The Pre-Tour Author Tour

Shelf Awareness - 7 April, 2011

Sara Gran, (photo left - Deborah Lopez), author of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, which Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish June 2, takes us on her pre-tour tour.
Gran may be stalked at saragran.com.

Twenty years ago, if a publisher told an author they were going to experiment on/with them, they wouldn't have been too thrilled. Now, those words make us giddy. All of us know things are changing, and we all want a publisher who's willing to try to sell books in new ways, in better ways, and sometimes in risky ways. Thank God, that's my publisher!

This month's experiment was what we're calling a pre-tour tour. For three days folks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, beloved publisher of my forthcoming Claire DeWitt & the City of the Dead, took me to meet some of their favorite booksellers in New York and New England. The idea was to introduce me to the booksellers, talk with them about the book, and to let them know that we appreciate the hard work they do not only my books, but all HMH titles.

I was a bookseller in New York City for many years--I'm proud to say I got my education in books and publishing at the Strand, Shakespeare & Co. and Housing Works. Often there's a disconnect between the publishers, who at best send reps to speak to the owners and buyers a few times a year, and the booksellers who work the floor. Even though these are the people who literally put books in the customers' hands, booksellers are only now starting to get the respect and recognition they deserve. Better late than never!

In Brooklyn, we dropped by WORD and Greenlight, two indie start-ups known as "tastemakers," as business folk say. In New Hampshire, we took out the ladies from RiverRun bookshop for lunch, and in Massachusetts we had dinner with the brilliant booksellers from Spirit of '76 and Harvard Bookstore.

The next day we had lunch with the wonderful people from Odyssey Books and then crossed the border to Vermont, where we had dinner and beer at Northshire Books with the staff.
Booksellers who had already read Claire had intelligent questions, and those who hadn't seemed ready to pick it up next. I'd love to attribute the response to my writing talent (and I'm not modest, I like my book!), but as we all know, brilliant books come out every day that fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, brilliant no longer cuts it.

Best idea of the trip: taking booksellers out for nice meals (or bringing such to them). I remember what it's like to work in a bookstore: it's tough, sweaty work moving those boxes around, and to have a lunch or dinner where you get to talk about books instead of moving them is a treat I know I would have appreciated. Everyone was relaxed and we got to speak in a less formal, more fun setting.
What I could have done better: I should have taken a little notebook with me and gotten the name, address and e-mail of every bookseller I met to follow up with (although I have been stalking them on Facebook and Twitter, it's not the same). I also could have brought more swag--copies of my backlist titles and/or other HMH galleys might have been nice, although maybe that would have diluted our focus on Claire. It's still an experiment, right?

It's too early to gauge our results by sales, but this is 2011, so we can gauge them another way: my fans, followers and friends on Facebook, Twitter and my blog have taken a big jump since our tour.
Not only am I now connected with the people I met, but people saw the HMH folks and the booksellers tweet/post about our meetings and became intrigued.

Next we'll do the same thing in Northern California and who knows, maybe more experiments. I've got a plan involving a trained monkey and a dolphin that just might fly....