Life about the event, which the indie-bookstore host had spent weeks promoting. Further adding to her excitement, Young's teenage son was going to interview her for an author Q&A.

But things took an unexpectedly upsetting turn when the author arrived at her event to find that no one else had shown up.

“I didn’t know what to do," she recalls. "I felt so lonely." While a couple of folks did eventually arrive — a local author and a college professor — it wasn’t enough to fill the space, which was lined with “rows and rows of empty chairs.”

Young’s shock quickly turned into devastation, then embarrassment. “I went into the bathroom and got choked up," she says. “When I came out, I saw them collapsing most of the chairs. My son was trying to make me laugh. He was like, ‘It’s OK, mom. We can still do the Q&A. I don’t care if anyone’s here.’ And that just broke me.”

The Q&A portion went ahead without a crowd, as Young tried to hide her disappointment. As she tells Yahoo Life, a lot of authors already grapple with self-doubt because of working independently, "and there’s no way to gauge how interested people are in your work. So when something like this happens, it can be crushing.”

Later that night, Young impulsively snapped a photo of the empty chairs and posted it to Twitter, adding the caption: "If you ever want to see a career low point, this is it. Crying my entire way home."

“It was just a moment of disappointment,” she admits.

But Young's mood changed the next morning when she discovered that her tweet had racked up more than 1 million views, and a pileup of supportive comments from authors, comedians and public speakers — including fellow writers Tara Moss, Caitlin Flanagan and Princess Diana's brother Charles Spencer, all sharing their own similar stories.

“I couldn't believe that so many people had gone through it as well, and that they had felt that lonely, too,” Young says, adding that hearing that others understood her pain made it that much easier to bear.

And those who shared are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to authors who have experienced similar lows — with one writer even telling Yahoo Life that facing empty event rooms is just a "rite of passage."

'These moments don't define your worth as a writer'

Michael Northrop, who wrote Book of the Dead, found himself in a similar situation in October 2015 during a book tour stop in Boulder, Colo. — and felt obligated to open up about it when he saw Young's tweet. "It stings, but it's a blip!" he wrote alongside an image of empty chairs from his event.

“It’s one of those things that’s imprinted in your memory,” he tells Yahoo Life, recalling the moment when organizers were forced to cancel the event after waiting an hour for people to come. They never did.

“It's a sinking feeling,” he says of his emotions that night. “You feel like you've let people down: The chairs are set up in your honor, you’re the reason for the event and no one shows up. And you feel sort of responsible.”

Luckily, that night's disappointment was short-lived, Northrop says.

“It was a low point, but when you combine it with all the other positive experiences in publishing, it just becomes part of the process,” he says. “This is why Suzanne's post got such a response. It is such a recognizable moment, but it’s just one of many moments. These moments don't define your worth as a writer.”

That's a lesson fantasy writer Chelsea Banning had to learn in December 2022 at the kickoff book signing event for her debut novel, Of Crowns and Legends, which she arrived at only to find empty.

“I had expected a few attendees, as I had some people say they were coming,” she tells Yahoo Life. “As the hours ticked by and only a couple of people trickled in, it was pretty disheartening and embarrassing.”

That night, Banning took to Twitter to vent her disappointment.

In the following days, Banning amassed thousands of new followers and countless supportive messages from authors — including none other than heavyweights Margaret Atwood, Cheryl Strayed and Stephen King, who chimed in with their own embarrassing stories to provide perspective.

“It's a wonderful feeling to know that even writers you don't know have your back," says Banning, whose story now has an even happier ending: At a sold-out book event in January, readers lined up around the block waiting to see her. It was a total "night-and-day" moment, she says, adding that she hasn't lost sight of the lesson she learned through the no-show event.

“Author signings have been hard for authors for decades,” Banning says. “As we saw with all the replies to my tweet, even the biggest authors had nobody show at their signings. It's a rite of passage as an author.”

“When it happens, it’s totally embarrassing,” adds award-winning author Eric Rosswood, who experienced his own no-show event in 2022 while promoting his children’s book, Strong, co-authored with Rob Kearney. Rosswood, at a Barnes & Noble in New Jersey. “I sat at a table for an hour to sign books and nobody came up to me.”

Still, “even when something bad happens, there's always something positive that can come out of it,” Rosswood says, noting that the support he received from other writers was the silver lining.

“You can never stop learning, no matter where you are in your career,” he says now. “Everybody in the industry is so supportive and helping each other up. We're cheerleaders for each other, and having that behind you, it kind of helps get you past any slump that you have because, for me at least, the slumps are clumsy.”

'I started to write down all the things that I was grateful for'

For best-selling children’s book author Jamar J. Perry (Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms), who made headlines last month when no one showed up to an Atlanta bookstore event for his latest release, Cameron Battle and the Escape Trials, such slumps are his "worst nightmare."

“I remember that morning being very nervous about the whole thing,” Perry tells Yahoo Life, explaining that, after nearly an hour of waiting, no one had arrived, which left him feeling "embarrassed."

“I just felt like I was a failure," he says. "I felt like no one wanted to hear from me and I'm a horrible writer. All those thoughts entered my head.”

But when he got back to his hotel that night, Perry recalled a conversation with his media escort that changed his perspective on the situation.

“She told me that morning about having a gratitude journal. It was just a little side comment that didn't really mean as much in the morning, but at night, it meant the world,” he says. “So, I started to write down all the things that I was grateful for. When I woke up the next morning, all of the depression, the stress and anxiety had gone away — and it was replaced with gratitude.”

That’s when he decided to share his story on Twitter: “Not one person came to my Atlanta tour event,” he wrote alongside an image of himself outside the bookstore. “Instead of being bummed about it I’ve decided to focus on being grateful that I get to do this work.”

Perry’s tweet went viral, raking in 2.5 million views to date and collecting thousands of comments from other writers offering advice and support. And since then, the Atlanta bookstore has sold over 500 copies of Perry’s new book, per Publisher’s Weekly.

The public response was an unexpected surprise. “I literally wrote the tweet and then I went to the airport, but there was no Wifi. I didn't know it went viral until much later," says Perry, noting that the experience gave him more opportunities to “find the gratitude” in other areas of life.

"It’s important to find the moments where you feel grateful and happy that you get to do this work," he says. "Not many people get to be authors. And the fact that you're able to write an entire book — and get that book published — is an accomplishment in itself.”

Kosoko Jackson, award-winning author of books including I’m So (Not) Over You and Yesterday is History, echoes those sentiments, advising writers to have compassion for other creatives during their lowest moments — something he experienced during his own no-show book event in 2022. That's why it's important to have a "thick skin," he says.

“There's 100 reasons why people didn't show up. You shouldn’t take it personally," he says, calling his 2022 event a "demoralizing experience." In hindsight, however, there are always highs hidden within the lows.

“There were three staff members who did show up, who took time out of their day to come to this event when they were on their breaks," Jackson pointed out of his event. "That meant something to me."

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