ITEM #1: THE TOUR
Tor is almost ready to announce the book tour. When it gets announced, all of the signings will be listed on my events page, so check out that page to see if I’m signing near you. I can tell you now that the tour will contain only US and Canadian cities, and it will be split into two sections.
I do plan to take a trip to Europe sometime in 2013, but it hasn’t been arranged yet. If you want a signed copy of the book and won’t be able to make it to one of my tour cities, there will be a couple additional ways to get signed copies. But if you want your book personalized, the best way to make that happen is to call one of the bookstores on my tour and ask if they can arrange it for you. As I’ll mention below, the Weller Book Works signing by mail has already sold out.
The focus on my tour stops will be on getting everyone’s books signed. I’ll probably read and answer questions at every stop, but I will also try to pre-sign some stock so if you just want a signed book and don’t want to stand in line for me to personalize it for you, you can just grab the book and go.
Harriet will be joining me on some tour stops; more details will be forthcoming when the tour is announced.
Some of the events might be ticketed, which means that the bookstore requires you to buy the book FROM THEM in order to get it signed. I’ve asked for this to happen at as few booksellers as possible, but each store has the final call. Why would they do this? Well, a lot of stores have to bring in extra staff (or even rent extra space) in order to handle an enormous event like this. In the past, they’ve spent this money and then had everyone bring in books they bought from Amazon to get signed. It makes them very bitter, as they lose money after all the work they put into holding an event. (In one famous case I heard of, a small bookstore held a signing where they spent hundreds on staff, promotion, and cookies, only to have over a hundred people, out of the hundred and twenty who came, bring in books they bought from Amazon.)
As I said, I’ve requested that the signings all be open to anyone. However, I can see the bookstores’ point. Please be respectful and realize one of the reasons that places like Amazon can give you the books so cheaply is that they don’t have to maintain or pay rent on expensive storefronts in retail areas. Support your local booksellers; it’s because of them that we can have signing events. If possible, I’d ask that you go and buy the book from the store where you’re planning to see me. You can buy it early and keep the receipt. If you bring the receipt with you to the signing, that’s as good as buying the book at the signing. Generally, at ticketed events, as long as you buy any hardcover book, they will let you get your other books signed. So, for instance, you could buy A Memory of Light and then get it, The Gathering Storm , and Towers of Midnight (or any of my other books) signed. And even if you don’t buy your copy of AMoL at the signing, it’s nice to support the store hosting me by buying at least one book (by any author) while you’re there.
I don’t know which events will be ticketed—or even if any will. I’m slowly gathering information on this. There probably won’t be many that are, but I wanted to lay the groundwork just in case. I’ll add more information to the events page as it trickles in.
Finally, there may be a cap on the number of books I will personalize for you at a time. I’ll sign all your books, but personalizations can take a while, so if there’s a large crowd, to keep the line moving I may only personalize three books at a time. However, it’s just fine if you want to go to the end of the line again and wait to get three more books personalized. I WILL sign paperbacks. I WILL NOT sign books I did not write—e.g. the Wheel of Time books before The Gathering Storm . Yes, people have asked; often about one per signing. However, for the signings on this tour where Harriet will be with me, she will be happy to sign them.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.