by Mark Parsons
Click here if you missed Part II.
“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to in-store events.
It’s more like “If you build it—and tell them all about it—some of them might come.”
Yes, there is the rare store that has such a strong, loyal customer base that you show up and there’ll either be a decent sized crowd waiting or they’ll flock to you from around the store once they see an author presenting, but depending on either of those is a very bad bet.
And unless you’re hovering near the very tippy-top of the NYT bestseller list, it’s also a mistake to think that your name alone will bring in a crowd.
One obvious challenge with a book tour is that you’re not in your hometown. When you do a local book event—assuming you have a new book out and you haven’t done anything local in a while—you can tell all your friends and family and co-workers about it, and get a pretty good turnout from just that.
But that doesn’t apply when you’re hundreds or thousands of miles away, in a different state, where you know virtually no one… and very few of them know of you.
So, you have to ask (and answer) the question: Why would someone come see you if they didn’t know you, and/or didn’t know your books?
The answer is two-fold: They have to know about the event, and they have to be interested in the event once they learn about it.
Let’s take the second part first. People are generally interested in information that can benefit them. I mentioned this last time, but multiple surveys have shown that something like 85% of all adults want to write a book, typically a novel or perhaps a memoir. A smaller but still significant number have started writing. We can provide value to them (beyond talking about our latest book) by stepping outside our specific genre and addressing this broad area of interest directly, as follows…
When we called stores and the event coordinator/owner/manager found out we wrote MG & YA, they often said, “We don’t usually have good luck with kids’ events, and worse with teens.” And we said, “We agree completely. We have better luck when we position it as: Two published authors talk about reading and writing and the publishing business.” And we promote it that way. And it generally worked. Often we get a good turnout with lots of engaged people at the event—asking questions and buying books to get signed—with not a kid in the room.
We’ll talk about presentation specifics more next time, but for now you should come up with a general theme and pitch for your presentation. We called ours the “He Said, She Said” presentation. We largely based it on us riffing back-and-forth on reading, writing, publishing, and living the writing life, and at least half of it was Q&A. Remember, your goal is to give the attendees something they’ll value, not find different ways to say “Here’s my book, buy it now!”
Once you have something that—hopefully—people will find interesting, and store event coordinators will feel the same about, you want to help get the word out.
Sure, you should put your tour schedule all over social media because once in a while someone will show up from seeing that. But really, your strongest move is helping the store let their customers know.
Easy things first.
Make an electronic poster for each event with all the pertinent date/time/presentation info, as well as graphics of you and your book, of course, and send it to the store. They can print out and place the posters wherever they see fit. Also send them high-res graphics of your book cover & author photo, so they can use them on their website and their social channels and in their email newsletter, etc.
We also made a nice overall tour poster which had all the images & info about us and our presentation, with spaces for each store to fill in their specific date and time, then we printed out a hundred of them at 11×17 and sent one to each store on the tour ahead of time.
We made a fun (okay, some might say corny!) little “tour trailer” video which we sent to all the stores as well as posting on our social accounts. This gives the stores an idea about the vibe of our presentation and lets them post it on their social accounts to let their customers know a little about the event.
Along with this we did a TV interview or two along the route, usually the day of or day before the presentation in that market, as well as getting press in some local papers for the same reason.
And last, make sure the store has your book in stock for the event. Don’t laugh. It seems obvious, but on our very first out-of-state stop on the big tour—in Arizona—the store had my book but not of my wife’s, and then in Minnesota the opposite thing happened. Your publicist can help here, as they’ll get in touch with their sales rep for that region and make sure the store has your books. Another piece of insurance is to contact each store with a quick message a week or so out saying, “We’re on the road headed your way—can’t wait to see you on June seventeenth!” or whatever. One store canceled on us after we’d already started the tour, but we found out ahead of time due to the above and it saved us driving halfway across Mississippi for a non-event.
Okay, the pump has been primed: the store knows, the customers know, and the books are in stock. Next, we’ll wrap up with the day-to-day nuts & bolts of in-store events.
Mark Parsons is a frequent presenter at conferences, festivals, and schools, speaking on the craft and business of writing. He is a critically acclaimed YA author—his newest novel is The 9:09 Project, out now from Delacorte/Random House. He has written extensively in the nonfiction arena, authoring over two-hundred articles for national publications as well as a pair of nonfiction books.
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