Authors and the Fiasco of Book Tours

With the advent of social media, author book tours have more or less gone the way of the stegosaurus. Some authors do them, but mainly only the celebrities, Hilary or David Sedaris. And you might be surprised to know that most authors think their demise is a very good thing. A book tour sounds exotic – at least it always did to me: “An Eleven-City National Book Tour!!!” How good can it get? Well, actually, it can get a lot better…

Let me preface this by saying that right now is an absolutely...