George McGovern (longtime senator, '72 Dem. Nominee for PotUS, other distinctions) is going to be at a small privately owned bookstore in Montgomery, Alabama, this week to give a talk and sign copies of his Lincoln bio. He’ll be here from 4-6 in the afernoon/evening when many people are working or just getting off.
Senator McGovern lives in South Dakota. Since he’s 86 years old and a widower I doubt that he travels alone- he probably has some sort of assistant/secretary who comes with him. To my knowledge he doesn’t have close friends or family in the area so that requires a hotel, plus airfare or other transportation for him and his companion, so you’ve already made a big dent in if not exceeded $1000 for travel/hotel accomodations/food/etc. for his trip.
This is a small bookstore, and while there will probably be a turnout we’re not talking auditorium- probably a few dozen people. Assuming 100 books are sold (which wouldn’t seem unreasonable as too many or too few) at $22 per book that’s $2200, of which McGovern’s royalties are presumably 10-20% of that (whatever his deal was) and nowhere near the amount of his trip to Alabama. I’ve no idea what the markup is on books or how much the publishers/bookstore receives, but by the time you take away travel expenses it can’t be that much, nor do I know if McGovern’s being given a speaker’s fee.
I’ve been to signings with Anne Rice and Alice Walker that were rock-star mobbed, though even if 1000 books were sold (and I doubt they were) there’s no way you could pay those writer’s expenses and speaking fees from the sales. (Walker charges anywhere from $30,000 to $75,000 for speaking engagements and while I don’t know Rice’s fee I’m sure it’s way up in the 5 figures.)
So anyway, the question is:
Do successful author appearances pay for themselves with the number of books sold, or are they more of a promotional event for the bookstore and not expected to make money? Why do publishers sometimes fund these events, because again it would be hard to make enough to justify the expenses (and that’s assuming it’s a success, which it might not be)?
Uh… B’ham has a fairly sizeable gay community (not Atlanta or Pensacola but up there) including elected openly gay officials, but she’s right that a book by a gay author about gay characters would never fly in Savannah.
You forget the power of the press. Nothing is more press worthy than
“Former presidental candidate George McGovern stopped by Montgomery to partronize his favourite small town bookstore, where he’ll be signing his new book…”
Then people will see it on the news and come.
Well maybe. Perhaps with his age it is preferable for him to go to small stores, where crowds will be less so it will be less stressful on him.
I recall reading interviews with Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum Mystery Series) where she says when she first started out she’d go to stores and there would be days no one asked her to sign a book and she’d spend the time helping the clerks in the store, 'cause she was so bored. Of course now she’s swamped.
Since the publishers organize the tours I reckon they base it on what worked in the past
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here. Nothing about the publishing industry makes any sense.
Book tours do not make money in terms of books sold at signings. Their purpose is to get local publicity, encourage fans, spread word of mouth, and do nice for the bookstores. There is nothing above the level of individual anecdotes that any of this works as a return on investment. It’s probably true that it works for certain kinds of books better than others. An author who writes a series is a far better candidate for a book tour than one who writes a book every few years on a different topic. Bookstore appearances nowadays are also almost totally sideshows to local media appearances anyway. I guarantee that the recession will cause a huge decrease in book tours for anybody under celebrity level.
As for McGovern, he may just like traveling and pressing the flesh, so to speak.
Yah, I know … as a native Southerner, I’m used to being painted with stereotypes, even from people who ought to know better. Sad, but true.
What she says is true, though, in that BECAUSE of the stereotype, publishers would probably not arrange for such signings in towns where they THINK they wouldn’t be well-received. Gabaldon is probably speaking from personal experience, because her secondary line of novels is about an 18th-century gay British nobleman and military officer. I’m sure signings for those books are limited to the big sinful cities such as SF and NY. :rolleyes:
I doubt any book signing (other than one in a local bookstore where the author could drive) ever made money for the author. Even one where people are lined up for blocks, the royalties on the books probably aren’t going to cover travel expenses. As Exapno says, it’s for publicity, building an audience for your next book, and bringing in a little money for bookstores (who do make money on them by selling the author’s books – but not a lot).
I used to organise book signings* for a fairly small independent bookshop and, unless we restricted our advertising to distributing flyers and in-shop posters, most events were likely to make only a minimal profit. Add in the cost of some press advertising and (even with the publisher paying half) a loss was almost guaranteed!
