Writing this on the plane from Phoenix to San Francisco. Spent yesterday in the Phoenix area doing drop-in signings and a TV interview, with a bookstore event at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale in the evening. The way it works is this: in each city there are people whose business is to escort authors. The publisher arranges for them to pick you up at your hotel and take you to appointments -- interviews, bookstore events, readings -- and in between, to stock signings at as many bookstores as can be fit into your schedule. (If you're on a tour you arrange yourself you probably won't use them; you'll rent cars, take cabs, etc. They're not cheap, these folks.) The escort knows all the bookstores and most of the managers, has called in advance so they've pulled your books from the shelves, and has worked out the most efficient route from one to another. He/she will come in with you, introduce you, and schmooze with the bookstore people while you sign all the books in the store. There's no reading or any kind of public event involved in a stock signing (alos called a drop-in); you just jump back in the car when you're done and race to the next store. Usually you can't count on more than a half-dozen hardcovers per store, sometimes fewer, maybe another dozen if the store also wants you to sign paperbacks. But signed books sell better than unsigned ones, and your publisher hasn't sent you to whatever city it is to sit by the hotel pool. If there's an interview scheduled with local media, the escort knows where the studio/office/coffee shop is and they get you there on time. Then more bookstores. They almost always have water in the car and they buy you lunch, coffee, whatever, which they bill to your publisher. They take you to your bookstore event, usually a reading, hang around until you're done, and drop you back at your hotel. Where you call room service and collapse.