Guerilla Book Tour Day 3: New Strategy

After the wild successes of the first two days of the tour, the authors began to wonder whether they had become too big for a "guerilla" operation. Their faces were everywhere (see here, here, and here), fans were lining up at some doors, and many booksellers had begun to clamor for formal signings with pre-announced dates and pastries. At a strategy session after Day 2's all-night post-signing bender in the Tour Trailer, the authors decided to take a different tack for Day 3: They would send an operative in their place. His report follows:

I was at the Barnes and Noble just north of Union Square yesterday at around 5pm. Holiday shopping was in full effect. As I waited on the thrity-minute line to check out the various Finding Nemo/Dinosaur books for my three year old nephew, I sent my wife hunting for a few birthday present copies of BOA 30. After she agreed to go on the hunt, I immediately thought to myself that amidst the holiday mayhem there was a good chance that I wouldn't see her again until we both left the store and returned home. How I was mistaken. In a scant 3 minutes, Sarah returned with three copies of BOA and all was grand. I asked, "How did you find them so quickly?" "No problem," she responded, "I figured they'd be on one of the tables in the front of the store labeled 'Gift Books and New Releases'." Genius!

After checkout, we headed toward the exit and passed the table with the BOA's. Sarah pointed them out and we noticed a really straggly looking dude wrapped up in various layers browsing through a BOA. Tall, dreaded, and multi-scarved, he looked pretty interested and continued to browse for about a minute and a half. At that point I realized, if he's still browsing for another ten seconds, I've got to step in there and seal the deal before he put the book down. As I stood there counting my Mississippi's, I got to seven and he closed the book and walked away from the stack, book in hand. What was even more gratifying was the fact that seconds later I spied him browsing through 30 Things Everybody Should Know by Age 30, only to put it back in its pile and move on.

JB

Thanks again to everyone who made the 2003 tour our biggest yet. See you back on the road in '04.