Blindsided on Book Tour!

By Hank Phillippi Ryan

When a thriller writer comes to town, all readers have to do is show up. (And buy a book, right?) But every author will tell you: though they hope every event is a triumph, they know they may also be a roiling disaster. Here’s a look backstage via USA Today bestseller Hank Phillippi Ryan.

Blindsided on Book Tour!

By Hank Phillippi Ryan

I was so happy. It was the best thing that had happened in my new career so far. A local Boston bookstore, a really really good one, had scheduled a book signing for me on their biggest night of the week. Oh, they assured me, your event is going to be terrific. We’ll put out tons of chairs. It will be fantastic. And the magic words: We may even run out of books!

As a new author, very new, I was infinitely thrilled about this, envisioning acclaim and applause and bestsellerness and all the other things that come with book success.

And then. And then.

The Red Sox got into the World Series.

And, as it turned out, the pivotal decisive game was scheduled on—do I need to reveal it? The same night—and even the same time!—as my book event.

Well, I can tell you, there was so much empty space in that bookstore that night, you could have played the baseball game in that place! It was so vacant, so silent, so infinitely deserted. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that even the employees of the store were in the back offices, watching the game on TV. Accompanied by my husband.

These things happen, every author knows it, and there’s nothing to do but go with the flow. In my new cat and mouse thriller All This Could Be Yours, a debut author’s career depends on bookstore and library events, but the truly terrifying things that unfold on her book tour would give real-life authors nightmares.

But tales from real life bestsellers prove you don’t need a fictional stalker threatening to ruin your life and career to have a bad day at the bookstore. Because every one of us has already had a nightmare tour date. Or a nightmare audience. Or even a nightmare question.

Riley Sager told me “About fifteen years ago, when I was just starting out, I did a reading-signing for a crowd of about ten people. Nine, if you don’t count the woman in the first row who quickly fell asleep. During the rest of the reading, I had to speak extra loudly because she was snoring.”

KT Nguyen had a makeup malfunction. “At my debut book launch event, the air conditioning in the bookstore failed. There was (thankfully!) a standing room crowd but each body seemed to drive the temperature up a degree. I sat on a stool beside my in-conversation partner Ed Aymar. Sweat gathered in my armpits. Sweat dripped down my forehead. Sweat melted my eyelash glue. As I spoke, my lashes slid down further and further until I finally had to acknowledge the lopsided spiders on my face. I finally ripped them off and simply handed them to Ed.”

Liza Tully remembers her first big book event. “The only people in the audience were the four women from my writing group. But NOT ONE OTHER PERSON showed up. Trying not to feel mortified, I said we should just go get some burritos or something. But they insisted they had come for a book event and weren’t leaving until they got one, so I read a passage out of a novel they had already seen multiple versions of, and they asked me questions they already knew the answers to, and we all laughed at ourselves and went out to dinner.”

Lisa Unger decided the show must go on. And failed. And then succeeded. “Once I struggled to a big event even though I was getting over a terrible case of bronchitis, and in the middle of my talk, I began to cough. Uncontrollably. The audience tried to rescue me with tea and cough drops, but it turned out that a professional narrator was in attendance. So she got up and did a dramatic reading of my book! It was very embarrassing, but also wonderful and sweet. And the narrator did a way better job than I ever could have!”

Tessa Wegert had an attendee who turned accusatory. “Because the setting for my series is a real place,” she told me, “I often meet local readers at signings who are convinced I modeled a character after someone they know. I once met a reader who argued with me when I tried to tell him no, I really didn’t base the serial killer on his uncle. Honestly, I was a little nervous that he’d bring that dicey uncle to a future event.”

How would you have handled this one? Charlaine Harris revealed, “There was the very inebriated woman who asked me—I’ll bowdlerize here—’How do you think of all those lovely male private parts in your books?’ What? That’s really not a question you can answer. And it was entirely from her own head, since I haven’t ever described any private parts of either sex in my books!”

So, readers, if you ever want to get an author talking, ask them about their worst tour date event. If you ever want to get a debate started, ask an author whether they’d prefer to have absolutely no one show up—or whether they’d rather have just one person. Either one, believe me, is equally humiliating.

And as you can see, if you ever think ohh, I don’t need to go to this book event, nobody will notice—trust me, we will. We are infinitely grateful to every single one of you who shows up.