The final panel finishes. The applause dies away. People stretch their legs, gather their bags, and begin making their way towards the exits.
Or at least they could. Instead, they join a queue. Sometimes it is a short queue. Sometimes it snakes through the room and out into the corridor. Readers stand patiently clutching books to their chests. Some chat excitedly with strangers. Some rehearse what they want to say. Some simply wait, happy to be there.
And some people would often find themselves wondering why? After all, the signature changes nothing. The story remains exactly the same. The murderer is still the murderer. The hero still survives, or doesn't. The final page remains unchanged. The words are identical to those in every other copy. And yet, somehow, everything is different.
I've spent most of my life around books and book collectors. I've watched people cross countries to attend signings. I've seen readers queue for hours to meet their favourite authors. I've sold books that are valuable because they are signed and books that are valuable despite being signed. I've watched collectors debate condition, scarcity, print runs and provenance with the seriousness of art dealers discussing a lost masterpiece.
But I don't think most people queue because they are thinking about value. Not really. The truth is something rather more human.
Last year, I stood in the bar at Capital Crime and watched a bestselling author chatting with readers. Nothing formal. No microphone. No stage. Just a conversation over a glass of wine. Nearby, another author was discussing football. Someone else was recommending books. A reader who had arrived knowing nobody was suddenly part of a conversation with people they had met only an hour before. It struck me then that festivals are not really about books.
Not entirely. They are about people. Books simply give us permission to meet. The older I get, the more remarkable that feels.
We live in a world that seems determined to divide us. Politics demands sides. Social media rewards outrage. Algorithms feed us more of what we already think and less of what might challenge us. Entire industries now exist to keep us scrolling, clicking and arguing.
Yet a book asks something entirely different. A book asks us to listen. To spend hours inside another person's imagination. To consider lives we have never lived and experiences we have never had. That is an extraordinary act of empathy. And perhaps that is why readers still travel to festivals. Not simply to hear authors speak, but to feel part of something larger than themselves.
At Capital Crime, thousands of people gather because they love stories. Some arrive alone. Some have been attending since the beginning. Some are discovering the festival for the first time. Yet within hours they are discussing favourite detectives, arguing about endings and comparing notes on which books they plan to buy next. For a weekend, complete strangers become a community. The signature comes at the end of all that. It is not the point of the experience. It is the reminder of it.
Years from now, a reader will pull a book from their shelf and see an author's signature on the title page. But what they will really remember is the conversation. The panel that made them laugh. The friend they met in the coffee queue. The author who turned out to be kinder, funnier or more thoughtful than they had imagined. The feeling of being surrounded by people who loved stories as much as they did. The signature is simply the bookmark left behind in that memory.
I sometimes think we misunderstand what book collecting is. People assume collectors are accumulating objects. Certainly, some are. But the best collections are not really collections of books. They are collections of moments. Every shelf tells a story. A festival attended. An author met. A recommendation followed. A chance encounter that led to a lifelong favourite.
That is certainly true of my own shelves. When I look at many of my books, I do not first remember reading them. I remember where I was. Who I was with. The conversation we had. The excitement of discovering something new. The book became part of the memory. Or perhaps the memory became part of the book.
Which is why, despite predictions that everything would become digital, readers still queue. They still travel. They still gather in rooms to hear authors speak. And they still wait patiently for a signature. Not because they want ink on paper. But because in an increasingly digital world, we are all searching for something real.
A conversation.
A connection.
A memory.
And sometimes all three can be found on the other side of a queue.
Capital Crime takes place this June on the 18th, 19th and 20. Tickets are available here: www.capitalcrime.org
