My 3rd + 4th and coolest story speech in SxSW

This is the 3rd time I did a speech at SxSW, and one of the rare moments for the conference to have the same speaker speak at both the EDU sections and the Interactive. I had a blast and signed many books there, which led to one of my favorite stories about my book.

During the EDU section, the speech I did was actually at the JW Marriott Austin hotel. After the speech, I told the audience, "Hey, if you are interested, you can abandon the next session, leave this building, walk 2.5 blocks to the Convention Center, go up to the 2nd floor, and find the Barnes & Noble bookstore there. You can buy my book and I'll be available to autograph your copies for the next hour!"

Since the friction to make this happen is so extreme, I was not certain if people would go out of their way just to get a physical book. However, I was delighted to see many people line up so I could sign my book. 

While I was signing the books, I noticed a lady picking up my book and paying for it at the counter. In my head, I thought, "Ok great! She will now be in line too and I can autograph her book!" 

But she just walked straight out the door. I was extremely surprised, so I shouted through the line of readers and yelled, "Hey! You over there!" 

The lady was startled by loud yelling, so she turned around and looked at me. 

"Me?"

"Yes! You!"

"What do you want?"

"I can sign your book....if you want?"

She looked at me weirdly, and said, "Who are you?"

At that point I fully realized what happened and started smiling, "I'm the author of the book you just bought!"

She looked at her book, pointed at the text where the author's name was, and said, "This is you?"

"Yes. I am Yu-kai Chou."

That's when she suddenly had a great smile of delight and said, "Yes please!!"

I always think about that moment fondly, imagining how cool it would be when you just walk into a bookstore, get attracted to a book you don't know about. And after you buy it, suddenly the author of that book was just standing right next to you offering to sign the book for you! I like to tell this story a lot, and I would like to imagine that this lady still tells the story to others too.

Also, due to having my actual framework on the cover, the my book Actionable Gamification was flying off the shelf from the Bookstore. The books were sold out very quickly and Barnes & Noble was extremely impressed with it. They reached out to me to ask if they could carry my book in all the Barnes & Nobles throughout the country. I was quite excited about that because it's a cool feeling when friends can see my book everywhere. However, once they realized the book was published through Amazon services, they withdrew the offer because their policy didn't allow them to work with any Amazon-affiliated books. 

But given that Barnes & Nobles has been deteriorating throughout the years, and my book sold over 100,000 copies mostly via online stores, I think I still came out the winner.

An event to be remembered!