As a first-time author, the whole meeting-the-readers idea is still pretty new to me. I’ve spent virtually all of my writing life working in a vacuum, very rarely having any contact with anyone who reads my work. That suits the shy side of my nature just fine, but promoting a new book offered a different experience that I thought might be interesting, or with luck, maybe even fun. It turned out to be that and more.

My book, King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records, tells the tale of an innovative and important record company that operated in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1943 to 1971. I know that many people in Cincinnati are interested in the history and legacy of King Records—and feel strongly that King has never received the credit it deserves as a pioneering American record company—so I obviously hoped to reach that core group with the book. I was fairly confident they’d at least appreciate King of the Queen City. What I hadn’t expected was their gratitude.

I felt that gratitude most strongly at two Cincinnati events, the annual multi-author Books by the Banks festival, sponsored by the Cincinnati Public Library and held downtown at the Duke Energy Convention Center, and a book signing the next day at Shake It Records, the coolest record store I’ve ever had the pleasure of shopping at.

The first book I signed at Shake It was for a woman who had to rush off to catch her daughter’s soccer game. She bought a couple of books and promised to buy several more for holiday presents. She then said, sort of apologetically, “I know you’ve heard this a million times already, but I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing this book. I know it must have been hard, and my husband and I thank you for sticking with it.”

Well, no, I haven’t heard that a million times already, but I heard it over and over at those two gatherings. Most of the thanks came from folks who said they “had been waiting years for this” and/or that it was a story “that needed to be told.” The high point for me was hearing that from Zella Nathan, the nonagenarian widow of King Records founder Syd Nathan.

It was highly gratifying for a new author to sell some books at these two functions and fairly surreal to be asked to autograph them. I look forward to hearing from people that they enjoyed reading it and that they’ve recommended it to friends. But being thanked so profusely by so many people for doing what was essentially a labor of love—that goes way beyond gratifying. That will take some thinking about.

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Jon Hartley Fox is the author of King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records.