Why authors complain about book tours

Joe Finder, author of the extraordinary new thriller Company Man, which is debuting this week at number 15 on the New York Times Bestseller List, is currently in the middle of a grueling tour. He shares some of his thought about it, for your reading pleasure.

Why Authors Complain About Book Tours

by Joseph Finder

I'm halfway through my book tour and have met hundreds of nice people, a number of whom have asked me whether it's exciting to go on a 15-city sweep across the country. Sometimes if I'm overtired my good manners fail me and I say no. Then they always say something sympathetic like, "Yeah, having to answer all those questions and say the same thing over and over again, bet that gets old." And I say, no, that's not it. I don't mind answering questions.  If they're the same questions, I get good at the answers. Since I don't like to complain to people I've just met, I don't elaborate. 

Let me do so now. It's not the people -- that's the best part. It's not the signings -- I've had some lousy ones and some excellent ones. It's the travel. Makes me really empathize with people who travel a lot for business. If you do one city, one day, you spend way too much more time than is good for you at airports. You get tired of taking your laptop out of your carry-on and putting it in some gray plastic Rubbermaid tray. You get tired of taking off your shoes and walking across a grimy floor through the security gate in your stockings.

So let me be specific. I'm in Miami. Just did a great event at one of my favorite bookstores in the country, Books & Books in Coral Gables. Easily 50, 60 people there, sold lots of books, answered a lot of great questions about my books and about the way I see the business world. Next day I go out to Delray Beach and visit the corporate headquarters of Levengers, the catalog of tools for serious readers -- I've been a faithful customer of theirs for years. 

I do a special event at their retail store, plenty of people there, smart questions, great conversation, even met some old friends. Spent the afternoon with my friend Steve Leveen, the founder and CEO of Levenger's, and his wife Lori at their breathtaking house on the water. Crashed in their guest house: a much needed nap after 10 days of sleep deprivation. Sat on their veranda overlooking the glimmering water talking with them and their sons and a fascinating writer-philosopher-speaker named Tom Morris. Truly a great, restful, recharging interlude. A quick dinner of Cuban food, and a limo takes me back to my hotel in Miami.

Life should always be like this.

Next morning, I'm scheduled for an 8:00 AM flight to Seattle. It's going to be crazy at the airport -- cruise change-over day -- so I plan to get there early, which means a 5:00 wake-up call.

Which never comes. Maybe someone at the front desk forgot to enter my request. I bolt out of bed at 5:30. No room service, because it's too early, so I make that awful coffee using the toylike coffee maker they supply your room with, with the little pods of stale ground coffee that drip tepid rust-colored water into thin Styrofoam cups. Stir in some of that fake creamer stuff, which barely changes the color of the coffee at all. Pack my suitcase -- I'm proud that yesterday I've shucked my garment bag, got everything into one. Get to the Miami airport, check in at Alaska Airlines, where the guy behind the counter says my suitcase is three pounds overweight, which will cost me $25. I go to the gate, which turns out to be a monorail train that takes me to a satellite terminal. 

Big swarming crowd at the Alaska Airlines gate, where I learn that the plane is overweight -- too much cargo -- so they've decided to bounce 25 passengers who have reservations and got to the airport in plenty of time. They ask for volunteers but no one volunteers to give up their seat. So I'm one of 25 people who don't get a seat on the plane. We get back on the monorail to the main terminal and stand around the Alaska Airlines counter pleading to be placed on another flight to Seattle. But all the other flights are sold out, they tell us. Cruise changeover day, you see. Finally one of the agents finds me a seat on the 5:00 PM. Northwest flight. I walk half a mile down to the Northwest counter, where I'm told that flight is sold out and I don't have a reservation. They don't know what Alaska Airlines is talking about. Half a mile back to Alaska Airlines where they show me on the computer that I really do have a seat on the later flight. One of them goes with me to Northwest, where he's told he's wrong, nothing's available.

I call American Express, where a nice lady gets me on an afternoon flight to Minneapolis. I'm lucky -- another refugee from Alaska Airlines has to make three changes to get to Seattle. Alaska Airlines gives us vouchers for lunch. After I eat some gruesome Cuban food I'm told that the voucher only covers beverages. Alaska Airlines tells me they had no idea. 

Another security line -- the laptop, the shoes, the whole drill. Then I'm pulled aside and told that Northwest has "selected" me for "secondary screening." That's where they put you in a special area for potential terrorists and wipe down everything in your luggage for traces of explosives and make you stand in your socks on these footprints painted on the floor and run a wand all over you, make you take off your belt, the whole works.

Here's the worst thing: if my publisher didn't send me on one of these book tours, believe me, I'd really be complaining.