Memoir of a Book Tour

What does it take to sell a book? Random House, my publisher, and I were willing to bet that a two-week, six-city tour of bookstores and synagogues across the country just might do the trick. And so in the middle of October, I made my way to the airport in Rome and flew to the United States.

Before publishing my first book, I used to dream of traveling at my publisher's expense to various cities in order to show off my work to appreciative audiences, newspaper and magazine reporters, and radio talk shows. In reality, a book tour may include a little of that dream. If your name is Jonathan Franzen or Toni Morrison, a book tour will include a great deal of that dream. For the rest of us, a book tour is a kind of marathon that can range from moments of exhiliration to deep depression. You pray that people will actually show up, that they've read your good reviews and not your bad ones, that they'll have the right sense of humor, the right politics, or simply that they've seen your author photo and think you're cute.

The biggest trouble with readings is that generally people don't like being read to. Or at least grown-ups don't. So it's important for a writer starting out that his friends and family mobilize the troops.

And mobilize they did. Everywhere I went, I was flattered and honored to see people I loved in the audience, particularly in my hometown of Detroit, where the local Borders brought out extra chairs to accommodate the overflow. Yet, it doesn't necessarily follow that because someone is your friend or family member or family member's friend that he or she is your target audience. In fact, quite a few people I met at readings told me they never read books. And so I read my novel about Jews visiting Israel to Christians who've never left the continent, about a middle-aged housewife with her troubled gay son to older men with no children or young straight career women, or impressionable middle schoolers who'd been promised extra credit by my nephew's English teacher for showing up. The best part of it was that many of these people actually had a good time.

What is the point of a book tour? I'm convinced it's more than the event itself. It's an opportunity to turn the publication of the book, which is really no more than opening a box and putting copies on shelves, into a happening worth marking by local bookstores, media, and readers. Your book gets placed in a prominent position in the store a week beforehand. Your reading gets listed in local newspapers. You sometimes do interviews. You shake hands with booksellers and audience members, several of whom (to my great delight) had read my first book and had eagerly been awaiting my new one.

Then there are the unforeseen wonderful small moments you never expected. I heard from friends of mine I hadn't heard from in years, including two men who came out to me for the first time. In Atlanta, I met a gay man who'd just escaped to the big city from the small town where he'd felt trapped for years and was enjoying his new life of freedom. In Washington, I was met at the airport by a "media escort," which is a person who makes a living by picking up authors in town for book signings and taking them around the city for the day. My media escort turned out to be a smart, insightful social worker with whom I shared a thoughtful conversation about religion and the role of faith in progressive politics. In L.A., I was adopted for the weekend by the synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim, where I was treated like a rock star.

And then in Chicago, I had a moment that reminded me what this whole business is really about. My eight-year old nephew Nick had just purchased the latest Berenstein Bears book--he owns the entire series--and I asked him if I could read it to him before he went to sleep. Nick very graciously said yes. "Do you have a bear you like to cuddle with when you're being read to?" I said. He did, and with his stuffed animal safely tucked into the crook of his arm, he lay in bed with a completely absorbed expression on his round face as I opened the book to page one and began to tell a story.