What really is the point of them? Everyone who comes to an author's signing has likely already read the book, or is planning to read it, so you're probably not selling more copies. I don't personally think that I would enjoy listening to an author read from a book for thirty minutes, and if I were the author I know for a fact that I would not care to read from my book in front of a crowd for that long — yet plenty of other people seem to feel differently, and author readings are fairly standard. Is there something about the experience that I'm missing, having never attended one?