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?