Author Tours: Novel Twists on the Tried and True
This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on August 10, 2006 Sign up now!
by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 8/10/2006
The children's author book tour is alive and well—and taking some divergent paths. When PW queried publicists about recent or upcoming author publicity plans, most reported that they had not backed off standard tours involving visits to bookstores and schools and local media interviews, yet many said they are being more selective about which authors they will tour, given the expense of sending authors on the road.
Still, most believe that live author appearances and signings translate into book sales and have the unique advantage of enabling authors to connect personally with young readers, parents, teachers and booksellers. Prime candidates for traditional tours are well-known picture-book authors and illustrators and big-name middle-grade authors, who tend to draw the largest crowds at store events and are popular choices for school bookings. Publishers view the young adult audience as the toughest to attract to author events, given teens' busy schedules and independent lifestyles.
Getting the Hype off to an Early Start
Conversations with publishers revealed some noteworthy innovations on the standard author tour. One ploy for building early excitement for a book is arranging pre-publication author publicity, a strategy that Little Brown Books for Young Readers used successfully for first-time novelist Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight came out in October 2005 with a 75,000-copy first printing. By way of background: the Phoenix author, a stay-at-home mother of three young boys, had a dream one night and immediately started writing a story based on it. She sent her manuscript to Writers House, where it was picked out of the slush pile and submitted to editors, including Megan Tingley. Instantly hooked on the book, Tingley made a preemptive bid and passed the novel on to others in-house, who shared her enthusiasm. When Little, Brown distributed ARCs of Twilight at ALA Midwinter and sent them to accounts, librarians and retailers were also hooked.
Were these pre-pub publicity efforts effective? Absolutely, says Eulberg, who reports that rights to Twilight have now been sold in 26 countries and the book is in its fifth printing, for a total of 105,000 copies. The author, who also embarked on a three-city tour after the book's release, "is incredibly personable and passionate about her work," which helped make both tours a success.
LBBYR has another pre-pub tour planned for another debut author, Trenton Lee Stewart, whose novel, The Mysterious Benedict Society, is due out next March. "People in the publishing industry like to connect with the individual responsible for creating a book," Eulberg remarks. "And if that happens in the early stages of a book's life, it can only help."
Paperback Tours
On the flip side timing-wise, some publicists are opting to tour authors well after their books first appear. In the case of middle-grade or YA titles, publishers may decide to wait to send an author on the road until the book is released in paperback, the format in which sales will be significantly higher. Or they may send authors back on tour for a second go-round.
There are a number of considerations factoring into the decision to launch a paperback tour, not the least of which is a book's garnering impressive awards in hardcover. In recent years, Random House Books for Young Readers has scheduled several such tours. Linda Sue Park toured to promote the Yearling edition of her 2002 Newbery winner, A Single Shard, when this reprint was published in 2003. And this spring the publisher toured Gary Schmidt when it released the Yearling edition of his Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, which won both a Newbery and Printz Honor.
Judith Haut, v-p and executive director of publicity at Random House Children's Books, mentions another incentive to promote the paperback editions of these novels with tours. "Even though we didn't publish these novels in hardcover, it is important to us that we support these authors and make them feel a part of our list," she comments. "We wanted to make an effort to establish the paperback editions of their books in stores and schools."
The personality of an author is also a factor in deciding whether to launch a paperback tour—and in determining how to shape it. "We always consider whether an author connects well with kids or with teachers or librarians," Haut notes. "We try to pair the author with the right constituencies. If an author is more comfortable with teachers and librarians, we focus on teacher nights or pair up with an organization to stage an event. If the author is great with youngsters, we'll emphasize kid events. Gary was a superstar on the road. He mesmerized kids and booksellers raved about him."
Haut predicts that there will be additional Random House tours for paperback reprints, saying, "We have been very happy with how these tours have gone, and we will absolutely continue to do them for the right book and right author."
One of the stops on Schmidt's tour was Dayton, Ohio's Books & Co., where Sharon Kelly Roth, director of public relations, views the practice of promoting paperback editions of middle-grade and YA books with tours "very valuable. For people in these age groups it is always effective to have a lower price point, since if they want to buy a number of books at once, they are able to do it. We often invite groups of students in when an author visits and send order forms to the schools in advance. We find we've been very successful with these author visits."
A Belt-Tightened Tour
 Buckley, emerging from a Hertz location. Photo: Lindsay Winget. |
Explaining the genesis of the tour, Wells says, "When we signed up Michael's series, he wanted us to create a Sisters Grimm Web site and we agreed, but told him that as a result of that expense, we would have to be cautious when it came to planning a tour."
On the tour, which started in late April and entailed 30 appearances over 30 days, Buckley flew several legs, but mostly drove a rented car with a navigational system and stayed at budget hotels, forgoing a hired car with driver and escort. "He had a tight schedule and he did it solo," Wells says. "He was a one-man road warrior. The 'budget tour' is quite unique—it's definitely more bang for the buck. And by cutting expenses, he was able to stay on the road longer."
The author traveled from New York to California and then headed east again, making numerous stops along the way. Wells observes that this dressed-down style of touring doesn't suit every author, but for Buckley it was "a great way for him, as an author beginning his career, to get out in the public eye and meet as many booksellers as possible."
According to one bookseller who hosted him, Ellen Mager, owner of Booktenders' Secret Garden in Doylestown, Pa., Buckley was the ideal author for such a freewheeling tour. She recalls, "He was spontaneous and generous with his time. After his presentation and book signing, he sat down with a group of kids and talked and talked books with them. I had to scrape the kids off the ceiling by the end of the night—they were so excited to have talked with him for so long. He was a natural at it. And it was great that he and I had such freedom to do whatever we wanted during his visit."
