How to Plan a Successful Book Tour: A Link to The Workshop for Today

Dear Poets, Writers and Friends,

In 2023 I launched my book, When the Moon Had Antlers on Zoom and then took it on tour to several places, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Boulder. It was probably the most exciting two weeks of my life, a time when I got to reconnect with old friends, have long lunches with poets I admire, visit a few tourist destinations, and do some additional reading and writing in coffee shops along the way.

Here's the link to a FB video I made of the tour

It was also a difficult two weeks because I was taking off time from work and spending a fair amount of money on travel. I was away from my husband and cats. And, a lot of things went wrong between, during, and on my way to the events.

There were times I literally had to sell a book in order to have enough money for lunch the next day. There were other days when I was so flush I bought myself a bottle of wine and some souvenirs to celebrate between stops. There were days I got lost, got delayed, or realized I had booked a hotel that was way too far from a venue I needed to get to and I would need to spend a fortune on Lyft to make it on time.

In retrospect, some of the things I learned were probably quite obvious. Things like, don’t try to give yourself bangs while buzzed in your hotel room the night before your first major featured reading, or don’t get on the road if you don’t have extra room on the credit card for unexpected expenses. But there are other pieces of advice I learned (or earned) from the experience, that weren’t so obvious. For example, it’s important to book your tour a year in advance, because people are busy and if you really want to see them, you sometimes need to give lots of notice. I really wanted to see some of my old friends from Poetry Center San Jose, but I had accidentally booked all of my events in San Francisco the same time that San Jose was having some big literary shin-dig of its own. I traveled across the country and missed going to their events in order to host one of my own.

When I returned home, my cousin-in-law, friend and fellow poet shared this really useful article with me.

Anne Marie Wells’ Guide to Building a Book Tour

A lot of this is advice I had already gotten and followed in planning out my trip. Some of it I really WISH I had learned in advance, and have since tried putting into practice locally. But there were some other things I learned in my travels that I didn’t see in this article. I want to share them with you now.

Paid Subscribers will see all tips and the link to today’s workshop at the bottom of this email.

Here’s What Else you Can See Coming up Next at The Poetry Salon

---

Sunday, June 29th, 10 am, PST/ 1 pm, EST: How to Plan a Successful Book Tour (Rescheduled from June 22nd)

In this workshop, Tresha Faye Haefner will share with you her tips and tricks for planning a book tour that is affordable and even profitable. You will get materials you can use for deciding where to go and when to go, sample letters to venues to announce your new book and ask for collaboration on a reading, and even sample emails to help you get paid gigs at libraries and other locations. Plus, you’ll get moral support and access to a network of fellow poets and promoters who can help you arrange a tour.

To register, either PayPal $25 to TreshaFayeHaefner@Gmail.com

or become a Paid Subscriber to this Substack.

Shaped, the Poetics of Containers

Join experimental poet Nikki Fragala Barnes, PhD, MFA for a generative workshop on the shapes our poems take. “Shaped, the Poetics of containers,” will explore text as material alongside the message and meanings of shaped texts. We will also write together, expanding our practice with prompts and encounter works by other stellar poets. [Participants are encouraged to have at hand a poem or two they have previously drafted.]

Do you have a book out? Do you need to pre-sell some copies? Do you need help getting out the word?

In this workshop, Tresha Faye Haefner, author of When the Moon Had Antlers (Pine Row Press 2023) (Take This Longing, 2012) will share tips she's used to have two successful book launches. We'll talk about ways to sell tickets to the launch, and ways to sell more copies of the book itself. Above all, we'll talk about ways to make the event fun and inviting!

To register, send $25 to TreshaFayeHaefner@gmail.com
or become a paid subscriber to ThePoetrySalonStack.Substack.com

See less

Register for This Reading for Free

Subscribe to The Daily Poet $49/Month

---