Thanks to the national Authors in Grocery Stores Program, I’m now able to hand sell my Hardscrabble Road series in Kroger supermarkets across Georgia. Nothing can take the place of talking about reading favorite genres with faithful bookstore patrons—who are there because they love books and enjoy meeting the people who write them—but arranging signings in bookstores can be difficult, and they sometimes struggle to attract a lot of foot traffic, whereas a supermarket in a busy part of town always has people walking in. Having done numerous signings in both venues, I’ve observed some interesting differences between grocery store customers and those who frequent the bookstores where I usually sign with my wife, author Kim Conrey.

First, the Kroger customers I manage to talk to are almost universally surprised and often delighted to find an author at a table between the produce and florist sections doing a signing. Bookstores customers, by contrast, are accustomed to seeing writers flogging their wares. Some bookstores host one or more signings every week; we’re a common sight in those outlets.

The flip side is that the vast majority of grocery store customers reflect most American consumers: either they don’t like reading or don’t have the time. While some bookstore customers might be only shopping for the non-book tchotchkes that help pay the shop’s rent, Kim and I seldom hear “I don’t like to read” except from relationship partners trailing their book-loving better-halves. The irony of doing signings in supermarkets, then, is that, while I’ll encounter 100+ more potential buyers of my work in a Kroger than in a bookstore, the rejection rate is far higher as well.

As a writer for the past 25 years and a published author for the last 13 years, I’ve grown thick skin, but, even so, being told by the multitudes that what you do doesn’t matter to them (or shown this via a rapid turn of a grocery cart and studious lack of eye contact) can be discouraging. It makes encountering a grocery shopper who also craves books an extra special event. They seem to be even more excited about their purchase of a signed copy than those in bookstores. When they were making out their shopping list that morning, none of them had written down “book,” but there they were, buying a copy for themselves or for family or a friend. If you go to a bookstore, you expect to buy books; getting an inscribed, autographed copy is a bonus, but you’re counting on getting something with lots of pages between two covers—not so the Kroger customer. Their enthusiasm more than makes up for all the rejection.

Another difference is pace. The average supermarket shopper is on a mission, whereas the typical bookstore customer is browsing or maybe even just killing time. “Shopping” is done at two very different speeds at these two kinds of retailers. I’ve seen some bookstore customers spend a full hour in browse mode and leave empty-handed—perhaps intentionally—but I seldom see a grocery store shopper walk out without at least a purchase or two in hand. Their hurried pace makes the rejection rate even higher: even if they like reading, they’ve told me, they don’t have time to listen to my spiel. But those who do pause to speak with me are much more likely to buy my work than is the bookstore patron who’s surrounded by thousands of other reading choices to consider on the shelves and tables around us.

Doing book signings in any kind of retail environment—from bookstores and supermarkets to craft fairs and festivals—is not for the easily discouraged or faint-hearted. The chance to talk to potential readers about what I’ve written is a privilege anywhere, but while the sales I get at the grocery store are fewer and further between than at bookstores, they’re harder won and can be that much more satisfying.

If you’re an author and interested in the Authors in Grocery Stores Program, click here, and if you sign up, please put AtlantaWC on the referral line so the Atlanta Writers Club will get credit.