The Book Tour Took Kit - Advice from Lee Child

I asked Bestselling author Lee Childabout the value of a tour and how best to take advantage of the opportunity. Here’s his response:

It's kind of tough to say whether author tours are worth it, dollar for dollar. I remember when I worked in TV we spent a fortune on promotion and the old cliche was, we're sure we're wasting half our money, but we don't know which half. It's a little like that.

My publishers in the US and the UK are certainly very hard-headed and realistic, and they send me on the road every year, so I guess they discern some value. Sometimes it's kind of hard to see it myself. At first you're hoping to sell 30,000 hardcovers, then 100,000, then 300,000 and up, and you're talking to maybe 20 or 60 or 100 or 150 individuals in one small corner of the nation. Feels like filling a swimming pool with a teaspoon. But I think the only absolute proven thing in book sales is word of mouth, and a tour can kick-start word of mouth ... instead of one person talking to two, you get in on a twenty-talking-to-forty level, and a month later you're exponentially ahead of where you would have been.

So overall I think tours are worth it ... but only because of the lack of better alternatives.

My goal on tour is twofold: to make the bookstore staff understand I'm grateful to them, and to make the audience feel that I'm a nice guy. I think that's what sells. Plugging the book too much is a blind alley.

Too many people are ready to say, "I don't read that kind of book." (Can't blame them, in today's vast market. People have to be selective, or they're overwhelmed.) But if the author comes across as a nice, fun person, then consumers are ready to give the book a go.

How do I get the most out of it?

Just be on the ball and work all day. You're away from home, what else are you going to do? I don't do sightseeing or tourism, although I would like to. If I've seen more than the airport, the escort's car, three radio stations, two dozen bookstores and the hotel, I feel like I haven't worked hard enough.

Happily low attendance is a problem that goes away with time, so it's a few years since I've suffered it. No problem if nobody shows - you can just spend the time with the bookstore staff. If one or two people show, that's tough. I just tried to make it intimate - sit with the folks, not in front of them, etc. But the biggest problem was that the staff would be embarrassed for me, feel the store had failed, etc. I honestly never cared - I've got a very thick skin, and nobody said this would be easy ... you need to reassure the staff more than anything.

The worst part of touring (for me) is chain store drop-ins. Physically tiring, very dispiriting sometimes (can't find the books, poor orders) and schmoozing is kind of pointless because the staff turns over so fast that the person you're schmoozing will be working at Wendy's next week.

The best part is showing up at a store where you've been many times and they already love you. It's like a reunion with old friends. Especially if there are drinks. I've learned over the years that a
cocktail-fueled event is worth its weight in gold. I did an event in New Zealand (where happily Jack Reacher is huge) in April last year, and 400 people had been drinking sundowners for an hour. The staff had noticed that I referred to a particular rock song a couple of times in the book, and they had it playing loud on repeat before I came on stage. Great, great event.

Comments

[Bob Morris]

Lee nails it on all fronts, as usual, but especially about the drinking.

I recently finished my first national tour, and since I still have to worry whether warm bodies will actually show up, I decided to provide the cocktails myself. My series is set largely in the Caribbean and the hero is something of a rum connoiseur. Scratch that. He drinks any rum he can get his hands on.

After first checking with the bookstore to make sure it was OK (no one turned me down except the chains) I showed up with the makings for a batch of rum sours -- a handle of rum, limes, sugar, bitters, etc -- and made a jugful as part of my presentation/reading. Then we sat around and drank. I daresay that lots of folks downed a couple of rum sours and bought more books than they came there intending to buy. And on those occasions when not a lot of people showed up, I sat around getting a buzz on with booksellers. Worse things can happen on the road ...

Just for the hell of it, and because my last book was set in Jamaica, I also contacted the U.S. distributor of Appleton Rum and asked if they would sponsor my book tour. At first they thought I was insane, but they liked the book and wound up giving me 250 miniature bottles of Appleton Estate that I handed out to booksellers around the country (after attaching my own JAMAICA ME DEAD label to the bottles.)

Let's just say I'm getting plenty of invitations for this fall's book tour. Cheers ...