Count Dooku: The force is with us, Master Sidious.
Darth Sidious: Welcome home Lord Tyranus. You have done well.
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
“Welcome to Borders. Buy my book.”
The first obstacle to your writer friend’s success on a book tour is her publicist. The publisher will assign one of the resident publicists to your writer friend. This is a major crapshoot. Many, nee most, resident publicists will be truly interested in bending over backwards to get your writer friend successfully out into the book buying world as often, as quickly and as successfully as possible. There is no guarantee, however, that your writer friend’s publicist will be one of these people. Indeed, knowing your friend the way you do, there’s probably a good chance that your writer friend is going to get a publicist that can hardly remember that he IS a publicist, let alone her publicist.
Because her publicist will inevitably be a boob, your writer friend may ask you to help her out by doing some of the groundwork for the eventual book tour. Working together, you’ll need to get a couple bottles of wine, her lucky pen and a pad of paper. Following the sip, write, sip method, you will begin to write down all the places with which she has had some remote had connection. These places will be the backbone of the upcoming book tour.
Where does her extended family live: parents, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, second cousins twice removed by marriage? Where was she born? Where did she grow up? Did she ever move as a child? Perfect! Her options have just increased incrementally. Where do the friends she had growing up, the friends she had in college and the friends she made at summer camp live? Are any of these small towns, medium sized cities or large metropolitan areas? If so, that’s just perfect.
Any bookstore, large or small, where a decent number of people can reasonably be pressed into converging, and therefore buying, is fine. Is there a morning radio or television show that might interview your writer friend the morning of the reading and book signing? Well, that’s a delightful town, city or metro area to consider too. Eventually, the wine bottles will run dry, the list will run long and the expectations will overflow. Or you’ll both pass out drunk. Either way, you’ll have quelled the rising panic in your writer friend for a few hours. And, sometimes, that is gift enough.
Next will come the realization that, unless your writer friend is already relatively famous, she is not going to be getting a blank check to cover the book tour expenses. Hell, there might not even be a check. Yes, alas, now comes the raging realization that your writer friend will need to run the numbers to make her book tour a reality. To be blunt, this comes down to one simple question, “Who can I bunk with?”
Wow, the work that goes into promoting oneself is phenomenal! Hopefully it works out and the book gets pimped well, and sells better!
You need to start a YouTube Channel and start promoting yourself silly.
Of course, you can always bunk here. We have a Borders a B&N and a Book People.