I gave a talk about NOVEL. This 60-ish woman came and sat right at the front, all eagerness and taking notes. When we got to the Q&A session, it soon became clear that she was furious that I had had a success with NOVEL, and that she could have written the same book--only much, much better.
She went on and on. The moderator tried to shut her up, but the audience sort of enjoyed the coliseum aspect of it.
She said, "The thing is, I could have written this book."
I said to her, “I'm sure you could have. But the difference is, you didn’t and I did.”
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Publicity Horror: The Woman in the Front Row
It's Halloween, time once again for Publicity Horror Tales. This one's from the author of a bestselling social satire, which I'll call NOVEL.
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4 comments:
Perfect comeback.
Absolutely!
Ha! What a fun anecdote & a great comeback.
I wonder how I would feel as an author if I had a "heckler" at one of my readings/panel/discussions, etc? I would hope that the old adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity" proved to be true.
The discussion must surely have prompted others in the audience to buy the book and to talk about the author & incident at the water cooler the next day.
Perhaps the author should have thanked the grumpy woman.
Cheers, Jill
www.jilledmondson.blogspot.com
the horror is having the woman be the owner of the book company.
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