Expert Tour Tips, Vol. 37, No. 6

By Bryan Gruley

Now that I’ve embarked on my second book tour, it’s time to impart my expertise about touring. Of course, merely two experiences qualifies no one as an expert at anything. But I’m blogging, and therefore I am an expert (blogito ergo geniusum).

TIP: If you’re driving 100 miles to an event, leave a bit more than an hour. And assume that you will reach the drawbridge in Charlevoix precisely thirty seconds before it goes up.

TIP: Inscribe books with embarrassingly intimate notes so as to discourage people from loaning the books to friends and family, thus maximizing sales.

TIP: Refuse to obsess about the young woman who took one of your books, sat down against a bookshelf, read for five minutes, and then returned the book to your table without so much as a glance at you. She’s a speed reader and she adored your book.

TIP: Forgo your blather about yourself and your precious new book and get NYT bestselling non-fiction author Doug Stanton to interview you about yourself and your precious new book.

TIP: The key to the city won't actually open anything, but it's pretty cool to get one from the good people of East Jordan, Michigan.

TIP: Tell people it’s fine if they don’t buy both of your books, so long as they can find a bookstore open at 2 in the morning when they finish the first one.

TIP: When speaking to a group of readers, avoid at all costs following novelist and cop James O. Born, the funniest man in south Florida since Jackie Gleason.

TIP: Feel grateful for the handwriting exercises foisted upon you at St. Gemma Elementary school when the nice reader from Okemos, Michigan, insists, “Please sign it legibly.”

TIP: Have an IT guy put something in your laptop that blocks you from looking at your Amazon sales rankings.

TIP: When someone in the audience asks if you’d please put his town in your next book, politely ask if he’d like it to be the home of the pedophile or the serial killer.

TIP: Order the whitefish at North Country in Suttons Bay, Michigan; the fried perch at Western Avenue Grill in Glen Arbor; and the patty melt at the Hide-A-Way Bar on Starvation Lake. Oh, and the empanadas at Fuego Café in Phoenix.

TIP: Treasure the opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones. Be humbled by the fact that anyone would read your work, let alone pay for it. Take someone who loves you even if you’re not a bestseller. Have fun: nobody promised you another tour.

I really mean that last one. And a couple of the others. Now I’m interested in hearing your tips, folks …

Notes From The Road . . . (Go Vote!)

by Sean Chercover

Been on the road since I don't know when. Feels like forever. Meeting many great people, talking 'bout books, putting serious miles on the old Chevy Malibu.

Some random notes from the road. . .

• If you want to know how to host the best Bouchercon ever, ask Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobalik.
• You really should visit the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. At night.
• Pittsburgh continues to impress. Beautiful city, friendly people.
• The people of Ohio are totally sick of political commercials, and for good reason.
  
• Obama bumper stickers outnumber McCain bumper stickers in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and California.
• McCain bumper stickers outnumber Obama bumper stickers in West Virginia.
• If you stop at the visitor's center in Wheeling, West Virginia, and ask where the nearest bookstore is, the answer will be, "Pennsylvania."
• I did not make that up.
• West Virginia is probably sick of being thought of as less than literate, but . . . damn.
• There are some really bright students at the University of Illinois, Champaign.
• Touring with Marcus is great fun. I recommend it.
• Breaking your toe while on tour is not so much fun. I do not recommend it.
• If you break your toe and then drive to the next town, do an interview for cable access TV, do a workshop at a library, walk to a pub, walk back from the pub, go to a cocktail party and stand for three hours, then drive for three hours, your toe will be ugly.
• If a guy in line at a gas station accidentally steps on your broken toe, you will immediately go out and buy steel-toe shoes that you really don't need.
• Doc Martens are not the quality shoes that they once were.
• Overheard in a bookstore. . . A wealthy suburban mom, speaking impatiently to her 12-year-old son: "Fine, you can have the Metallica CD, but then we're putting the books back. You can't have everything you want."
• It takes a great deal of restraint to keep your mouth shut and mind your own business when you hear a mother telling her son that he can't have books, in a country where very few young men still want to read.
• California hasn't changed.
• I love palm trees.
• If you live in California, please vote No on Proposition 8.
• The OC is very OC.
• You can get signed copies of Trigger City at the Barbara's Bookstore near gate H1 at O'Hare.
• Signed books make a thoughtful Christmas gift.
• And all them other religious holidays, too. Like Hanukkah. And Kwanzaa
  
• I can never remember how to spell Hanukkah, and I'm not sure why it sometimes has a C and sometimes doesn't.
• And I always forget the extra 'a' on the end of Kwanzaa.
• I am obviously rambling and in need of sleep.
• G'night...

Go Vote. Now.