Buckley will set out on a similar "budget tour" next spring to promote the fourth Sisters Grimm tale, Once Upon a Crime, and the paperback editions of the first and second installments, The Fairy-Tale Detectives and The Unusual Suspects.
The Satellite Solution
In another spin on traditional children's author tour practices, an increasing number of children's publishers are cashing in on satellite technology to maximize both their touring dollars and their authors' exposure, as well as minimize the amount of time required by a writer to tout his or her book. Publicists cite many advantages to satellite interviews, which are customarily scheduled through satellite media companies that pitch the author to specific TV and radio markets and print venues.
Cathleen Brady, senior manager of children's publicity at Chronicle Books, opted for a radio satellite tour for Robin Jarvis for a practical reason: the author lives in the U.K. Jarvis, author of The Deptford Mice Trilogy and the Deptford Histories, launches a new trilogy, The Whitby Witches, this fall. "This is a great way to break him out in the U.S.," Brady notes. "And the beauty of it is that he will be heard in a number of markets across the country without traveling." As an added bonus, Jarvis's personality is ideally suited for radio repartee, says Brady, describing him as a "jolly Englishman whose accent is especially appealing in this Harry Potter era."
As another advantage of satellite tours, Brady cites the "shotgun approach" of the technology. "Satellite interviews let you get news of a book out there all at once into various markets." she says. "Otherwise, if you pitch an author over time, the publicity is instead just a trickle." This immediate publicity saturation is especially advantageous in the instance of a book with a timely subject. Jennifer Levine, Disney Book Group's director of publicity, is planning a fall radio satellite tour for Patricia McCormick, author of Sold, which Levine calls a timely and topical book about teens who are being sold into human sex trafficking. The author traveled to Nepal and Calcutta to interview girls in red-light districts and, Levine comments, "her amazing stories lend themselves to a radio format."
Satellite tours can also come in handy when extenuating circumstances prevent an author from making live publicity appearances. Clarion, which recently released Karen Cushman's The Loud Silence of Francine Green, a novel about a girl growing up during the McCarthy era, scheduled a satellite radio tour for the author since she was not able to do a multi-city tour due to health issues. Instead, Cushman did three hours of back-to-back interviews that aired on 18 radio stations during morning drive time.
Similarly, Simon & Schuster diverted from its traditional track of touring bestselling collaborators Betsy Lewin and Doreen Cronin when their latest book, Dooby Dooby Moo, was released this week. Since Cronin is pregnant, the publisher set up a 20-market radio satellite tour consisting of national radio networks like Radio Disney and Westwood One's nationally syndicated The Jim Bohannon Show, as well as various regional markets.
Celebrity authors are prime candidates for the satellite spotlight, a number of publicists report. Not surprisingly, publishers often spring for a TV satellite tour—which reportedly costs at least twice the amount of a radio satellite tour—when they are promoting a red-carpet author. HarperCollins Children's Books has between 13 and 15 satellite tours lined up to promote its star-studded fall list. Appearing on TV via satellite will be Jamie Lee Curtis (Is There Really a Human Race?), Emeril (There's a Chef in My World)—both of whom will also be heard on satellite-beamed radio interviews—as well as Queen Latifah (Queen of the Scene). The publisher also has fall satellite tours in the works for Meg Cabot, Lemony Snicket, Laura Ruby, Laura Numeroff and Gail Carson Levine.
Sandee Roston, executive director of publicity, observes, "The best thing about satellite tours is the ability to cover 10 to 30 markets in a short amount of time. This is particularly useful with celebrity authors, since we often have a limited window of time with them."
Some publicists are bullish on satellite tours as complements to rather than replacements for traditional author tours, because they enable an author to reach a market too remote to be included on his or her road trip. Candlewick has a dual-pronged tour in place for Sam Stern, a 15-year-old British cookbook author who has become a culinary celebrity in the U.K. and France. To promote his Cooking Up a Storm: The Teen Survival Cookbook, the publisher is jetting the young chef to the States, where he will do "meet and greet sessions" with print media and visit several bookstores in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But the crux of the campaign, Roberts says, is a satellite TV tour in at least 20 markets that entails both live and taped segments. Anchoring the tour is Stern's kick-off appearance on Today on August 7. "We had limited time with Sam and he is such a strong, charismatic personality that a satellite TV campaign made perfect sense," Roberts remarks. "And of course the subject of the book is perfectly suited to lifestyle TV."
Cutting to the bottom line: are satellite media tours effective in selling books? Surely some children's authors resonate more deeply with an audience that is apt to be more skewed toward adults than youngsters. At Harcourt, which did a satellite radio tour last fall for Dan Greenburg's Secrets of Dripping Fang series, associate director of publicity Sarah Shealy observes that this author was a good choice for this publicity venue since "he is known in adult circles for his cult-classic book, How to Be a Jewish Mother. The talk-radio audience read that book in the 1960s and now would be interested in buying books for kids and grandkids. It's impossible to determine if these interviews actually sell books, but they do help to spread the word about a new book."
Despite the cost- and time-efficiency of satellite tours, this technology is not likely to render obsolete store and school author visits and book signings that have been the mainstay of children's book publicity for generations. "Author tours will continue to be the best way for authors to reach kids directly," says Levine at Disney. "Kids continue to turn out by the hundreds for events with authors like Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson and Eoin Colfer, and the authors just love it. It's the most concrete way for them to see their target audience enjoying the fruits of their labor. And booksellers have come to develop such incredible relationships with authors who tour in support of their titles that even just one in-store event can result in handselling all year long." High praise indeed for the tried-and-true.
