Ficlets

A question about the book tour, from Ficleteer PWStrain:

My big question: Who is REALLY paying for this tour? Does the publisher have it in the marketing budget for the book? Will you find it charged back against royalties? Will that fabulous cheeseburger eventually show up on a statement somewhere that you’ll have to pay for?

PWStrain is perhaps thinking of the music industry, in which music companies will often take all sorts of promotional and marketing costs and tack them (or some significant portion of them) onto the back of the advance the company gave a musician or band, thus more or less making sure that the band never quite makes it into the black or makes all that much in the way of money. These sort of contractual hijinxs are why it’s not necessarily a great thing to be a musicians. Yes, they get groupies. Lord knows they should something, because most of them aren’t making any money to speak of.

Fortunately, however, I am not in the same boat. Not only do I not have groupies, but I will also not have the costs of this book tour contractually tacked onto my advance. My book publisher (in this case Tor Books) is paying for this tour out of its promotional budget. It’s paying for airlines, it’s paying for the hotel rooms, it’s paying for the handlers who pick me up and lead me around to my events, my meals and my occasional taxi rides, although in the latter two cases I’m paying for them, keeping receipts and then getting reimbursed. Basically, all costs essential to getting me where I need to be for my appearances and keeping me fed are covered. I don’t have to pay a dime of those.

Which sounds like an excuse to go insane on the free dinners, I suppose. However, as Uncle Ben tells us, with great power comes great responsibility – which is to say if you’re smart, you don’t abuse the cost-covering power of the publisher. If I ate hugley expensive dinners at every stop and invited all my friends along, I’d likely get a little note from my publicist informing me that I should probably get a grip. Likewise, while Tor might be happy to pick up a cab ride from the airport to a hotel, I’m not planning to try to get the company to reimburse me for the gifts I bought my daughter when I was in Portland. Basically I’m acting like I’m a grown-up, and that I might want to go on a book tour again at some point in the near future.

The fact that Tor is shouldering the cost of the tour means that it’s something of a risk for them: If no one comes out to see me while I’m on the road, that’s thousands of dollars down the drain, and to be blunt about it, that was one of my big fears going in – that I’d get out here and there would be six people at every stop, and I would be going from city to city becoming increasingly aware of just how much I was costing my publisher. The good news is that the turnout has been better than six people per stop; the crowds have been good enough that I suspect each stop has justified its expense in exchange for the publicity it’s provided, if not in direct sales (I would have to be packing in at least couple hundred people at each spot, each buying a book or two at the bookstore, for that to happen. Neil Gaiman might be at that level, but alas, I am not. But I don’t think anyone was expecting that, anyway. I’m pretty sure I’m performing to expectations).

I should note that while Tor is shouldering the cost and risk of the tour, it also wasn’t stupid about when to put me on tour. I’m on tour supporting the third and final book in a trilogy; the first two books have sold very well and they’re also both now in mass-market paperback, which makes them easy and cheap to get (and I have another novel out besides). It also helps that I’ve won awards for writing science fiction and have a Web presence that helps promote myself and the tour (hello!). The timing for the tour was intelligently done, in other words.

Even then, however, I had to audition. Which is to say earlier in the year Tor had me come out to New York City to see if I was presentable – some authors, for better or worse, won’t do well in a tour situation. Tor’s marketing and publicity folks needed to see if I was the kind of writer who could play well with others and handle being away from home and family for nearly three weeks. I appear to have passed the audition, and here I am.

The good news for me in all of this is that I think the tour has been pretty successful so far (right this moment I’m in Iowa City, where my reading and Q&A was taped for local public radio, and where there was an excellent turnout – go Iowa!), and that, indeed, I haven’t cracked, although a few days back I had a bout of stomach flu that made me wish I was home already. But I’m now on the downslope of the tour – I’ll be home in less than a week! – and that’s a good thing too. I’m glad Tor is paying for the tour and letting me go all over the US to say hello; I’ll also be glad to see my wife and kid again.