The thing is, Maryann, it's harder to not buy a book with the author looking on than it is online, say, where the author may not know which five of the twenty who said they'd buy books actually did. Readings sell books, albeit rarely huge numbers in a go, but so does lugging them around as an author and having a copy available when the book comes up. I've sold books to the guy sitting next to me on the plane, a Basque couple at a Greenwich Village restaurant who thought I "looked like a poet," and at the Cuirt festival in Galway to everyone who expressed regret at missing my launch (I think that was almost twenty sales based on, "Well, I do have a couple copies in my bag...."). And so forth.
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