David Sedaris has been experimenting with a tip tray at public readings, but maybe you folks have some brighter ideas
Posted by
Benedicte Page
Thursday 16 December 2010 16.19 GMT
Article from The guardian.co.uk
Please tip your writer ... David Sedaris. Photograph: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
American humourist (or do I have to say humorist?) David Sedaris has revealed an interesting money-making tip for authors in an interview with the National Post.
Sedaris says he left a tip jar on his signing table at a book tour and made a grand total of $4,000. At the end of his "best evening", in Dallas, he said, he made $530. "I told people it was all for me to spend on candy," he explained. "They were delighted because it's funny to give money to someone who doesn't need it."
But there was a downside to the lucrative venture which eventually stopped Sedaris continuing, as he explained. "The problem was then I started hating people who didn't tip me," he said. "I didn't say anything to them, but I would just sit there thinking, 'You cheap son of a bitch. I just signed four books and you can't even give me a dollar?' And why should they? But I just got so involved in it."
If anyone can get away with this kind of stunt, it's Sedaris, who delights in human eccentricities and is inclined to bring his own supper with him to evening book signings in case he misses out. But hard-pressed authors this side of the Atlantic - where tipping just isn't part of the culture – will have to broaden their horizons. JH Prynne writing personalised Valentine's card inscriptions, maybe? Or Paul Muldoon, the Slash of academic poetry, wigging out on the axe in a guitar band? Oh wait a minute, he already did that. I'm sure you folks can do better ...
Article from The guardian.co.uk