Here’s my notes from my first book tour (one city, 3 days, 6 appearances). Here’s your chance to learn from my mistakes:

1. You will be overwhelmed. There are too many logistics to juggle at the same time with too many different people not to screw things up. It’s ok, it’s fine, but prepare to leave things, forget things, and make mistakes. As Durden said, if you want to make an omelet, you have to breaks some eggs.
2. Make a daily itinerary. I had a daily itinerary set up with address, directions, and contact info. Before you go to bed, make sure everything is set and confirmed for the next day. Margins of error are small, and people expect you to arrive at certain times.
3. Don’t trust technology or anything else. Things always break. Murphy’s law is alive and well in 2005. Expect presentations not to work and video equipment to fail. Transportation will be late. Compatibility is a myth. Be ready to talk about the book without any technological support, even if just for 10 minutes – that’s enough to give people some context and ask you questions.
4. Get everyone’s business card. I have a decent memory for faces, an excellent memory of ideas, but a horrible memory of names. I didn’t get nearly enough business cards from people. I love questions and thinking about them, but there’s never enough time. E-mail is better. And I know the routine, grab card, write note/comment/question on back, put in secret special non-forgettable place in clothing, review later. But I was overwhelmed (see #1) and unable to remember to do this nearly enough. I’d have asked people to do this, hand me a card with their question on it, but historically this never works – people won’t do it. The whole business card thing is awkward, but I’ll just have to suck it up next time.
5. Be friendly and open. This is basic presenting advice, but I’m there to invite people to spend more time with my book. If I can’t do that in person, I don’t blame people for not placing much hope in the book. I tried to think of myself as a host for the book, and the talk was the tasty appetizer. If I seem smart, and the appetizer good, they should want, all on their own, to buy the book. Smart good books are rare.
6. Two talks a day is enough – The most valuable, interesting part of the whole experience was talking to people before and after the actual talk/seminar thing. That’s when there’s some shared context and the chance to get to know people. If you do more than two talks a day you will running from venue to venue, and not get much interactive time with people. If you don’t want that, fine – go for 3 or 4. But if you do want to go deeper into people’s questions or learn something, 2 seems about the maximum
7. Have free things. Free books helped get people to stay for Q&A. The flyers and postcards I had gave people something to take with them if they didn’t get a book. In a pinch business cards can work, but I think ideal would have been a sample 4 or 5 pages from the book itself.
8. Rest your voice. If you go 2 or 3 lectures a day, plan quiet time. Drink lots of tea. Last thing you want is to lose your voice before your last few dates. You can go out, but warn people you won’t be talking much.
9. Plan a social event. As a total no frills impromptu thing I invited everyone I met out for drinks at a pub. Was fun. About 15 people showed in the course of a few hours. Most didn’t stay long (and a few grabbed a book a left), but the whole experience was positive. Unlike the run and gun lecture experience, at the pub everyone is chatting and the environment is social. If you’re not as attracted to risk as I am, you could get confirmations from a small nugget of people to insure against drinking alone.
10. Everyone matters. Crowds are over-rated. No matter who is there or how many people show, your performance should be the same. The smaller the group, the bigger a slice of your energy you can give to everyone that’s there. I’ve presented to 1000 people (umm, not on this tour) and 10, and sometimes I think my time was better spent with the 10. Don’t worry about numbers – worry about who’s in front of you, and how effective what you’re saying is interesting to them.
11. Gigs are network dependent. I spoke at places where my network reached. I asked friends, acquaintances, people I interviewed once, old managers, websites I’ve read, you name it. I sent mail to baychi and other professional groups, and just asked around until I found enough gigs to fill 3 days. I was told NO many times, and didn’t get responses at all from various places. Hiring a PR person might help, but I didn’t have one. See the previous bullet – if you can only find 3 gigs of 10 people, that’s 30 people who will know of you and your book that won’t if you don’t do a tour. And in theory a great way to grow your network is speaking – hopefully for my next book, it will be a little easier to find places to speak.
12. Consider tag-teaming the tour. Given 1,2 & 3 there are good reasons to have a supporting person around to help/share with various kind of logistics. I imagined at a certain moments how much easier and more fun the whole experience would be if I was sharing it with another author (or had a friend willing to be a roadie for a few days). The costs might be lower or the same, but the logistics would be much easier, the social would draw more people, etc. Not sure it would work, but it was a thought I had several times.
13. Remember Walt Whitman. The man known as one of America’s greatest writers used to go door to door selling his poems. Yes door to door. Imagine: knock, knock. Door opens. “Who’s there?”. There stands a strange poor looking man, in ragged wrinkled dirty clothes, with a big white beard and crazy eyes. “Hi, I’m Walt. I’m a poet. Can I…”. Door slams shut. Repeat. If Walt could do poetry door to door, it’s within your talent and pride to tour and talk about whatever it is you’re writing about.

But the big question is: does this help sales at all? I have no idea. I have to say yes, in that I’m an unknown and this got me (positive) exposure to about 300 people in 3 days. So I’d say this gets the book on the playing field with people – whether they buy it or not is based on so many factors that I have no control over it’s not even funny. But a book tour is one tool I have, so I used it.

Total score:

Cost: $800 (plane ticket, 3 nights lodging, rental car)
Time: 3 days
Gigs: 6 (3 different lectures, which paid off as I saw some people twice. Hope they were impressed :)
Total attendence: ~350 (Google: 100, Baychi: 100, Sun: 30,Adobe: 40, Yahoo: 40, Macromedia: 40)
Fun had: much
Pints of beer: many
Books given away: 70 (Thanks to O’Reilly)
Power cables lost: 1
Roadside assistance calls: 1
Bad meals: 2
Forgetable meals: umm
Good meals: 2
Moments of extreme existential angst: Once per day
Moments where I felt like a vacumn cleaner salesman: Once a talk
Desire to write more books, despite all this hard work and unclear returns: High