Book Tour Diary: Twelve Cities, Twelve Bookshops

Last spring I visited twelve independent bookshops in twelve cities. I packed one suitcase, two pairs of shoes, a box of pens that ran out by the fourth stop and a paperback copy of my own novel so dog-eared by the end that booksellers kept offering me a fresh one. Here are the highlights — and the night nobody came. It was the best, most tiring and most humbling month of my writing life, and I want to get it down before the details blur into one long highway.

A book tour sounds glamorous from the outside. Mostly, it is driving, eating granola bars in parking lots and practicing the same reading in hotel mirrors. But in between, there are moments that remind you why you wrote the book in the first place. These are some of mine.

The route

The tour started in Portland, Maine, and ended in Portland, Oregon, which my publicist thought was funny and I thought was very far. In between, I zigzagged through New England, the Midwest, the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest, mostly by car, with two flights where the distances were too long to drive in a day. Every stop was an independent bookshop, which was the only thing I had asked for.

• Twelve cities in twenty-six days
• Roughly four thousand miles on the rental car
• Eleven readings and one long conversation
• About six hundred books signed, give or take a few smudged ones
• One blizzard, two thunderstorms and a flat tire outside Omaha

Each shop had its own personality. One was a converted firehouse in Ohio with the children’s section where the trucks used to park. Another, in Colorado, had a resident cat who sat on the signing table and refused to move. A shop in Wisconsin served homemade pie after every event, which I fully support as a national policy.

The driving days had their own rhythm. I would leave a hotel around nine, stop for coffee in whatever town looked friendliest and spend the afternoon listening to audiobooks or, more often, to nothing at all. Some of the best ideas for my next book came somewhere on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, where the land is so flat and wide that your mind has room to wander. I kept a small notebook on the passenger seat and pulled over at rest stops to scribble sentences before they disappeared. By the end of the tour, that notebook held the first rough sketch of a new story, a handful of overheard lines and a very long list of pie recommendations from booksellers across the country.

The best night

A tiny shop in Vermont, forty chairs, and a reader who knew the book better than I did.

It was the fourth stop, in a small town where the main street was still lined with dirty snowbanks in late March. The shop was called Hollow Pine Books (fictional), and it was barely bigger than my living room. The owner had set out forty folding chairs, and by the time I started reading, every one was full and people were standing between the shelves.

During the questions afterward, a woman in the second row raised her hand and asked about a minor character, the hardware store owner, who appears in only three scenes. She had noticed that he always mentions the weather before saying anything important, and she wanted to know if that was on purpose. It was, but I had forgotten I did it. She had read the book twice and kept notes. I signed her copy and then, slightly embarrassed, asked if I could borrow her observations for the next reading. She said yes and laughed.

Independent bookshops are where books find their people.

Elliot

That is what a good reading feels like. Not applause, though applause is nice, but the sense that the book has left you and gone to live with other people, who now know it in ways you don’t.

The quiet night

A blizzard kept everyone home. The bookseller and I talked for two hours.

It was the eighth stop, in a Minnesota town where the forecast had said “light snow” and the sky had other ideas. By six o’clock the roads were nearly empty and the plows were struggling. The owner, an older man named Walter Price (fictional), called each person on the sign-up list, told them to stay home and then turned on the kettle.

We sat by the front window watching the snow pile up on the sidewalk. He told me how he had opened the shop thirty-one years earlier with his late wife, how they had almost closed twice and how a group of regulars had once organized a fundraiser to cover a winter heating bill. I told him about the two drafts in my drawer and the sister who finally told the story. By the end of the night, he had sold me four books, and I had signed every copy of mine on his shelves so he could sell them later.

I have done many readings since. I think about that empty room more than most of them.

What I learned on the road

A month of readings teaches you things about your own book that years of writing it don’t. Reading the same chapter aloud a dozen times, I heard every clumsy rhythm. Answering the same questions, I discovered what readers actually cared about, which was rarely what I expected.

1. Read less than you think. Fifteen minutes is plenty. People want to talk, not listen to a full chapter.
2. Change the passage when you get bored. If you are tired of it, the audience can tell.
3. Ask the bookseller what to read. They know their customers far better than you do.
4. Buy a book at every shop. It is good manners and a good way to build a library of memories.
5. Eat a real dinner. Granola bars are not a dinner, no matter how many you eat.

On the small audiences

Several nights had fewer than ten people. At first I took it personally. By the end I loved those nights. With six readers in a circle, the event turns into a conversation. People ask stranger and better questions, and nobody is performing.

Key takeaway: The size of the crowd doesn’t measure the night. The quality of the conversation does.

Thank you, booksellers

I finished the tour in Oregon on a rainy Tuesday, signed the last stack, ate a celebratory slice of marionberry pie and slept for most of the next day. Then I wrote a thank-you card to every shop.

Independent booksellers are some of the hardest-working people I know. They hand-sell books they love, host strangers in their stores and stay open through blizzards and slow seasons because they believe a town needs a place for books. If you have one near you, please visit. Buy something, even something small. And if an author you have never heard of is reading there on a snowy night, go anyway. You might end up talking for two hours.

My upcoming readings are listed on the calendar here. I hope to see some of you on the next tour, and I promise to bring better pens.