80 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ APRIL 6, 2020
Soapbox
“In the months to come, my book promotion will use both established
tools and my newly adopted technological ones.”
A Book Tour in a Time of Pandemic
With her traditional book tour canceled, an author adapts
By Ainissa Ramirez
a tour for a book that took years to write.
All evening, I got pretty heated about
my bad luck. I would have gone swim-
ming to cool off, but my pool was
shuttered.
The next day, I woke up with an idea
that I needed to buy a new computer. For
years, I wrote on an old Mac, but lately
Skype wasn’t working. I had been on the
fence about buying a new laptop, but not
that morning. After two trips to the
Apple Store, I owned a new MacBook that
night. It was a good thing I acted when I
did, because two days later Apple closed
its retail stores.
At the time, I had no idea that my new
computer would be my main vehicle for
my virtual book tour. I could do radio interviews with it via
Skype, and I could livestream lectures via Zoom. In this brave
new world of virtual book tours, I’ve learned quite a bit. I jury-
rigged a home studio with a standalone webcam for my
livestream events. I didn’t have a podium in my house, so I
repurposed my music stand to hold my notes. This virtual book
tour is being cobbled together much in the same way as the
resources I used in writing the book it’s supporting.
For years, I have been writing my best book yet and creating
my own luck as I moved ahead. For a golden moment, my luck
improved—but then the world changed for the worse, and so
I had to make my own luck again with the book’s promotion.
In the months to come, my book promotion will use both
established tools and my newly adopted technological ones.
This use of technology for book promotion seems fitting. In
The Alchemy of Us, I show how society embraces new technolo-
gies out of need, and it is out of need that I am using technology
to promote the book. This notion isn’t lost on me—nor is the
fact that my luck improved again. This spring I will reach my
readers virtually, but in fall I will reach them in person, since
my tour has been rescheduled. There should be much to cele-
brate come fall, when, hopefully, the worst of this pandemic will
be behind us. ■Generally, I consider myself to be a lucky
person, but the type of luck that I mean is
the luck one makes. For several years, I
used that type of luck while writing my
book, The Alchemy of Us. I didn’t have
access to a well-funded library, so I cobbled
together a patchwork of resources. I used
public libraries for books, digital libraries
for articles, and a local college library for
its quiet.
In these places, I pieced together stories
about inventors and the impact of their
inventions. It was a slow and arduous
process. So, when my publisher selected
my work as one of its big titles for spring
2020, I felt that I inherited a new form
of luck.M
y publicist assembled a tour of 26 venues in 21 cities
in the U.S. and the U.K. With such an ambitious
plan, my book felt like NASA’s Golden Record, with
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be propelled across the
publishing universe. I wanted to be ready. In preparation, I
practiced my talk and swam four times a week. I even organized
a preview talk at a local library to rehearse in front of an audience
before my tour began. Little did I know that this small venue
would telegraph the big things to come.
Two days before that event, the library’s coordinator asked
if I was still coming, given the recent coronavirus news. At
that time, there were only a few cases on the East Coast, so I
said yes. The next day, that small library understandably
canceled, since the number of cases was escalating and safety
was key. By then, a few of my tour venues in England had
canceled because of the crisis in Europe. A few days later, the
West Coast bookstores started to cancel. Then, the East Coast
bookstores began to cancel, too. Eventually, the whole tour
collapsed.
As this was unfolding, I was in okay spirits. I presented a level
of acceptance honed from my New Jersey upbringing, with
its unofficial state motto of, “What are you going to do?”
However, in retrospect, I must have been partly in shock,
because a few days later my acceptance transformed into
anger. I kept thinking about the odds of a pandemic cancelingAinissa Ramirez is a materials scientist and science communicator. Her book
The Alchemy of Us will be published by MIT on April 7.