Friends,
I’m in New York today, peddling my new book. It’s officially out today.
I loathe book tours.
The first book tour I ever went on, in the early 1980s, brought me to a bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin, where they sat me in the window under a spotlight next to a sign “Come In and Have Your Book Signed By Robert Reich.”
No one came in. For two hours, people passed on the street, a few gazing at the pathetic author in the window. I felt like a piece of merchandise, which I was.
That’s what you are when you go on a book tour: merchandise. A traveling salesperson selling a book. But not just any book — it’s your book. It’s something you’ve worked on and sweated over for several years. It’s your baby. And now you have to flog it like a can of dog food.
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