And some bonus tips for readers and writers alike!

Cross-posted on Substack.

I honestly had no idea what to write for today’s newsletter, so I took it to my Facebook reader group (Not a member yet? Come join us!) and they had some great suggestions. A few for fall drinks, one about audio news (nothing to report that you don’t already know), and one question about my summer book signings. So let’s do a little coffee recipe and chat about book signings, shall we? That sounds fun.

I am obsessed with sweet cream cold brew from Starbucks. I started drinking it last summer, and now they have even more flavors and I love every one of them. You might remember last week when I wrote about finding pumpkin spice cold foam in the store and (regrettably) not buying it, but listen…I found something even better.

Enter: DIY sweet cream. And bonus: It’s hella easy.

This will probably not come as a surprise to anyone (Except me. Listen, I’m good at many things, but domesticity and kitchen things aren’t really on the list.), but making your own whipped cream is super simple, and that’s basically all sweet cream is—plus a little flavor. I think I had been fooled by all these people on baking shows frantically whipping their cream and failing. I now kind of think all of that is manufactured for drama because if I can do it, literally anyone can.

Here’s what you do. You make your iced coffee or cold brew however you want to make it. Then you put a little bit of heavy cream in a blender. I prefer to use my Magic Bullet for this because it’s so easy and it makes a nice single serving size. Add a pump or two of your favorite coffee syrup, and blend it for about 30 seconds or until it reaches your desired consistency. Pour it over your coffee, and you’re done! A $6.00 coffee for about $0.50 and just as much work as it would be to drive to the Starbucks to get it. And it takes EXACTLY THE SAME.

I’ve been using salted caramel mocha syrup because it is my favorite (sugar free because I am 41 and sugar hurts my tummy and makes my mouth taste sour now), but I plan to make the switch to pumpkin spice as soon as I have room on my counter for another giant bottle of flavor syrup.

If you want to try this yourself, here are some tips!

• A clear mug or glass isn’t a must, but it is fun to watch the layers intermingle.
• Extra whipped cream will keep in the fridge, but it does get a little watery. You can re-whip it or use it as-is, but I’d use it within 24 hours or it’ll definitely have a weird consistency.
• My personal sweet spot is about one shot of syrup per tablespoon of cream, but everyone has different taste preferences.
• I have tried this with iced coffee and with cold brew, and the cold brew is about 10000x better. It makes the whole thing into a rich, delicious experience that I want to savor rather than something I want to suck down through a straw in as little time as possible. But, you know, iced coffee works, too.

If you try this out, let me know, because I am curious how other people think of this drink!

The question on Facebook was what the top five surprises of my summer tour were, but I think I’m going to twist that a bit and talk about five things I learned because, honestly, if I learned something from it, it came from something surprising, so I think it still answers the question.

If you’re new to setting up author signings, though, I did a rundown on YouTube about how to go about scheduling and preparing for signings. (Hint: You have to reach out to bookstores; they’ll most often not reach out to you.)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DpganVK0Ro0?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Okay, now that that’s out of the way…

5 Things I Learned from My Summer of Book Signings

1. Look CLOSELY at a calendar and ask about competing events before you schedule.

This sounds obvious, but hear me out. I had kind of assumed summer weekends would be a great time for scheduling book events. For the most part, I was right! People were around and maybe looking for a reason to spend an afternoon in a bookstore or at a bookish event (in the air conditioning). That said, the weekend before July 4 was a bit slow, as was the last weekend in July. It’s impossible to compete with local events and prime vacation times, so it might be best to not even try.

2. You don’t have to say “yes” to every signing.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, your girl burned herself out. I didn’t think I’d be so tired with three events in June, three in July, and one in August—especially given I wasn’t working on anything but writing this summer—but the way I scheduled all of these events meant that it was hard for us to take a family vacation, and because so many of them were 3+ hours away from me, it also meant that I missed out on some summer family time. That’s inevitable! But if I had it to do again, I wouldn’t have scheduled these signings so close together. After all, my life doesn’t stop when school starts, so there really wasn’t a reason for me to do all of these signings so close together. All’s well, though; we were able to get away for a weekend and with my husband working on grad school and us taking several large trips last year, we meant to take a summer off from travel, but I will have to keep this in mind for the future.

3. Attendance at book events is wildly unpredictable.

If there’s one thing I’m really good at as a teacher and a parent (and now an author), it’s to expect the unexpected. At some of my events, I sold out. At some, I sold two books. One of my events was attended by (literally) one person. At another, I signed and sold over 40 books. Now, both of these are definitely the outliers and it’s much more common for me to sell in the range of 15-25 books at a signing that doesn’t include other authors, but you really just never know! I have gotten pretty good at estimating how many books and which titles to bring based on how long I’ll be there, whether or not I’ve been there before, and whether or not the bookstore has done a lot of promo, so here are some tips if you’re doing a signing where you have to bring your own books:

• Ask questions! Ask the booksellers how many people they expect to come through the doors and, if they’ve done author signings before, how many books authors typically sell. This is different from how many books they typically sell on normal days; people will more often buy from an author who is sitting there than they will off a shelf.
• If you sell out, ask the booksellers if you can set up a system wherein readers can purchase through the bookstore and you can ship them to the store for patrons to pick up.
  • If that’s not possible, have a code available for people who are interested in purchasing can do so from your table and receive a discount or free shipping. Don’t have a website set up to sell signed copies? I’d highly suggest looking into this, even if it’s something you only use for overflow from events.
• Always bring more of your newest release, first in series, and bestseller. I usually aim for about 15-20 of my new release and bestseller, and maybe 5 of the rest. I will say, though, that the day I sold 40+ copies of books was a day that everyone was coming in and picking up the entire Leade Park series, which totally shocked me given that they’ve been out for so long—and this store carries them! (Luckily, this shop had warned me to bring a ton of books, so I was prepared.)

4. You are your own hype team.

While my best events were ones that were heavily publicized by the bookstores themselves, I still had to hype my own events. What surprised me about this was that posting about it a few times and dropping the info in my newsletter was not enough sometimes! The amount of times I would post about an event that had already happened and someone reached out to say, “You were so close to me and I didn’t even know!” or “Shoot, I forgot you were coming!” was…more than once. (Damn algorithm.) I saw The Last Chapter suggest on Threads that authors post at least once a day about their upcoming events and I couldn’t agree more. I think even just sharing to stories every day or posting something on Threads or TikTok where your feed doesn’t have to be as curated—or even rotating between all of your socials so it doesn’t feel overwhelming—would be a good way to go about this.

That said, I wish bookstores would be doing this too, even for baby indie authors (maybe especially for baby indie authors). Especially in the week prior, or before the ticket sales deadline.

5. You are the entertainment.

I hate to break it to you, authors, but you’re the entertainment. In fact, now that you’ve published a book, you are an entertainer. There’s just no way around it. If you’re there for a signing, there are inevitably people who are coming out strictly to see you. Otherwise, they would have stayed in their pajamas and rotted in bed all day with their books. Think about your first author event—how excited you were to meet an author, how cool it was to hold the words of an actual human artist who was sitting right in front of you in your hands, how fun it was to talk to them and watch as they signed your book. That’s you now! So make it fun! Take the time to chat with each person who comes to your table. If they seem shy (or if you are), ask them about what they’re reading. Compliment their outfit. Just say something! Remember: they are here to talk to you. You can’t possibly talk too much. I promise. They want to hear from you.

And this also means that whether there are 50 attendees or just one, your job is to focus on who is there (not who isn’t) and put on a good event for whoever is in front of you. Everyone else is missing out. (But don’t worry; you can go home and cry about it later. That’s totally allowed!)

Bonus tip for authors!

Sticky notes with people’s names on them are your friend if you have a lot of people wanting signed books! Have someone pass them back in the line for people to write their names on them as they want it to be written in the book.

And bonus tip for readers!

Signings are overwhelming AF. Even if an author knows you from the internet or has met you before, it is highly likely they will not recognize you after seeing so many faces and writing so many names. Please be kind and re-introduce yourself!

This is the part where I BEG you to leave reviews of Love Out Loud. Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with a cherry on top. I’ve see the sales and the page reads! I know more of you have read this cute summer romance than I have reviews for! Even ratings would be helpful if you don’t have time to type something up. But please, if you’ve read the book, consider leaving a review and maybe posting about it on your social media. I know I didn’t do ARCs, but it doesn’t have to be an ARC for you to leave a sentence or two about what you thought! (And while you’re at it, leave a review for another indie, too.)

If you haven’t read it yet, now is the perfect time! This summery, beachy, friends to lovers romance is calling your name.

Reviews please!

And also a reminder that I’m headed back to school today (yes, on a Friday), so my responses might be slower and shorter than they have been this summer. It’s not you! It’s not even me. It’s just that time of year. I still love you all.

If you’ve finished Love Out Loud and are looking for another swoony romance, check out Forever Then by Rachae Stevens!

We were almost forever…

Gretchen

It’s been three years since the kiss. The one I can’t seem to forget.
Judging by the girl on his arm, Connor Vining has no such problem.

I guess I misunderstood the look in his eyes that night.

I guess his best friend’s kid sister was never really in the running for Love of His Life.

But I’m not a kid anymore. I’ve graduated college and I’m about to fly interstate, in hopes of meeting my birth mother.

I was never going to face her alone, but when a twist of fate puts Connor by my side, I’m blindsided. And our tangled past is threatening to come undone…

Connor

I’m not sure whose heart is more broken: Gretchen’s or mine. All I know is it took everything in me to walk away from that kiss. I kept a promise, and I lost a friend.

And I think I made a mistake.

The problem is, now is not the right time to break down the walls Gretchen built to keep me out.

But now is the only time we’ve got.

Read now

Thank a teacher this week! And leave reviews for your favorite books! That is all! (Why am I using so many exclamation points?! I don’t know!)

Happy reading,
Allie