A Book Tour, In Numbers
In Which We Talk About Achieving Baby's First No Show and When Book Tours Are Worth It ⭕️
Happy holidays aboard the Ventorship! I hope y’all have been enjoying the butter-filled options in the buffet and nonstop holiday music like I have. For all my Type-A girlies and those that are just curious, I thought I’d give the gift of…data! 🎁 I’ve been blown away by people’s responses when I share royalties info, so I thought I would share the sales and attendance numbers behind my most recent book tour to ring in the release of FLOPPING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND.
So, over the course of 10 days, I went to three cities where I did either a Meet & Greet signing and hung out at a table for a while to talk to readers/shoppers, or did an in-conversation. Here’s how many books I sold over that time:
*Stop 1 - Meet & Greet Signing (90 minutes at a table) - Attendees: Lots of passersby who came to shop and saw me sitting there with a Hallmark-level grin on my face, and 4 who came specifically to get FLOPPING; Copies Sold: 6
*Stop 2 - Bookstore In-Conversation - Attendees: 2 people that happened to be reading in-store in the same space as our convo but definitely were not there for me as they hardly looked up from their books even when the bookstore manager lovingly announced, “We’ve got Jason June here!” (In their defense, they looked like great books!); Copies Sold: 0
*Stop 3 - Bookstore In-Conversation - Attendees: 3 magnificent friends who arrived even when they found out about the event same day and a handful of fabulous readers who were excited to chat Christmas books; Copies Sold: 7
So, first thing’s first: As you can tell from the Big 0 at Stop 2 (and the fact that while a couple bodies were technically in the room, they were sure as Krampus’s Hell not there to hear from me), I have officially joined the No Show Club. There’s so much hysterical irony to me to be promoting a book called FLOPPING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND and have an event be a total flop. A lot of non-book-ish people have asked me questions about how this could happen as if there is someone to blame, but honestly, it’s no one’s fault. The bookstore did an excellent job of marketing the event (and the booksellers were outrageously kind to me the whole evening!), my publicist at my publisher is phenomenal and went so above and beyond to set up this tour, and readers have their own lives to attend to in a world where they can get all of their book content online, so really, it is what it is. Authors with the star power to command audiences at signings and get hundreds of people to show up for midnight release parties are those that are already mega bestsellers or huge on social media, usually BookTok. While I would love for that to be me at this point, it’s not, and I think any author planning in-person events should take this into consideration when deciding if in-person is actually the right choice for them.
Second, if you do the very detailed math on those large sales numbers above, you see that 13 copies were sold over three cities. My publisher footed the bill for these tour stops, for which I’m so grateful to get that show of support, but now that I have real-world, experiential data showing that readers aren’t coming out in droves to see this midlist author in the flesh, thousands of dollars spent to sell 13 copies doesn’t seem like the best spend of marketing/publicity money. Potentially more than 13 copies have been sold at these locations after the events where my signed books were on display tables and interested shoppers grabbed a copy or two, which I think is the case. That’s great! But I still think there are better ways to spend that time and money for me, my publisher, and the bookstores who were so wonderful in welcoming me. Here are a few more data points to support this:
*While only 13 copies sold during these in-person events, Bookscan reported that 316 sales occurred in the first week. If we use the industry rumor that only about 80% of retailers report to Bookscan, that means 395 copies sold in the first week. That’s a heck of a lot more than 13 copies (and a huge thank you to every one of you who supports my work!), and those sales most likely happened thanks to the online efforts of early readers, my publisher, and me.
*In the middle of this tour, I was a panelist at YALLFest, the annual celebration in Charleston, SC all about young adult lit. People show up in the thousands, the whole town feels in on it, and it’s such a wonderful time. While there, I believe they had around 15 copies of FLOPPING, and they sold out. They also sold almost all copies of JJ backlist books they had on hand. All in all, I think about 50 JJ books were sold, and I got to have that connection with new and loyal readers. Readers go to festivals to discover new authors and see those they love, are going there with the specific purpose to buy books, and often have money budgeted to buy books not just from authors they know, but new ones they saw speak on a panel that they want to learn more about. It’s fabulous!
*Last year, I teamed up with a bookstore to run an Instagram ad for THE SPELLS WE CAST. It was my first time running an ad there, and I wanted to see what kind of traction those could get. We ran an ad over the course of a week, I believe, and spent $1,500 total. That ad got 60 sales direct to the independent bookstore. Now, when I only make about $1.50 in royalties per book sold, that doesn’t come close to making up the money spent for the ad and I wouldn’t do it again. But it sold almost 5 times as many copies as the book tour, getting the awareness ball of the book rolling even more (which I would say is the point of a tour or an ad), and cost less than half what the airfare, hotel, food, and ride shares did as I traveled between cities.
