What if we started treating an author’s book tour a lot more like a rock band on tour than the way we currently handle them? Right now, a book tour is a promotional affair, in which the author is flown by the publisher (sometimes) into various cities, where arrangements have been made with local bookstores. They might do a signing, or a reading, or be “in conversation.” The idea of the book tour is to convince people to buy the book, raise awareness of it, and sell copies of the book in the store that the author’s stopped in. They’re usually pretty cool events, and if you’ve never been to an author event, I recommend wholeheartedly that you go.