I had set up a usual book signing: when I cordially ask a business owner if she wouldn’t mind me setting up shop on the sidewalk and sell books. In this case Impressions of Saratoga. They buy only what I sell. It’s win-win. They don’t incur the risk of investment (though with books, they never incur the risk because of the weird business model in publishing where book sellers can send back what they don’t sell.), get to make a small profit, and I get to spread the gospel. Hallelujah!
My father’s comment about this picture was, “Good photo, looks like you were giving the sermon on the mount.”
While I was signing, a young woman approached me with a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook—the kind I use—and said she was a reporter doing a story about the Saratoga Springs nightlife and would I be willing to answer a couple questions. I was happy to oblige figuring she worked for the Post-Star, Daily Gazette, or Albany Times-Union. Her photographer snapped that shot as I was speaking with someone buying the book I was signing. When Liz Leydan (the reporter) was through interviewing, I asked her what paper she worked for.
“The New York Times,” she said, smiled, and walked into the night.
Oh, that paper.
So the story ran online on Friday August 24. You can read it here. It ran in print the following day, the day my brother-in-law Deriek was getting married. My mother and father-in-law were so excited this past Saturday—as we all were—they went out and bought six copies of the paper. When they found the story, they couldn’t believe what they saw: a color image taking up almost the entire width of the NY/Region section.
I checked Amazon (my barometer for sales) and saw 20 copies of the book were available. By mid-afternoon? One. As in one, as in one is the loneliest number. They bulked back up to 13, then it went down to one again, where it was as of this writing.
What I’m trying to say is when you put in the work, put in the effort, sometimes serendipity hits you in the face.
