Tour Day 8 and 9

Day 8

Miles driven today: 324
Bookstores visited: 0
Books signed: 0
Books hand sold: 0
Bookstores remaining: 439

So far, the hardest thing about this tour has been finding time to blog about it.

I finished the line edit of DIRTY MARTINI and sent it off to Hyperion, then attended Rob's wedding and reception, and immediately afterward drove from Charleston WV to Knoxville TN, which was a lovely five and a half hour trip through mountains with zero cell phone and radio reception.

There wasn't any time to visit bookstores today, which plays havoc with my daily average, but I'll make up for it tomorrow.

Day 9

Miles driven today: 283
Bookstores visited: 13
Books signed: 70
Books hand sold: 4
Bookstores remaining: 426

Signed at the following stores in Tennessee:

Borders 202 Morrell Road Knoxville

Borders 11235 Parkside Dr. Knoxville

Books-A-Million (BAM) 8507 Kingston Pike4 Knoxville

BAM 190 Collier Dr. Pigeon Forge

Waldenbooks 3000 MAll Roasd North Knoxville

BN 8029 Kingston Pike Knoxville

BAM Chattanooga

Waldenbooks Chattanooga

BN Chatanooga

Then on to Atlanta:

BN 292 Cobb Parkway

BN 50 Barrett Parkway Marietta

Borders 3101 Cobb Parkway

BN Cobb Parkway Marietta

Atlanta has about 20 more stores, and I hope to hit many of them before my book party.

So far on tour, I've given away 76 copies of Rusty Nail to booksellers, and their response has been overwhelmingly positive. The free book goes to the person in the store most likely to read it (the biggest thriller fan, the mystery department head, the GM, the CRM, the person who recognizes me or has read me before.)

As I mentioned before, the goal here isn't just to sign stock. In fact, I have several goals when I walk into a bookstore:

• Sign stock and place business cards in the books I sign. The cards stick out like bookmarks, which draws more attention to the book and also advertises the other books in the series.
• Meet the booksellers and give them signed coasters to put in future books of mine that they order (which sort of makes them signed copies.)
• Tell the booksellers about my series, and give them a free copy of Rusty Nail, which also comes with promo material for my audiobooks and These Guns for Hire, my antho coming out in the fall.
• Get business cards with email addys for follow ups.
• Have booksellers write their names in my acknowledgements book, and let them know they'll see their name in print when Dirty Martini comes out next year.
• Ask them to please handsell the copies I've signed, and then order more.

I'm surprised how many stores have copies of all three books, which means my backlist is being stocked (a good thing.) However, almost half of the stores I've visited haven't gotten their copies of Rusty Nail yet, or tell me they have tried to get it and Whiskey Sour, but can't because of distributor/computer issues. Hopefully that is being resolved (Whiskey Sour is coming out in a second printing, and the Rusty Nail issue is being fixed.) We'll see how things develop as the weeks pass.