Journal

Monday, May 23, 2005

Where I'll be signing ANANSI BOYS in the US

I'm home. Waiting for me were: one (numbered) ANANSI BOYS bound proof (#1 of 450) -- it's not really even a bound galley, it was printed from my raw manuscript and is filled with odd typos; about a dozen copies of the ANANSI BOYS first chapter extract booklet-thing the publisher did for Book Expo (it has a drawing of a seven-legged spider I did on the front); and some ANANSI BOYS pamphlets.

The pamphlets contain information for the booksellers, and they list, in the details of the marketing campaign, the 16 US and Canada tour I'm going to be doing, starting on September the 20th and ending around Oct 12th. (The pamphlets also have a picture of me on the cover and FALL UNDER HIS SPELL in huge letters and are thus deeply embarrassing, so it's probably a good thing that I didn't see them first.)

Anyway, according to the pamphlet, I'll be signing (in Alphabetical Order) in Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Portland (OR), San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Washington DC.

If where you live isn't on the list, I'm really sorry. I don't pick the locations -- it's done by Harper Collins and tends to be weighted towards a) bookshops that report to the New York Times, and b) places that put in proposals for signings that Harper liked. (Which then tends to be weighted further towards places that I've signed before because they know what to expect and put in proposals that assume they'll be getting several hundred people and that they know what to do with them.) I'm certain that the San Francisco signing is actually a few different Bay Area signings, and have my fingers crossed that Harper Canada aren't going to make me go back to whatever the place was I signed in Vancouver last time (I'm pretty sure it was a Virgin megastore) where I tried to use the microphone and discovered that I was speaking over the store's Public Address system, which couldn't actually be heard in the place they'd put the reading.

I don't know actual store locations yet, although I should get a list very soon, and will post it here and on Where's Neil as soon as I do.