Dear sirs
I think it would be a very sad day for everybody if authors are no longer allowed to do signing events in Waterstone's. Only recently I met a wonderful lady who was selling her two books in the Woking store, she was friendly, polite and I walked out with two books of hers, amongst others. This was an impromptu meet and a nice chat, which was very enjoyable for me.
I have also been to a signing by Sir David Attenborough, I queued from seven thirty in the morning, was first in the queue and waited there for four hours. This was a more structured event, with tickets allocated upon arriving at the store and so on. Although I enjoyed meeting the gentleman, it was very quick and there was little time to speak to him, as it was quite rush rush. I don't regret the time I waited, however, it would have been nice to have been able to speak to him a little longer as I did with the lady I met in Woking.
It would be well for Waterstone's to remember that all authors start somewhere, the more books being written by authors who have managed to establish themselves, ultimately the more profit they will have at the end of the day!
If people are not allowed to have signing events, then how are they supposed to promote themselves? If people cannot promote their books then they will be discouraged from writing books and we will all be the poorer for this. Reading is something that I thoroughly enjoy doing and it is always a joy to discover new books and immerse yourselves into another world for an hour or two, whether it be fiction or a retelling of the author's personal experiences.
Rather than preventing authors from introducing other people to their literature, why not, as others have suggested, draw up a code of conduct? Anyone breaking this should receive one warning and then should they continue being poorly behaved, be informed they will not be invited back. This then protects the store's customers from unwanted intrusion and allows genuine authors to have a better chance of successfully selling their books, as people will know they won't be harassed.
Other issues with stores such as Waterstone's are a lack of variety. I go in regularly and more often than not, there are very few new titles. Ordering books from certain authors is difficult, when there is a release date, Waterstone's will take your money and then come release day, no book. "It hasn't arrived with our wholesaler yet, I don't know how long it will be before it gets to us." WHY take a customer's money of you cannot fulfill the order on the date you are supposed to? This is the reason they are failing. I could go online and have the book ordered and dispatched from an American store, to arrive within a week.
Also, please sort out your MBS sections - I haven't seen a new title in months. Most people don't want to wait weeks to order in a book, they want to be able to walk in, browse the titles, not do a load of research on line and have to find ISBN numbers to order books by. If they have to do that they might as well order online while they're at it, which is another death knell for the high street book store.
Wake up and see what you are doing to yourselves. Make it an amazing experience to shop in your bookstores again. I don't want to read a book on a kindle. I want a BOOK in my hands!
Yours faithfully
MissyA

