If you want a book tour

Everything you need to know about the most confusing, exasperating, difficult, painful topic in book publicity.

Who gets a book tour? Who doesn’t? Why didn’t you get one? Can you get one? Why is your publicist or editor being so squirrelly about whether you’ll get one? Are you the only author on Earth who isn’t getting one?

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, this week’s newsletter is for you.

Book tours are confusing. Moreover, at most of the big publishing houses, they’re confusing by design. For that reason, there’s no amount of explaining I can do that will spare you at least some personal confusion on this topic, provided you care about it at all.

I’ll do my durndest, though.

What’s a book tour?

Here, “book tour” means any post-pub, in-person promotional event outside your hometown—anything from a single Strand signing to a multi-city national swing.

These events usually take place in bookstores, although big authors might do them at higher-capacity venues like Sixth & I in DC or the 92nd Street Y in New York. They typically involve an “in conversation with” style dialogue with another media personality or a short solo reading, followed by some kind of Q and A session and a book signing.

…None of this is confusing.

I know. We’re getting there.

Who pays for book tours?

Publishers generally pay for book tours IF:

1. A book tour is the publisher’s idea—i.e., something they spontaneously decide to include in their publicity budget, a rare occurrence; OR

2. A bunch of indie booksellers across the country proactively contact the publisher about hosting a certain author.

If neither of the above is true, the publisher generally WILL NOT pay for a tour (or even do much heavy lifting to help set up a self-funded one).

Publishers are uninterested and unwilling to sponsor book tours for the vast majority of authors. Bookstores are likewise uninterested in hosting the vast majority of authors.

Here’s why:

In a vast majority of cases, book tours make zero practical sense for anyone involved.

We need only arithmetic to understand why.

Let’s say you’re an author who lives in DC and dreams of doing a bookstore event in New York—up and back in a day; nothing fancy. You’ve just published a hardcover book that costs $30. Your plan is to take a regional Amtrak to Manhattan ($250), take a cab to Brooklyn ($35), do the event at Greenlight, and come back. In total, this will not cost anyone a dime more than $285.

Assuming your book has thus far sold fewer than 5,000 copies, you’re likely earning $3/copy against your advance for every hardcover book sale. Your publisher is likely earning a little more—after production, marketing, shipping, and corporate overhead, maybe $5 per copy? $6? Something like that.

Punch it all into a calculator: if you’d like the publisher to pay for this entire event, the prospect makes no financial sense for them unless you are going to move AT LEAST 49 hardcovers. This is assuming that you’ve booked the event with Greenlight in sufficient time to spare them express hardcover shipping. (Remember: shipping warehouses are generally not in NYC.)

If you plan to pay for the event yourself, it makes no financial sense for you to do that unless you sell at least ninety-five copies. Although I suppose you might also incur some minuscule tax savings by writing off the cost…so let’s round it down to a cool 90.

These are not easy numbers to achieve. AT ALL.

Not unless you have a rabid popular fan base in the tens or hundreds of thousands and a large part of their enthusiasm exists as a function of your personal charisma. Even then, just a small percentage of your fans will show up in person.

Adult readers simply don’t go to in-person author events that often—not even for authors they really, really like. They’ll go for family, close friends, clients, and the occasional honest-to-god personal hero, but that’s generally it. Most bestselling authors can count on (at best) a few dozen attendees at any of the events they do—and of course, not all of the people who show up will buy books.

Be honest with me: when was the last time YOU dragged yourself out to a bookstore event for an author who wasn’t a client, close friend, or family member?

I’ll be honest with you: mine was Oliver Sacks at Sixth & I in 2013. Twelve years ago. Every single other bookstore event I’ve been to since has been for a client or friend. AND I AM OBSESSED WITH BOOKS. THEY ARE MY WHOLE LIFE.

QED: whoever pays for an author to go on tour will almost certainly not see positive ROI, at least of the sort one can quantify on a spreadsheet. Authors, of course, might want to do events for unquantifiable spiritual reasons, and publishers might want to do them for vaguely-quantifiable ones related to bookseller relations. But raw profit? LOL, good luck.

Bookstores share in these liabilities. When they order a bunch of books for an event but only sell a couple, they suffer in all kinds of ways: cash tied up in nonmoving inventory; opportunity cost in tied-up floor space; possible return costs on unsold stock; time wasted in the receiving room.

When you consider all this, the corporate reluctance makes sense.

…This is a bummer, Anna, but you said book tours were confusing, and I have yet to be confused.

I SAID WE’RE GETTING THERE!!!

We’re actually there now.

We need only math to understand why publishers are “meh” on book tours for the vast majority of authors. We need more than math, however, to understand why they’re also “meh” on most of the people for whom the math actually works out.

I cannot tell you how many times I have dealt with each of these deeply confusing scenarios:

1. A publisher refuses to finance or even straightforwardly discuss a tour for an author who could easily and demonstrably summon audiences of 40-100+ people in several different cities.

2. A publisher tells an author they’re not opposed to the idea of a tour, it’s just too early to book one…then several months later tells them they’re not opposed, it’s just too late.

3. A publisher pays $500k+ for a book and/or repeatedly insists that they consider this a major frontlist pull-out-all-the-stops title….then refuses to finance or even straightforwardly discuss a book tour, which seems like one of the more obvious stops on which one could pull.

4. An author receives a proactive event invitation from a large-capacity venue outside of their hometown, and the publisher seems weirdly uninterested in making it happen.

5. An author reluctantly makes peace with having no tour…only to open Instagram one day and see a midlist peer with a comparable book and pub date announcing a 12-stop national tour.

In these scenarios, what is happening? And if you’re an author who has dreamed their entire freaking life of going on tour and now wants to kill me because you are FREAKING OUT…how on Earth do you improve your odds of getting one?

I’ve got some tips.