Originally published at Robin Hobb. You can comment here or there.

There are hundreds of ways to react to a sparsely attended signing.  Yesterday was sunny and warm here in the PNW after days of rain and chill.  So that may have been why readers chose to finally go outside and get a bit of sun rather than come to my signing at Parkplace Books.

However, I had a wonderful time with several of the readers who did show up!  Jill and Nancy offered me some insights into e-books and e-book readers that I hadn't considered before. 

 I'm new to e-books as a consumer.  My Nook is scarcely a week old.  But I've already encountered very unsatisfactory copies of badly scanned free public domain books.  (Yet again, I prove to myself that, yes, indeed, you do get what you pay for!)  And when I bought a copy of a carefully scanned and corrected public domain title, I felt that the ease of reading that old favorite was well worth the price.  But I did wish the illustrations were larger.

Evidently I'm not the only one who needs larger illustrations.   Jill pointed out to me that the maps in the front of a fantasy book don't show up in much detail on an e-book reader, something that is frustrating to map lovers.  She had a possible solution.  She suggested the authors, or even publishers should feature accessible maps on their websites, so that readers who bought the e-book but still wished to have a readable map could print one out. Now that's an intriguing idea to me.  I'd love to hear from people suggesting other tweaks to the e-book experience.

And while we are on the subject of e-books, I want to mention a place that caters to lovers of e-books, with a generous supply of  free samples of books.  Book View Cafe is an enterprise that allows authors to put up their own e-books for sale, in a variety of DRM free formats. My hot tip: Try the first volume of Starfarers by Vonda McIntyre for free.  And even if you do not have an e-book reader, take a moment to visit A Pillow Book for Cats by Ursula LeGuin.

My signing at Parkplace books was also notable in that my husband's Aunt Suzie joined us there!  So my time in the bookstore was followed by a very enjoyable hour or two of catching up on family news.  It made me realize that the drive to Bothell is not really that long, and we should make it more often.

Also of note to book lovers:  Parkplace Books is coming up ona birthday, and yes, there will be a party!  For details and to RSVP, visit their website.  I heard rumors of very special carrot cake! I certainly intend to make a second run up that way for this!

Hope to see you there!

Robin