[dwndrgn]

I've heard of many booksignings ending up like that. With extremely popular authors, I don't know why they don't have the author sign books beforehand and limit the number of people. I can't imagine something like that to be at all enjoyable for the author. Diana Gabaldon does something a little different. She (through her website) allows people to mail her one of her books, she'll sign it at her leisure and then send it back. She also does regular book signings like the one above but I bet they aren't as stressful, more of people just wanting to say hi and chat for a minute instead of robotically signing through a line as long as the equator.