Banned Yet Again

As promised, an update about my book signing yesterday, and the title of the post should give you an idea on how it ultimately went.

I got there on time and started setting up my table: bookmarks placed on the table, two sets of business cards, the two e-book displays, two displays of books and a small pile of books for people to peruse through. Started promptly at 9a and was my normal jovial self as I was brimming with loads of confidence and self-esteem. Pimped my book pretty good, gave the entire spiel on how it wasn't self-pubbed and it was pubbed the traditional way, gave the brief synopsis (A young lady was in debt to her uncle the loan shark and the only way she can raise enough money was to become an adult movie actress.

Only got grilled by one person (evil harbinger on what was about to happen some twenty minutes later) who asked what my book was about, and who the writer was that wrote the blurb that is prominently featured on the book jacket and bookmark. He also happened to mention what his speciality was at the agency, then wished me good luck before taking his leave.

Twenty minutes later, two people who run our Affirmative Action department stopped by to tell me that they had received a complaint that I was selling PORNOGRAPHY, so they came down to investigate. For the next 15 minutes or so, we had a polite conversation on the following: trials and tribulations of what I personally went through in order to get this vending gig, what I had and didn't have displayed in my cube, and what I showed and didn't show in regards to the following images:



Purchase your autographed copy here!

 The one thing that they did make clear during the conversation, since the first thing out of my mouth when they told me that a complaint was made was, "Should I contact my union steward", was that this wasn't an employee issue, but a vendor issue. After further discussion, in which we both made salient points about our respective positions, it was strongly suggested that my vending gig should end for the day.

I politely said that I would do it one better, and not only would I end the vendor gig for the day, but I would take the rest of the day off, as I was truly upset about this and I didn't want to go back to work and have it poison the rest of my day (which my supervisor agreed to once I had explained to her what had happened).

The end result was that I sold 3 books prior to closing and one afterwards, and had at least four more that wanted to buy it after lunch (word of mouth does indeed work).

So, this is what I'm now forced to do if I want to sell my book: I will keep a small stack stashed in a backpack, which will be stored in my car. I'll take orders from people and will either retrieve right then and there, or mail it to them.

Speaking of mail, as promised, the link to purchase not only an autographed copy of my debut but an autographed copy of my chapbook and a special deal on a two-fer can be found at the last picture listed.

I'm not overly thrilled about my personal reputation taking unwanted body shots from narrow minded tools, but I tell you one thing, I will not back down from a fight. For those of you keeping score, this marks the third time in less than a year that I've gotten severely negative feedback about this book.

For any of you out there who are writers, or if you do things not related to writing, have you ever faced the issues that I'm facing with my book?