BOOK TOUR
I’m embarking on a “book tour” in connection with the publication of Boy With Wings, which I’ve done before with my prior books. On my first book, The Return, the Florida-based publisher set me up at several bookstores for signings. This was the year 2000, and so I appeared at Walden bookstores in Orlando and Tampa. I had no idea what to expect, but I soon realized I’d been thrust into performance of the “lonely author at the mall.” From my perch at the front of the store, incoming customers generally sought to avoid eye contact, or would glance at me and my book and move on. The only books I sold or signed were to people I knew. I had another “signing” in the now-defunct Borders bookstore in Tallahassee, where the helpful salesperson kept announcing on the PA: “Please welcome author Mark Mustian!” The only person I recall speaking to was someone seriously mentally ill, who did not deign to buy a book.
I learned from these experiences, and made a big push in planning for events for The Gendarme, my second book, to contact people I knew wherever the event was to be held. This worked much better in general, although, as any author knows, not all events are successful. I had one in New Orleans where, but for my wife, the bookseller and his mother, two people showed up. At another, on a rainy night in Miami in a room set for one hundred, six people attended, four of whom I knew. Still, if anyone is interested in hearing me speak about my books, I’m fine with that. They’ve cared enough to stop whatever they were doing and come see me, and so I try to be engaging, appreciative, and hopefully semi-entertaining.
One thing I don’t do much is read from the book. I find this as a listener (generally) boring, and so I tend to read only short snippets, and then talk about the book. (I once attended a writers conference where a speaker, immediately before cocktail hour, announced “I’m now going to read the first thirty pages of my novel in progress.” Audible groans echoed from the audience, and a scurrying toward the door.) One of the best parts of any event for me as a speaker, and I hope for the listener, is the Q&A: readers have all sorts of interesting questions, and many see things in the book that I didn’t see (or necessarily intend). One of the things I try not to do is answer the question: “What does this mean?” That’s for you, the reader, to decide. I just set up the scaffolding.