Month: May 2025

I went on my first book tour in 1995. Even though my pub­li­cist did all the ground­work and prepped me like a pro, I had no idea what to ex­pect. I still don’t.

The biggest un­known is the audi­ence. There may be two or there may be 200 plus, and the size doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily re­flect the qual­ity of your book, your name re­cog­ni­tion or all the work your pub­li­cist and the host have undertaken.

What you can count on is that at some point, there will be a wild­card. My first was an eld­erly man, ob­vi­ously in some stage of de­men­tia, who kept ask­ing why all the im­ages in his book were dif­fer­ent from every­one else’s. Then there was the home­less wo­man who at­temp­ted to dom­in­ate the Q & A ses­sion with in­co­her­ent stories.

But the most wor­ri­some was the men­tally dis­turbed man (even­tu­ally in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized) who got a hold of my phone num­ber and called re­peatedly to say he wanted to “get me alone some­where” so he could tell me what ob­scene acts my friends were en­ga­ging in with chil­dren. In his first call, he said he’d been at my present­a­tion the night be­fore but there were too many people around for him to talk to me privately. The gig had ended late at night and vehicles left the isol­ated park­ing lot quickly. I was glad a friend had ac­com­pan­ied me.

’ll nev­er for­get the trip on a gravel road that was so full of potholes I kept look­ing in the rear­view mir­ror to see what part of the car might be fall­ing off. But at least I had con­trol over the vehicle’s speed and was the only per­son reacting.

That wasn’t so while fly­ing to east­ern Canada for a present­a­tion at a writer’s fest­iv­al. The wo­man on my left had a pan­ic at­tack when the plane ex­per­i­enced tur­bu­lence. Despite mul­tiple flight at­tend­ants of­fer­ing re­as­sur­ing words, as well as coach­ing on deep breath­ing, the dis­traught wo­man shrieked at every jostle. I asked if she’d like me to hold her hand and she said yes. Lunch had just been served so I nibbled at my sand­wich with my free hand. When the man on the oth­er side of me began moan­ing and hy­per­vent­il­at­ing, I put my sand­wich down and held his hand too.

My ac­com­mod­a­tion while on tour has ranged from me­diocre to wa­ter­front ho­tels. The icon­ic Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver’s west end is my fave. Quaint charm at its best. But that isn’t al­ways the case. At one des­tin­a­tion, I was es­cor­ted to an un­oc­cu­pied but fur­nished house where I was to spend the night. As we entered the front door, the loc­al or­gan­izer said, “Oh good, nothing’s in the traps. Yes, plur­al, as in five baited mouse traps.

Presentations in­volving PowerPoint can be tricky. I al­ways re­quest a tech per­son be present to as­sist with setup, but that isn’t al­ways pos­sible. Several times I’ve had to crawl along stage floors with the audi­ence look­ing on while try­ing to con­nect com­pat­ible cables.

Once, after re­cruit­ing a teen from a nearby cof­fee shop to get things go­ing, someone turned on the wash­room light at the same mo­ment someone else plugged in the kettle for tea after the event. The room was plunged into dark­ness and when power was re­stored the screen re­turned to “no in­put sig­nal found.” Once again, I ran down the street to get the teen.

A book tour of­ten means at­tend­ing as many gigs as pos­sible in the shortest amount of time. On one Vancouver tour, I was in­ter­viewed by two ra­dio sta­tions, ap­peared on three tele­vi­sion shows, gave a present­a­tion at the down­town lib­rary and had a photo shoot for the Globe & Mail all with­in 24 hours.

To say I was ex­hausted is an un­der­state­ment. That’s why hav­ing a good road­ie is a god­send. They can drive, carry boxes of books and sell them if necessary.

Yes, tak­ing ex­tra books is im­port­ant. Buyers may ex­ceed the host’s ex­pect­a­tions, or the ship­ment may be waylaid.

A road­ie can also be de­terrent to po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous strangers.   

Going on book tour is the coun­ter­point to be­ing a writer.  You are no longer se­questered in a room by your­self; you are at the head of a room in front of a lot of people, in many cases, most of them unknown.

It is ex­cit­ing and daunt­ing. Will they like your book? Will they buy your book? Will they stare at you in rapt awe or will they bom­bard you with awk­ward ques­tions? All are possible.

The im­port­ant thing is to re­mem­ber that you are an au­thor on book tour, which is some­thing to be proud of no mat­ter what happens.

Photo cred­its:

Woman with books Mykta Dolmatov/Dreamstime.com

Red car Irina Miroshnichenko/Dreamstime.com