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Finest-selling authors have been sharing their ebook signing horror tales after native writer Chelsea Vandergrift Podgorny tweeted about her poorly attended ebook signing over the weekend.

Chelsea Vandergrift Podgorny has one thing in frequent with a few of her literary idols — a humbling ebook signing.

However in her case, it turned the Howland native and Girard Free Library younger grownup librarian right into a viral sensation.

Finest-selling authors resembling Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman and Jodi Picoult have been sharing their very own book-signing horror tales after a tweet by Podgorny, who used the pen title Chelsea Banning for her debut novel “Of Crowns and Legends,” went viral.

Lower than 48 hours later, she’s been interviewed by NPR, written about on a number of main web sites and watched her novel skyrocket to the highest of a number of Amazon specialty ebook classes.

Her ebook signing was scheduled Saturday afternoon at Fairly Good Books in Ashtabula.

“It’s one among my favourite bookstores,” she stated. “I believed it will be someplace associates might get their books signed. I had a fairly good response to the occasion on Fb and was fairly excited.”

Solely two folks confirmed up.

On Sunday morning, she posted on Twitter: “Solely 2 folks got here to my writer signing yesterday, so I used to be fairly bummed about it. Particularly as 37 responded ‘going’ to the occasion. Type of upset truthfully, and a bit embarrassed.”

She picked Twitter to vent as a result of she doesn’t use it typically, and she or he didn’t need to name out the individuals who stated they’d present up however didn’t. If she hoped to maintain her harm low key, it had the other impression.

When she got here again dwelling from a day of working errands and turned on the pc, she couldn’t imagine what she noticed.

“It was pure shock, simply pure shock,” Podgorny stated. “Simply staring open-mouthed at my pc. Is that this actually taking place proper now?”

Picoult, the best-selling writer of “My Sister’s Keeper,” “Nineteen Minutes” and lots of others, tweeted, “I’ve sat lonely at a signing desk many instances solely to have somebody strategy … and ask me the place the lavatory is.”

A who’s who of literary giants adopted. Gaiman, who Podgorny paid to see communicate in Cleveland earlier this 12 months, tweeted, “Terry Pratchett and I did a signing in Manhattan for ‘Good Omens’ that no one got here to in any respect. So you might be two up on us.”

King, some of the profitable authors of all time, responded, “At my first ‘SALEM’S LOT’ signing, I had one buyer. A fats child who stated, ‘Hey bud, are you aware the place there’s some Nazi books?’”

And it wasn’t solely folks identified for his or her literary contributions who got here out in assist of her. She acquired retweets from everybody from ’70s pop star Shaun Cassidy to actor Henry Winkler, who additionally shared a hyperlink to buy her ebook.

She doesn’t know the total impression but — “It takes a few day to report. Gross sales don’t depend till they get shipped,” Podgorny stated — however Tuesday afternoon “Of Crowns and Legends” was listed on the high of Amazon’s Kindle Retailer gross sales within the class of Dragons & Legendary Creatures Fantasy and in each Kindle and ebook gross sales for Arthurian Fantasy.

She described the self-published novel as a re-imagining of the King Arthur legend specializing in the twins he was by no means speculated to have who now reside of their father’s shadow 20 years after his dying.

“It’s stuffed with journey and lore and political intrigue,” she stated, and it’s the primary ebook in a deliberate trilogy.

Podgorny began the novel when she was a pupil at Howland Excessive College. She graduated in 2007 and earned her bachelor’s diploma in English from Youngstown State College. She revisited the thought after school, and her pen title, Chelsea Banning, is an homage to Peter Banning, Robin Williams’ character in “Hook,” Podgorny’s favourite film.

Since Sunday morning, her Twitter followers have gone from about 100 to eight,000, and people following her Chelsea Banning-Creator Fb web page have jumped from about 200 to 1,700. She’s already utilizing these pages to advertise the work different impartial authors.

“The writing group has all the time been so supportive of one another, and I’ve had some shares and encouragement from associates made (on social media),” Podgorny stated. “I had this huge factor occur to me and I need to assist them as nicely. I need to share the limelight, I suppose.”

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