So, going forward, here’s what I would bring to the table for asks for the marketing spend of my next book:
*Social media ads on Instagram and TikTok
*Book festival travel costs
That’s it. Now that I know at this point in my career that I don’t bring big crowds in-store, it’s so much effort on behalf of everyone (me, my publisher, and the bookstores) to plan book tours. The time my publicist spent putting this together could have been used on another author, and the money spent by the bookstores to have people not only clocked-in for my events, but to work on promoting them too, could have been spent or enjoyed elsewhere. Honestly, half the energy of having a book tour not go well attendance-wise has been spent feeling bad about all the people on the business-side of things (namely, booksellers and my publicist) show up for me and my book, and then not having sales or attendance that makes that effort worth it.
Of course, if I’m not doing in-store events, I still want to support bookstores because they are the life force of our industry and booksellers are rockstars. I would recommend that every author still team up with an indie and offer signed copies. For FLOPPING, I think Chevalier’s who I teamed up with sold around 10 preorders to get a signed and personalized copy, which is more than any of the stops I did, so that makes sense all around, bringing business to a store that I adore, and isn’t a financial or time burden on my publisher, the bookstore, or me. I also think popping into any bookstore you come across organically whether locally or while traveling makes sense, because there are still book enthusiasts out there who love a signed copy, and seeing a book with a Signed by the Author sticker on display is a good way to sell a book without having the pressure of an event that is scantily attended.
Even though at this point in time, in-store events don’t make sense for me, I can still see how they could for other authors or if my circumstances change. So, if you’re planning how to celebrate your book publication and considering in-person parties, here are situations where I would say definitely go in-store:
*If you’re a debut, do that in-store event, baby! But keep it to where you have friends/family or to where friends/family can get to if they don’t live in that same city. They are going to be so pumped to celebrate this achievement with you. It’s a big freaking deal, and you deserve a night to soak in all the warm fuzzies from those who’ve cheered you on along the way ❤️
*If you’ve got a big community around you locally who wants to celebrate all the achievements. When I lived in Austin, this was one of my favorite parts about the literary scene in the city! Austinite authors support each other so much, and whenever we had a book release, whether it was our first or our seventeenth, folks showed up. It was so lovely. Now that I’ve moved and only know a couple people, it doesn’t make sense, and I find that with my new releases, I feel bad asking friends/family to come to yet another event that they might have to spend money to attend since I don’t live in the cities they do.
*If your book has gone social media viral and those preorder numbers keep climbing, do those in-person events! Celebrate that win! Getting your book to stand out before it’s even published in such a way that literal thousands of people are talking about it online is a huge, huge, huge accomplishment, and you should bask in that 💃🏼
Since I can no longer return to debut status and the people pleaser in me feels bad asking friends and family to travel to events when they’ve already heard my writer spiels, I’m over here waiting to do another in-store event until we hit it big on the interwebs! In the meantime, I will attend any and all book festivals I’m invited to (please invite me!), go on any podcast that wants me, and see if my publisher will instead spend marketing/publicity dollars on footing the bill for a TikTok ad or two. I will also continue to be eternally grateful to every single person out there who supports me—readers, editors, booksellers, reviewers, ALL OF YOU—not just in book sales, but cheering me on whether in-person or not. I don’t take that for granted and I can’t thank you all enough for rooting for me and my flamboyant little books 💖
How about you, fellow authors? What feels like the best use of your time when you’re launching a book? And bookstores/booksellers? How can authors bring the most sales to you? Anything I’m not seeing here? Any and all input is so appreciated! If you’d like to remain anonymous, you can always email me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com and I’ll include your thoughts here while you remain veiled in mystery!
-JJ
If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️
Your experience mirrors everything I've learned over the last decade in children's publishing. I no longer look for book store events, though I love supporting my indies in other ways that are sometimes more effective (like directing readers to a local store for signed books). I focus on festivals in areas that I want to visit and that are a good chance to see friends. I only travel seriously when my publisher pays for it, and I try to get marketing value out of appearances bc the book sales are never going to be massive.
Thank you for sharing this post! It’s a real conversation that needs to happen, especially for midlist authors! We all have this dream of a tour and an amazing book launch. My reality has been unless you’re a huge seller with lots of anticipation, bookstore events can be crickets! I’ve settled on doing something locally with a favorite indie and getting my friends and family there to celebrate. A few people trickle in but my past two launches have mostly been people I know. Even with strong conversation partners. I’m in a big city with lots going on. I love the other advice you gave as u know with more books the friends and family have other things to do and will likely dwindle down in numbers. So setting expectations with yourself is so important!