As a new author of children’s picture books who recently set up as an independent publisher, I'd like to put my two penn'orth in.
I was relieved to find this very interesting thread and it's good to know that people have an outlet to air their views regarding the recent changes to author events at Waterstone’s.
Having published my first picture book last December, I was quick to send the book to Waterstone’s to find out if it may deemed worthy of sale at their stores. I received a positive response from them and was asked to get in touch with Gardners for supplying the title. I was told that I would be welcome to arrange signing events with individual stores.
Over the last five months, I have completed 33 signing events and sold around 850 copies of my book. I know this isn't earth-shattering but the experience of being able to sell my book at stores has been incredible, and I will always be extremely grateful to Waterstone’s for giving me this chance at what is without doubt the only real bookshop-chain left on the high street.
In return for this opportunity, I have always tried to conduct myself with affable respect to customers and friendly professionalism to store staff.
Being new to the game, finding my way, I didn’t want to tread on any toes, walk on eggshells, ruffle any feathers or be pushy to customers.
Over time, I gathered more bookings at stores around the south of England and, by May, found that I was fully booked for Saturdays (with some Sundays and weekday signings during the summer holidays) till mid-October, with an additional nine bookings for the month of December, just in time for my second picture book.
Well aware that the publishing world is going through a seemingly endless state of trauma following an eruption of internet sales and ceaseless takeover jitters everywhere, I have had my worries about whether Waterstone’s could survive the recession. Would it be forced to give up its rightful place on the high street, leaving the internet to sweep up leftovers while Smiths perhaps busied itself to make amends by imitating Waterstone’s in its wake?
But it wasn’t just that. A little gremlin on my shoulder kept telling me that this was too good to be true, that things would change for the worse whatever the weather. Somehow, I knew I’d have to rethink my strategy sooner rather than later.
News that a rich Russian had taken over the finances of Waterstone’s and engaged the highly respected James Daunt as head honcho allayed my fears temporarily.
As an independent publisher, I knew I would be happy just to break-even from sales during the first year and as long as I had a platform to regularly market my book and children continued to enjoy it, I stood a chance. I have always regarded this new departure in my life as a long-term goal and prepared myself for hard work with little financial reward. If I could get my business off the ground in a depression, I’d survive.
Response to the book, from children, has been overwhelming.
While the industry contested that the format was wrong for the book’s preceived age group, children of between the ages of 3 and 11 are enjoying the story immensely. This is a very wide berth but the most satisfying thing about self-publishing, for me, has been the realisation of a vision. I believed that children of 11 could appreciate a picture book just as I had at that age, and that picture books in large format should not be restricted to the very young.
By handing a business card to each person that buys the book at Waterstone's and offering to read the story at their child’s school as a completely free service, I have read to almost 3,000 children at schools around the south-east.
School readings are one of the most amazing things that have come from selling books at Waterstone’s, but the best thing about talking to parents and children in stores is a feeling that this is a special moment for them.
I am not a well-known author (yet), but when a parent says to his/her child, ‘This man wrote this book,’ and the child looks up at me in gleeful bewilderment, it’s a two-way win because the child may never have met an author before and the parent may have just found a way to encourage his/her child to read more books. Also, a signed book for a child is something that they may treasure for years to come.
A few weeks ago, I received news of the changes to author events. It didn’t come as a surprise and I was quick to realise that the gremlin had been right all along.
The manager who emailed me regarding a provisional holiday booking was incredibly thoughtful and gave me good warning ahead of the proposed date. He told me that ‘it came right from the top’ and there was nothing he could do to change the situation until the effects of the change were made clear.
Then I heard from another manager, who told me that my December date had to be cancelled. She felt awful telling me because we get on really well and then she told me she’d offered her resignation as events manager due to the change. This time, it was me who offered support!
Between these first two bombshells, I resolved to look at the situation philosophically.
There was no way I wanted to kick up a fuss because I owed pretty much all my success and newfound knowledge of the publishing business to Waterstone’s. I made a conscious decision that I would concentrate on the school readings that had been generated from my time at stores, asking for references from those schools that I had visited and building from there once the school year started again.
Three counties’ library services have ordered copies for their public libraries and loans are going very well, so this would be a great place to read the story to children too.
Sales had always been good at school picking-up time and there were plenty of other areas of interest to look into, such as book festivals, local activity centres, children’s centres, playgroups.
Suddenly, a whole new world of solutions offered itself up to me as a children’s author, so I think it's good that Waterstone's have resolved to work with schools and libraries off-site, as long as this measure is actually taken seriously and is not a cul-de-sac for authors.
There are many who believe that the change is a bad decision and will deter sales and the overall feel of stores. This is a good point, but I think there's more to the change than meets the eye. While Mr Daunt does not like lengthy events resided over by pushy authors, which is completely understandable, there are also a few booksellers who believe that author events don't actually increase sales at all; they believe that authors replace sales which would have been made elsewhere in the store. I know that this is not entirely true from experience, but try telling that to ambitious graduates who want to make a name for themselves at Waterstone's. No chance.
I expected an avalanche of apologetic emails from Waterstone’s managers cancelling events when news broke, but only two more cancellations have arrived so far, and I remain hopeful that most of my bookings will remain intact. Talking to what I believe is a very good manageer at a store recently, I was assured that all was not lost for me at Waterstone’s.
I won’t ever count my chickens but one thing that this has taught me is that I need to remain positive about my professional life as an independent author/publisher. Regardless of which direction the retail industry decides to take, there will always be a need for children’s authors who provide good, mind-opening, nondidactic work.
I have to say that I totally respect James Daunt’s wish to regulate standards for author events and hand-to-hand marketing of one’s own title at Waterstone’s, but this could easily be done at store level. Those authors who prove to be over-bearing should be shown the door.
It has to be remembered that the high street is a feeding ground for out-of-work luvvies with clipboards, fuelled on high-octane affability, touting for acts of generosity from people who can barely afford to pay for a family holiday. Shopping malls can seem like a tunnel of relentless commercial hell, and I am one of those who steers well clear of anyone trying to sell me anything. Even with a well-trained style of clever enforcement, I am on default to see right through them.
When a customer steps into Waterstone’s, that person should be free to roam and Mr Daunt's overall vision does sound like it could be both profitable and endearing.
Books are probably the only product on the high street that require investigation without guidance. People buying clothes invariably wonder what certain people may think, but books are a personal buy without constraint of any sort.
While a book as a present for someone is a kind gesture, it’s usually ourselves who finds the right one.
By flicking a few pages of a book, we either like it or we don’t. It can sometimes be a lengthy process of elimination, like clothes-buying, but if we’re adamant about getting some reading material, we will leave that shop with a book, but no one should tell us which one, probably least of all the author of his own, relatively unknown work.
I do feel very fortunate to be a children's writer. Having been an 'adult writer’ for over 25 years, dabbling as an advertising copywriter, then as a novelist (still unpublished), I’m happy to pen a few political poems a month so long as I can continue as a children’s fiction writer.
When a child tells me I'm their favourite author and asks what my next book's about, it's a far better buzz than any of my younger dreams of being the next Orwell or Amis. Children are a pleasure to write for.

Roger - I'm surprised that an author who has gone to the trouble of arranging signings at Waterstones is unaware that they're no longer part of HMV. It was one of the biggest stories in the book trade last year.

As a former store manager, I always had mixed feelings about events where an author would 'handsell' their (usually) self-published book to poor, unsuspecting browsers. Some customers ended up buying the book because they were too embarrassed to walk away empty-handed from a man they'd just had a five-minute conversation with. Once they at the till point, I could often tell that the customer didn't really want the book.

The events were usually commercialy successful, albeit on a very small scale, but of course we could never measure the number of customers who might have thought twice about coming back, put off by the experienced of being harrassed in a supposedly peaceful bookshop.

Some events of this type work well. A children's illustrator, for example, just needs to sit at a table and draw to attract customers and their reaction is usually very positive. I think that Waterstones is right to restrict some of the more 'in your face' authors.