Mother Of All Book Tours

One motorhome, six thousand kilometres and the Mother Of All Book Tours.

Once upon a time, the national book tour ranked among the major pleasures of authorship, giving reclusive scribes a brief illusion of importance. In city after city, the author was driven by the publisher’s rep to lunches and studio visits with local media figures as well as book signings at major bookstores. Indeed, Marjorie and I met when she interviewed me on a book tour in 1993. But local bookstores and media outlets have withered, and publishers have become lean, mean and parsimonious. Every year over one million books are published in the United States alone, and the average non-fiction book sells fewer than 250 copies a year. Only superstars now get book tours.