How book tours have changed over the years
But even as my sales were growing, the tours themselves were getting less bang for the effort.
The media was harder to get. Even if I had some cool new nonfiction hook (corpses who wake up in morgues in VANISH. Or the how-to of shrinking human heads in THE KEEPSAKE) the TV and radio spots weren't there as they used to be. I'm not the only novelist who faces this dwindling of interest; it seems to be a problem for all of us. The publisher pays to fly you into a new town, puts you up in a hotel, all to speak at a bookstore where you end up selling maybe thirty hardcovers. Without any TV or radio or print coverage, does that make economic sense?
Emphasis added by me.
No. It doesn't.
That's why I see Blog Book Tours as one wave of the future.
Another wave is Mini Book Expo for Bloggers.
The third wave is How Our Future Does Things.
And the fourth: eBook Signings: The Postcard Solution?
As the reading world moves towards eBooks, a shift in the culture will happen too.
eBooks = Internet. Thus the Internet should become the primary pipeline and meeting place for eBook readers.
With no physical copies to sell -- except maybe some POD done for the leftovers and retrogrades -- an author having to be physically present somewhere becomes pointless.
And economically nonsensical.
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