- You can get at least 30-50 people at the bookstore AND
- at least 3/4 of those people buy a book AND
- you can get at least one piece of media out of the signing
She felt otherwise it was too expensive for the publisher to spend all the money for hotels, air fare, food, and escorts, and too expensive for the bookstores, which have to take people off the floor for your event, thus losing sales.
She did say that if your toured you get in the store newsletter, the signing get promoted for a month, and you get better positioning in the store. But she felt if you didn't have the above, it wasn't worth it.
I was once at an author event for the second book of the woman who had written one of the early Oprah picks. There was the Powells events coordinator, the author's escort, the author's publicist, a Newsweek editor and a Newsweek photographer.
They outnumbered the people in the audience.
