For most of my career, I assumed book tours happened to other authors. Authors with a publisher. Authors with some dedicated person whose entire job is to call a bookstore in Portland and ask about their Tuesday availability.
I’m self-published, so I filed “book tour” under not-for-me, right next to “advance” and “someone else picks your cover.”
Then I started pitching bookstores for Let Me Be Your Ghost, and a lot of them said yes. So now I’m planning a book tour, by myself, with a lot of spreadsheets.
I filmed a video diary about it from Los Angeles, where I’m spending the month on launch prep (plus a few things I can’t talk about yet, which is the most annoying sentence a writer can type). I was drinking a San Pellegrino peach sparkling water the whole time, and for the record, it was delicious.
Here’s the written version, with a few things I didn’t say on camera:
⚖️ Two launches, one year, almost nothing in common
This year I’m releasing two books, and the launches could not be more different.
In January, Write for Money and Power came out with a whole team behind it. I had a publicist (the great Haley Raymond), a book marketer and a virtual assistant, all working in tandem for 4 months. Everything was digital. I ran Amazon ads and nothing else. I did a 12-hour Substack Live and interviewed 12 guests about the book’s themes, back to back. (The replays are still here on 💡 Sutoscience, all 12 hours of them.)
And it worked. Write for Money and Power hit the top 10 of all business books on Amazon. My favorite part is still the notes from writers who say it changed how they think about getting paid for their work.
Here’s what didn’t work: traditional press. A book that is this anti-gatekeeper had, shockingly, next to no luck with the gatekeepers. The big exception was an essay I wrote for Publishers Weekly, which Haley landed for me, and which drove some really good traffic.
Let Me Be Your Ghost is book 5 for me, and this time I’m doing everything myself. Part of that is because my last launch taught me exactly what I want, and part of it is the connections I made along the way. If this is your first book, I really do think hiring help is worth it. It’s how I learned all of this.
Here’s what’s been working so far:
NetGalley. It’s the most effective ARC platform I’ve ever used, and I’ve tried a lot of them. It puts your book in front of bookstagrammers, librarians, booksellers and press you’d never reach on your own. (Here’s how NetGalley works, from both sides.)
A big ARC campaign. Early readers mean early Goodreads and Amazon reviews, and sometimes libraries and bookstores ordering the book before it comes out.
Free chapters, right here. Posting Let Me Be Your Ghost chapter by chapter as I wrote it built the early fan base that became my beta readers, my ARC readers, and a lot of my preorders. Plenty of readers haven’t tried a romantic thriller yet, and a free chapter lets them try one.
Influencer outreach and a few experiments. I’ll tell you what worked and what flopped after launch, here and on YouTube.
🗺️ So, about this book tour
The money that went to a team in January is going to in-person events, travel and ads this time. I’m running Meta ads for the first time ever, plus more Amazon ads, and the rest goes to getting me to all of these events.
The plan, as of today: a pretty extensive West Coast tour, maybe a little of the Southwest, and possibly an East Coast leg, depending on whether I can brave New York in the cold. I’ll be doing signings, talks, and a mix of both.
Putting on events isn’t new to me. I did a sold-out talk for the Big Brain Lecture Series, and I taught a sold-out class at The Love Potion Library when it opened in June. What’s new is putting my own book at the center of an event and saying, “Hi, I’m the author, and here’s my book.”
One date I can already share: I’m bringing Let Me Be Your Ghost back to The Love Potion Library in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 15, from 6 to 7:30pm. Bay Area friends, I’d love to see you there. ❤️
The rest of the dates go out here on 💡 Sutoscience first.
I also want to thank everyone who shows up in person. I know it takes time to get in your car and drive to a bookstore on a weeknight. So if you come, I’ll have some surprises for you. 🎁
🏪 How to pitch a bookstore (for my fellow indie authors)
If you’re self-published, you can reach out to bookstores yourself. I was really impressed by how many of them wanted to work with me. My pitch is 3 lines long:
Here’s my background.
Here’s what I can bring to the event.
Here’s the book.
Bookstores will often be interested in stocking your book and doing an event with you, especially if your book is set up through IngramSpark, which makes it easy for them to order. Setting up IngramSpark is its own adventure, and some of it is kind of complicated. Let me know if you want a tutorial video, and I’ll bump it up my list.
💸 Why the indie math makes this possible
When I sell an ebook on Amazon, I keep 70% of the sale (that’s Amazon’s rate for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99). A traditionally published author might get somewhere between 10 and 30%, depending on the deal, the format, the advance and the publisher. I break down the real numbers in Write for Money and Power, which is still 99 cents.
More ownership means you need fewer sales to be profitable, and fewer sales to write full-time. I’m also lucky to have income from Substack, freelancing, consulting and YouTube, so no single book has to carry the whole house.
That’s what pays for the road trip. Owning your book means you get to decide what’s worth spending on.
🫶 Come find me
A few ways to help, if you’d like to:
Tell me where to go. Reply with your favorite bookstore and your city. I’d love to know.
Preorder the book. Let Me Be Your Ghost is my romantic thriller about a memoir ghostwriter who secretly informs on her clients for the FBI, then falls for her final one. It comes out November 18. Preorder one copy, in any format, from any retailer, and you get my unreleased book How to Write a Memoir free. It’s everything I’ve learned in more than a decade as a memoir ghostwriter (and, conveniently, everything my protagonist Lola uses). Upload your receipt at amysuto.com/ghost and it lands in your inbox right away.
And if I owe you an email right now: I see you, I’m a little slow at the moment, and I’m working on it.
Thank you for being here for all of it, the spreadsheets included. See you in person soon. 🍵
-Amy
