Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Why You're Not Going on a Book Tour

Colleen Lindsay lays out the cold, hard economic facts of the bookstore signing.

In the business, authors get toured either because they're superstars who draw huge crowds (a few "real" writers are in this category, but it's mostly celebrities who got famous doing other things) or because they demand it and the cost is reasonable compared to what their books earn.

And, from what I've seen from writer's blogs, the book tour is a cruel, hard slog as well. So why do new writers still dream of it?

2 comments:

Michael A. Burstein said...

Actually, I may be going on a book tour. But that's because we're being creative about it.

Anonymous said...

New writers dream of it the same way people dream of being music stars who are on tour. They simply don't comprehend the realities of touring until they've done it, no matter how much factual information you put in front of them explaining the economics. Because to them, it's time to be FAMOUS! It's show up, sign books, shake hands and maybe do photo ops with fans. And they're (supposedly) the center of attention. AWESOME!

Post a Comment