Double booked

By the time Harley Jane Kozak arrives at the Barnes & Noble bookstore for her 7:30 p.m. reading, the stage is set. Two rows of chairs borrowed from the cafe face a low table stacked with copies of her recently published second mystery novel, “Dating Is Murder.” The seats, to Kozak’s relief, are filled, but many of the faces are familiar -- a niece and her young husband, some friends, loose acquaintances, a former chauffeur from Kozak’s acting days and four people with whom she has corresponded by e-mail.

Of the 19 people facing her, only six are strangers, which is not exactly what Kozak is after. The idea is to build a fan base among people who will buy her book for reasons other than personal loyalty, or even because they remember her career acting in soaps, movies (“Parenthood” and “When Harry Met Sally,” among them) and TV pilots that crashed on takeoff.

But the event still works, because part of Kozak’s mission is to sow seeds. Kozak comes from a big family -- she has seven bothers and sisters -- and has developed an even wider circle of friends, and on this weeklong seven-city tour, she hopes to marshal them all -- family, friends and fans -- into an unsuspecting army of Johnny Appleseeds to help spread the word.

Kozak’s writing career might hang in the balance. “Dating Is Murder” winds up her two-book deal with Doubleday, although her first, “Dating Dead Men,” recently won an Agatha Award for best first novel. “My next book really is contingent upon how many people buy this book,” says Kozak, who also scheduled a series of short forays to such places as San Mateo, San Diego and Scottsdale, Ariz. (With more than 70,000 of Kozak’s books in print, Doubleday publicist Rachel Pace says she can’t go on record with any contract details at this time, “but can say we are extremely pleased with how we’ve published Harley thus far.”)

For many authors, the book tour is a literary Bataan Death March of long days, uncertain meals and strange beds; interviewers who didn’t crack your book; and skeptical readers. “That doesn’t sound like a lot of giggles,” one woman drawled earlier in the day as she looked at the stack of copies of “Dating Is Murder” Kozak was about to sign at a Borders store here.

And then when the day’s over, after a dinner that started at 9 p.m. and with a plane reservation for 8 the next morning, you try to connect with your real life back in Topanga Canyon, the hiss of cellular technology crossing time zones to deliver the heart pang that even though your children miss you and your husband reports there’s no milk in the house, things at home are going on nicely without you.

“Those little things nibble at my mind,” says Kozak, 48. “They’re getting along without me, and I guess that’s a relief.... Then I worry that they’re going to be mad at me for having left. I’m so glad that this is only 10 days out of the year. If I had to do this on a regular basis, I don’t think I could do it.”

On the road

In a sense, this is the old-fashioned way to build a writing career. With travel becoming increasingly expensive and technology making it cheaper to link authors and readers in ever more inventive ways, the tradition of the writer physically going out to press the flesh has faded. There are fewer Kozaks -- new writers hoping to stake out a readership -- out on the road these days. When they do tours, the trips tend to be shorter and closer to where the author lives or where the book is set, hoping to play off local interest.

“What we have learned is that if you are going to go out on tour with basically an unknown author and set up a book-signing, chances are you’ll have two to five people show up,” says Justin Loeber, publicity director for Simon & Schuster. “It’s just not very cost-effective.”

Instead, publicity campaigns are increasingly built on satellite television and radio interviews, in which an author can spend one morning doing half a dozen on-air interviews from one studio; interviews on the Web; phone interviews with local newspapers; visits with buyers for bookstore chains; and the occasional gimmick. For Kozak’s book, Doubleday is offering a $5 discount to people who buy both the new hardcover and a paperback copy of her first mystery.

One new tack merges readings -- traditionally rather sedate affairs in bookstores -- and a night on the town. Last month, four first-time novelists collectively toured bars around the country, including Los Angeles’ Cafe-Club Fais Do-Do. Book Soup added dinner to a reading at the club last week by Chuck Palahniuk from his new short story collection, “Haunted.”

Stuart Applebaum, spokesman for Random House Inc., which includes Doubleday, believes the book tour is evolving yet will remain a component of book promotion, especially as consolidation of broadcast media reduces the numbers of local shows on which publishers can place authors. The focus now, he says, is on gaining the support of book buyers for chains -- from Borders to Wal-Mart to Ralphs -- and local booksellers and clerks, a reflection of the industry’s reliance on word-of-mouth and local media coverage over advertising.

“We simply can’t afford, even for our most highly anticipated books, the kind of multimillion-dollar budgets that the movie companies and DVD purveyors put forward,” Applebaum says.

