Book touring is new to us but it's part of the process of publishing your book so it's a good thing to think about it from the beginning. Books, sadly, don't sell themselves. You, the author, have to promote them, send your child out into the world. One time honored way is the book tour.
When we knew we had a book, we thought: Let's party! One and done. But opportunities came up and then there were eight of them staring at us, saying: You've committed to doing us. Get doing!
Most of the tour, we do have to do the doing. If you're a famous author, maybe all you have to do is get your body in the door but if you're not, well....
We were in LA yesterday, where David lived and I went to college. (Fight on for old SC!) My adventure started at the airport when Southwest cancelled my flight and the one leaving 90 minutes later became 2 hours, which meant I'd be late for our event. Complaining got me a $50 travel voucher and not much else. A 30 minute, $55 cab ride from LAX brought me to the venue, Neveux Artisan Creamery, a place I highly recommend. Owner Leo and his ice cream are both well constructed. http://neveuxartisancreamery.com
I saw immediately, as David already had, that the layout of the shop wasn't going to let us read stories, much less play games and award red jockstraps. This is the danger of nontraditional. We want our signings to be events so we're in mainly not meeting rooms: ice cream store, French restaurant, museum, luxury condo. But the evil twin of this good idea is sometimes the space doesn't work for what you want to do. So, be flexible or ask for schematics.
Luckily, David and I are flexible boys and we switched to chitchat in L.A. I met some terrific people, people I'd very much like to see again. We sold books and ginger/gingerphile tshirts. And the ginger ice cream was excellent. You should stop by and take a bite. Warning though: it bites back.
Meanwhile, I still have this red jock. Anyone want it?
Preview our book at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3577527.
No comments:
Post a Comment