Sunday, December 15, 2013

I don't know what to write in people's books

I don't even know how to use this type of pen
Yesterday I was asked to autograph a book I have a short story published in (it's coming out officially later - I'll post about that then) and I wrote, "Keep on truckin'!" Because seriously, I have no idea what to write in these things. I'm not famous enough to write nothing except my name if the person is standing in front of me. Famous authors either only put their name in or only put their name and the person's name in. I'm supposed to come up with something.

For book 1 I pretty much universally wrote, "Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy the book" or something to that effect, even though some of them were not going to read the book because they were friends or family members. I actually personalized one a little too much to give to one of Grandma's friends and my mom ended up cutting something I said (about loaning a car to someone?) right out of the page, leaving a little cut at the bottom. Then for a little while I tried, "It is a universal truth that a good author must be in want of a loyal reader" which ended up being way too long for my awful handwriting.

I'm just going to think out loud in this post about possible things to put in the book:

"Thanks for reading!"

"Keep on truckin'" (not valid if person is a trucker)

"If someone steals this book, may they be punched to death by wolves" (I actually put this in one of the books I assigned for Brandy but I misspelled wolves, which is why I need Brandy to edit everything I write in the first place)

"There's a spider on your back."

"[Insert witty comment here]"

"Thx! My handwriting is terrible."

"[Insert personal, moving comment here]"

"Catchphrase!"

"Welcome to Night Vale" (I love this show)

In other news, Book 8 is now available for Kindle and for all other eBook formats. It will be available in print when we finally get Createspace to not mess up the cover alignment, which will hopefully be this week. Then I'll do the "it's officially published" post and start doing some contests. One of them will be to win a paperback copy of the book, which is very heavy and expensive and therefore will only be open to US residents or people with a US mailing address. You probably want to enter that one. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want something generic that will work, you could stick with "Happy reading," or "Enjoy the story." (Or just "enjoy.") If it's a first book, or a new reader, "welcome to [insert world name here]" works too. And yes, I did look through a bunch of the autographed books on my shelf before posting this... (I discovered that Naomi Novik didn't write a message; she drew a little doodle of a dragon. So there's another idea. Random doodle.)

Marsha Altman said...

I guess "Happy Reading!" is pretty good.

ophelia021 said...

I guess it depends what the book is about. "Beware of zombies" wouldn't work with a P & P sequel...(unless you start writing one of those silly stories)! How about "look behind you! It's. Mr. Darcy!!!"