The Book Tour Tool Kit #2 - Advice from Barry Eisler

Bestseller Barry Eisler kinds offers up his advice for what to put in the Book Tour Tool kit. I especially like his mention of going for media not just stores. It’s tough to get but makes the experience much more worthwhile.

Next week look for more advice from more bestselling authors including Tess Gerritsen and Laura Lippman and a few publicists.

Barry Eisler: Well, like anything else, you have to measure the cost against the benefit to determine whether something is worth doing.

First, what's the benefit? For me, primarily it's the opportunity to meet my front line distributors (booksellers) and get them excited about my product line (the Rain books). Occasionally I'm criticized for saying this because it seems as though I'm making light of my endusers (readers). I'm not: obviously, if no one reads your books, no one's buying them, and you're out of business. And I love meeting readers while I'm touring (see "best part of touring," below). My point is a simple business one. Booksellers have relationships with hundreds of readers. That means if I infect 100 booksellers with my enthusiasm about the Rain books, and each of them infects 100 readers, I have indirectly reached 10,000 readers. If I infect 100 readers directly, I've only reached 100 readers. 100 is a smaller benefit that 10,000.

Of course I'm oversimplifying, and thankfully there's not really a tradeoff between meeting booksellers and meeting readers. But in marketing, you have to identify and cultivate your amplifiers and opinion makers because by working through them you can reach more people in your market than you could reach alone (for more thoughts on this subject, I recommend Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point).

Now, what's the cost? Well, there's the financial cost, and the "backside" cost, so to speak, and the opportunity costs -- the cost of not doing whatever you could have been doing if you hadn't gone on the tour. The trick is to find a way to bring all these costs down as low as possible. The more the benefit exceeds the costs, the more value you get from the exercise.

What's your goal when you tour?

Sell, sell, sell. That doesn't mean everyone I meet is going to head straight for the cash register; selling is a process, and you have to work every step of it. For more, see Barry Eisler

How do you ensure you get a lot of out it?

First I try to plan things as efficiently as possible. This summer, for example, I'm driving coast to coast and back for all of June and July and none of it involves airplanes. The stops are all planned out logically so I don't have to drive more than necessary. I'm mapping out all the key independents on the route so I can at least do drivebys, and will pause for a few days in Southern California, Chicago, and New York (and home in the Bay Area) to really concentrate on driveby signings. There are something like 63 Borders and B&Ns in Manhattan alone -- with the right planning and implementation, you can sign a lot of books and meet a lot of booksellers in a short time where you have that kind of concentration.

I also get in touch with the bookstores where I'm doing an event beforehand to see what I can do to help make the event a success.

This summer I'm concentrating more on media. I'd like to get coverage in every city where I'm doing an event. If people hear about me on the radio or on television, maybe more people will come to events, or even if they don't they'll have been primed so when they see my books in a store they'll say to themselves, "Hey, isn't that the guy I heard on the radio yesterday...?" Which gets them to pick up the book, which gets them to read the back jacket, which gets them to read the first page... etc. all the way to the cash register and to telling friends about the series after.

How do you deal with low attendance?

I don't care how many or few people show up, I'm psyched to sell to all of them. I've had as many as 130 and as few as two, and I have everything I had for all of them. Of course I'd rather have a bigger audience, but I'll take whatever I get and get the most out of it.

Okay, one exception; on the Killing Rain tour last summer, I had a first: not a single person showed up in Lexington, Kentucky! The truth is, I was glad -- I was so tired at that point I was afraid we'd get just one or two and right at that moment I was so beat I preferred a rest. I waited fifteen minutes, then walked over to a Whole Foods, bought sushi and some other delectables, then walked over to the local Multiplex and caught Fantastic Four while I ate and vegged. Just what the doctor ordered.

What's the best/worst part of touring?

The best part is meeting John Rain fans, that feeling of connection you get through something you wrote. The worse part is being away from my family (especially from my little girl) for way too long.

Comments

[Karen Syed @ Echelon Press Publishing]

I wanted to say thanks for all the information you are filtering out into the masses. I have only recently discovered your talents and thankfully they run so much deeper than just writing. As a publisher, I am always looking for ways to remind my authors that events are still GOOD. There is so much mis-information out there that has new authors believing that events are a waste of time. I still believe that there is no better selling tool than an authors enthusiasm, up close and personal. You are an excellent example of that.

[Alessandro (from Italy)]

Thank you for useful info! Touring seems to be very exciting... wow!