Except that we’d be doing advertising of some sort for the shop anyway, so we tended not to factor that in when we decided if an event was a financial success.
It was good PR for us to be able to say to people later that there had been a signing, if only to show that we were as ‘good’ a shop as the big chain branches.
And you might be surprised how few people are willing to make the effort and turn up on a wet Tuesday afternoon to get a book signed! Even for best-selling authors…
back before readings and seated audiences, etc. became the norm. I’m talking about a table in the shop with the author behind it signing and talking to the person whose turn it was in the queue. (Well, hopefully there was a queue!)
I agree with everything that Exapno wrote. My sister owned a small independent bookstore and that was always my understanding about the rationale for, and the economics of, book signings.
Incidentally, the American Booksellers Association’s magazine used to have an annual “contest” for its members to anonymously nominate their least favorite authors (the prima donnas, the bitches/bastards, the unreliables) who’d visited for signings. Some of the stories were quite entertaining… until, I gather, the authors collectively demanded that the ABA stop running that feature.
Generally, as a writer I hate signings. They can be incredibly humiliating, but on a personal note I have found if I have to be someplace and my publisher will pick up all or part of my expenses if I drop by a lookstore for three to five hours, no problem.
For the majority of us who write books, the publishers do little to no promotion, and its up to the authors to generate interest. My publisher isn’t going to pay for me to go anywhere, but if I push them they’ll set up signings at bookstores in the region, and if I work real hard maybe I can sell a dozen books at each one. It’s a humbling experience, especially when nobody shows up.
But the reality is that for authors like me, who work very hard to sell 10-15,000 copies of a book, this is very much a one-book-at-a-time business. A book signing at a local B&N may sell 10 copies, a radio appearance may sell 5, a mention by a local columnist might sell 3. Authors have to promote or their books will die. The quality of the writing has very little to do with how many copies you sell.
This is my experience. My publisher did nothing about readings or signings, so I arranged those myself. It’s a lot of work, you get turned down in your requests for an in-store event 99% of the time, and then not a lot of folks show up (which is why you get turned down 99% of the time). Altogether a stressful and humiliating experience.
I’ve read some of those- the Golden Dartboard IIRC. There are some googlable articles on it. The horror stories included Douglas Coupland (Generation X) who is apparently unstable and prone to tantrums, Gore Vidal (no surprise there), Lewis Grizzard (southern humorist for those unfamiliar), and Faye Dunaway (who wrote a couple of non-fiction books some years ago; there are actors and directors who’ve said they’ll never work with her again and apparently she’s the same off the set). They also did a sweetheart poll of those who were a joy to work with and it included (a surprise considering how much she loves her fame) Anne Rice.
I remember, as Sampiro does, Gore Vidal and Lewis Grizzard being mentioned. The only other one who I remember was the British author Jeffrey Archer. I love his books (First Among Equals is a particular favorite of mine) and short stories, but by widespread agreement he’s a demanding, arrogant, pushy asshole when he’s touring. One of the bookstore owners who had the misfortune of dealing with him said she was glad when he went to prison for perverting the course of justice: Jeffrey Archer - Wikipedia
In Michael Moore’s documentary of his book signing tour he (with some help from Garrison Keillor whose tour his intersected with) had less than kind things to say about media escorts. It made me wonder if these two were being proactive since both were probably familiar with the award. (In spite of his “humble everyman” persona, Moore is evidently a first order prima donna; he got really nasty press in London a few years ago for the fits he pitched with the staff of the theater where he was performing his one man show.)
Deepak Chopra is probably the author not named I’ve read the most assholery stories about (evidently when the cameras are rolling he’s Gandhi, when they’re off he’s a total prick). Of newsmen Lou Dobbs is evidently as obnoxious in person as on his program while Keith Olbermann has a reputation for hitting on any woman younger than he is.
I was surprised to read in one of Elendil’s links that Barbara Bush is on the “nice” list as I’ve read (not just in Al Franken’s book) that she can be a condescending shrew. I wonder what Franken is like (I can easily see him being a whiney pain in the ass) or for that matter Ann Coulter (who I wouldn’t be surprised to read that she’s a decent enough person in private or that some of her local escorts have never been seen again).
In many cases, book stores receive books from the publishing house on a sale or return basis. If an author signs a book, the book store can’t return it to the publishing house and get their money back. For this reason, sometimes the publisher and/or the author wants to go to the signing, and sign as many copies of the book as possible not caring whether they get sold or not, to stop these books being returned.
