This time a year ago I had just finished a week-long book tour in four different locations to promote the paperback publication of The Shoulders We Stand On.

Organising my own book tour (alongside author dream team Sheela Banerjee and Lucy Fulford) was a steep learning curve, so I wanted to share what I learned here to help any other authors who want to organise their book tour but don’t really know where to start. If that’s you, then read on.

The basics of organising a book tour

What a book tour is for

Let’s start with what a book tour is actually for. It may sound obvious: a book tour is used to promote your book, but it can also be more than that. It can be a space to connect not only with readers but with booksellers, authors, and those involved with publishing and books more broadly, such as librarians or teachers. Keep this in mind when organising your book tour in terms of how you publicise it, and what else you do when you’re not doing the events themselves.

I also want to address what some of you may be asking at this time, “surely it is the publisher’s job to organise a book tour?” and the answer is, “not necessarily”. Marketing and publicity staff are thinly stretched and cannot organise book tours for every author. They are, however, really enthusiastic about authors who are proactive about this, see ‘Working with your publisher’ below for more.

Where to have book events

As an unknown debut author, the event is more likely to be successful (i.e. have people attend) if you and/or your book have some connections to a place. For me, this meant doing an event in London, where I’m from and where a lot of the movements I discuss took place, and in Oxford, where I studied.

In terms of the types of places you can do an event, consider contacting:

Bookshops - both independent and chains e.g. Waterstones
Libraries
Festival organisers
Book clubs - also good for potential online events
Relevant clubs or societies - e.g. for my hardback book tour I did an event at the Indian Workers’ Association in Handsworth, graciously organised by local activists

When cold contacting people via email, have a basic template you use for all of them with the pertinent information including a short bio, the elevator pitch for the book, and, most importantly, why you think the book could be of interest to people in the area. This is essentially a sales pitch, which you will be pretty good at by now if you have gotten to the stage of book publication.

Once you have that positive response, you will want to ask some further questions to now check that you want to go ahead with them. You could ask them the following questions:

What is the minimum number of sign-ups required for an event to go ahead?
Is there a charge for tickets? If yes…

How much do tickets cost?
Can the cost be redeemed against purchase of books?
Is there anything else included with the cost (e.g. a drink)?
How many complimentary tickets are available?

What publicity do you do for your events?
How long are your events and what is the structure or format?

This is helpful to check expectations on both sides. If there is an extortionate amount charged for an event, or a high minimum number of sign-ups, then you might decide that that is too much pressure and you’d rather look elsewhere.

Once the event is confirmed, provide them with the following details:

A headshot
A bio
An image of the book cover
A phone number to contact you on the day if needed

*Me and the dream team, Sheela Banerjee and Lucy Fulford, at House of Books & Friends in Manchester*

Who and what for the book tour

Again, these may seem like obvious points when it comes to organising your own book tour, as you will be involved, and you will be discussing your book. But there is more to consider. Will you be doing events alone, or with another author(s)? If you are alone, do you expect the event to be chaired by someone from the event provider e.g. a librarian or bookseller, or will it be more like a lecture style and therefore without a chairperson? Will you use visual aids at all, such as photos on a presentation, and what tech do you need for that?

Once you know these details, you can put them in the pitch to event providers. You can also outline what you are open to doing, in case you don’t have a fixed idea or even want to mix up the formats to keep it fresh. For example, at our event at Waterstones Gower Street, we offered that the event would be chaired by someone we know, and at the House of Books & Friends in Manchester we said we would convene a conversation between ourselves.

I highly recommend joining forces with another author or authors for your tour. If you are an unknown author then this will make your pitch much more appealing to providers as you are less of a risk, and, let’s face it, it is much more fun to collaborate. I personally find it tough to talk non-stop for an hour by myself (ok, maybe not most of the time, but in a book setting I do), so I loved sharing the limelight with Sheela Banerjee and Lucy Fulford. New ways to talk about my book were also sparked by what they said about theirs, which made each event feel as authentic and lively as the last.

Make sure you build in Q&A time from the audience. That is often the best bit as there are always angles you haven’t thought of, and people also just share their insights which is always fascinating. Pro tip: if you know someone who will be in the audience then plant a question just in case there is deathly silence when you ask for questions… though usually the event provider will also come to your rescue with a question if needed!

When to do a book tour

I’ve been lucky enough to do two book tours, one for the hardback and one for the paperback. For the hardback, that was organised through a mixture of lovely people who reached out to me wanting to do events and my publisher reaching out to others, and the paperback tour was organised by me and my dream team as mentioned. In both cases, the tours were organised to roughly coincide with publication.

Publication time is the obvious time for a book tour, but is not the only one. Publication of my book in September lent itself well to an October book tour as October is Black History Month in the UK and the history I discussed was therefore pertinent for that time of year.

Are there any holidays/events/anniversaries that it makes sense to tie your book into?

Working with your publisher

Even when you are organising your own book tour, it doesn’t mean your publisher shouldn’t be involved, they absolutely should be. Contact your publisher at the planning stage to tell them what you are thinking and ask if they have any recommendations. Even if they can’t do all the legwork for you, they will know bookshops they think could be a good fit, and maybe even recommend other authors they publish that could be good to join forces with.

At this stage it is also useful to ask what they can do to support your book tour. My publisher, Dialogue Books, paid for transportation and accommodation for the tour even though it was initiated by me. They also graciously offered to book those for me. There should be some support forthcoming from your publisher. The more you publicise the book, the better for them too! Assuming you have an agent, discuss how to best approach this topic with them first if it makes you uncomfortable.

