erin!balser

I was reading this interesting article by Ann Patchett for The Atlantic and it was about book tours. The following quote struck me as odd:

We’re a country obsessed with celebrity, and trying to make authors into small-scale Lindsay Lohans does nothing but encourage what is already a bad cultural habit. Reading, no matter what book clubs tell us, is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.

I understand Patchett’s point–and her other one about authors being inherently anti-social people–but book tours and publicity isn’t about turning everyone into a Lindsay Lohan.

Yes, we live in a world of celebrity (I, of all people, should know that!), but the author is as much the product as the book. It’s about culitvating a relationship between the author and the reader, so the reader, by virtue of knowing about the author or hearing the author speak, can divulge deeper into the book and become more likely to buy books by that author in the future.

Besides, what gives authors the moral authority to choose for what reasons people buy their books?

The article itself is fascinating and raises a lot of excellent points about the nature of selling books, book tours, and using authors as promotional tools.