Publicising the book tour

Do not rely just on the bookstore/library/event provider to publicise the event. They will have many events going on at the same time, and in the case of bookstores, if they have some big names coming in soon then their energy will go into publicising those events.

So what can you do as an author?

Spread the word on social media. Create a snazzy graphic in Canva and post it on your socials. Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky, even Facebook. It can get a little boring and monotonous though to just talk about the events you have coming up, so vary it up a little. Maybe do some posts about things you’ve learned during writing the book, or if you’ve already done other publicity you could write a list of the weirdest questions you’ve been asked about the book so far.
Send personal invitations. Assuming you have arranged events in places where you may know some people then remember to personally invite them and not just assume that they would have seen the social media outreach. Even if they can’t attend, they may circulate the invite to their local networks too.
Contact local media outlets. Local newspapers, magazines or online events listings are usually on the lookout for interesting things happening in the area. That’s your event! I did an interview with Ox Mag in Oxford and even had my name mentioned on the cover with Rag‘n’Bone Man! A first, and probably a last.
Include the events on your website. Yes, your website, that simple one you set up because you thought it would be a good idea, well it is. Include your events on there too. Though you may not have regular visitors to your website, it will also help the internet Gods with the algorithms.

Overall, remember to persevere. It can be embarrassing to be so unashamed in publicising yourself, but remember why you’re doing it: you’ve written an amazing book and you want to talk about it.

Getting ready for the tour

The practical stuff

Think about having a freebie or something special that audiences get for coming to your talk. We printed snazzy bookmarks with the images of our book covers on one side, and QR codes which led to our websites or socials on the other side. Everyone loves a bookmark, and hopefully they are the gift that keeps on giving as other people who weren’t at the event will also see the bookmark and be intrigued about the books.

If there is one piece of advice you take from this very, very long blog, then let it be this one: get a good pen for signing books. You will hopefully be signing a LOT of books, so make sure your tools are up to the job. I used a thin purple Sharpie to match the book cover, I called it my trademark Sharpie but I don’t think that really caught on. Alongside this, think of a pithy thing to write that you can easily write while also maintaining a conversation with someone. The second hardest part of writing life besides writing the book itself.

What do you want to say?

Next, the more serious preparation for your book tour, thinking about what you actually want to say. If you are having some chaired events, you may think you can’t prepare too much, but you absolutely can, and you absolutely must. Most people who come to your event will not have read your book, and may actually know very little about it despite choosing to come to an event. So you must make sure you highlight the book.

There will be some standard questions you can prepare for. This means practising your answers actually out loud, maybe even timing yourself to make sure you’re not rambling on. Questions I prepared for included:

What movement resonated with you the most?
Why haven’t we heard about these movements more?
What can we learn from them as we face challenges today?

It is also important though not to approach it like learning lines, this will be too robotic. You want to be natural, but concise and cogent. Importantly, you want to make sure you are actually talking about the book. It sounds silly but I can easily answer questions especially about today’s politics without referencing the book at all.

As well as what you want to say, it is equally important to know what you don’t want to say, and how you will deal with difficult questions or contrary opinions. For example, I do not discuss too much of my family’s personal history with the stories in the book out of respect for them. And when faced with audience members who clearly think racism doesn’t exist or other delightful takes, I aim to shut it down and move on rather than engaging too much.

On the day

The book tour is here! You made it! All that organisation, the hours at your desk sending and answering emails. Or just hitting refresh hoping someone would respond. Now what do you do?

Make sure you get to the venue at least 30 minutes before the start time. This helps you to settle in and make sure the lighting/seating/temperature are to your liking, and ensures you are relaxed before you begin. Make sure there is water available, talking is thirsty work.

Assuming the event is in the evening, then if you can use the day to hit up local bookstores or local libraries to see if your book is there, offer to sign copies if it is, and even cheekily turn it facing outwards on the shelf (you didn’t hear it from me). Talk to booksellers and librarians, word of mouth is really important when it comes to books so if they know about your book then they can recommend your book.

Back to the event. Be sure to ask someone to take photos and videos so you can do those all important updates for your avid social media following, or at the very least have some nice snaps for your website that you absolutely will update. This is likely to be the event provider, though also take some photos yourself if you can e.g. of stacks of your books.

After you’ve dazzled the audience with your talk and you have their undivided attention, make sure you have a call to action. These are the three points we said to audiences:

If you have read the book, please review it. You don’t have to have bought the book on Amazon to review it on Amazon! Or you can review it on Goodreads. Through the magic of algorithms it really helps people to find the book.
Follow us on social media. We pointed people towards the bookmark to follow us on our socials through there, and the publicise the upcoming events if they wanted.
Spread the word about the upcoming online event. We wanted to host an online event after the in-person ones for people who couldn’t make it, so we asked people to do some word of mouth promo for us (unfortunately due to personal reasons the online event didn’t go ahead in the end).

Keep in mind…

Events get cancelled. Even with all your best publicity efforts and asking your mum to invite the barista at her local cafe, sometimes events just don’t work out. Don’t take it personally.
In-person events are simultaneously energising and tiring. Build in rest days.
Events have ripple effects. Word of mouth is one of the best publicity tools for authors. Even if the turnout to an event is lower than you would have liked don’t forget the wider impact of those people telling others about the talk and your book, and the bookseller who sits in on your talk will also be recommending your book to potential readers (and will hopefully put any signed copies you leave behind prominently on a table).

Good luck, I hope you found these tips useful, and see you soon on your book tour!

How to organise your own book tour