While many authors dislike tours, Kozak sees it as crucial to building a network of readers and sympathetic store clerks willing to recommend her book to customers. Loeber says many writers, who by nature spend a lot of time alone, adjust with difficulty to being in the spotlight.

“A lot of authors are very reluctant to throw themselves into the publicity arena,” he says, adding that many would “rather write their book in their den and be done with it. The hardest part for many people is for them to promote.”

With reason. The ones who do go out are volunteering for a grinding experience.

“I don’t know how these people do it, flying one city, one day on a 20-city tour,” Loeber says. “You are totally exhausted.”

Kozak, with years of television and film promotion tours behind her, is on a different page. So eager to promote her writing, she organized her own tour last year for her first book, hitting cities where she knew she could borrow a couch and where she and her publicist could find bookstores willing to have her.

For this tour, the publisher did all the publicity arrangements, and instead of crashing on friends’ couches, Kozak is staying at comfortable hotels.

The tour began on a Saturday at a San Mateo bookshop, after which Kozak flew home to spend most of Sunday with her husband, lawyer Greg Aldisert, 46, and their children, Audrey, 5, and twins Louis and Gia, who just turned 3. After dinner, Kozak headed to LAX to pick up the tour on a Monday in Houston, where a reporter joined up with her, then Dallas; Lincoln, Seward and Omaha in her native Nebraska; and on to Minneapolis and Milwaukee.

“It was almost unbearable on the airplane Sunday,” Kozak says the following Tuesday, sitting in the Adolphus’ high-ceilinged, wood-paneled lobby. “It was kind of bad yesterday, and now it’s like a dull ache.”

But the days are busy, which helps. Each morning, Kozak visits a handful of bookstores to meet the owners and managers and sign copies of her books. In smaller ones, such as Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, tucked between a tailor and a gift store in a neighborhood strip mall 10 miles west of downtown, that means three hardcover copies of the new book and four paperback copies of her first one.

Kozak also adds her signature to author graffiti on the shop’s walls, and buys some stuffed animals for her kids, all while making small talk with the owner and clerks.

She makes similar stops at three other bookstores before arriving at public radio station KUHF-FM for a live interview -- following a performance from a local production of “La Boheme” -- about her reluctant detective, Sunset Strip card-shop manager Wollie Shelley, although the star-struck host asks more about her acting career than the book. “That doesn’t bother me,” Kozak says later. “I’m still pretty new [at writing], and that gives me a leg up.”

After a break at the hotel, Kozak heads for the main event -- an evening reading and signing at Murder by the Book, where she is double-billed with Randy Wayne White, author of the bestselling Doc Ford mysteries and former “Out There” columnist for Outside magazine. Together they draw about 50 people, and Kozak signs 34 books for 19 readers, many of whom tell her they came for White but decided to buy her book too.

On to Dallas

The next day, Kozak flies to Dallas -- different city, basically the same routine. After landing at the airport at a little after 10 a.m., she ducks into an empty chapel where it’s quiet enough for a telephoned radio interview with a station in Lincoln. The call is pre-arranged, but Kozak still has trouble getting through. She explains herself to the person who answers the phone, who asks if Kozak is calling in to record a commercial.

Finally, someone agrees to call her back. As she waits, someone steps into the chapel, so Kozak leaves and slips into an unlocked meeting room next door, sheltered from the echoing announcements about where to find luggage -- hers is spinning untended on a carousel somewhere downstairs -- and where not to leave your car.

The call comes and the female interviewer tells Kozak to pretend that she’s being questioned by a man -- the quotes will be cut up and edited back together later -- and that the conversation is taking place the next day, when Kozak will actually be in Lincoln. Kneeling on the floor, Kozak reminisces about growing up in Lincoln performing in local theaters, fields the usual questions about her acting days, then rattles off the time and place for the Lincoln signing before hanging up. “That was pretty surreal,” she murmurs.

From there, she’s off to the hotel. Then, with a slow afternoon, she goes for a run (she likes to get in a 90-minute outing whenever she can), and by late afternoon the local handler picks her up for drop-bys -- Kozak calls them “drive-bys” -- to sign stock at three bookstores, then the reading at Barnes & Noble.

The next day, Kozak’s back at the airport to fly to Lincoln, via Minneapolis. She carries advertising bookmarks with her and hands them out like calling cards. In the shuttle from the rental car drop-off, an elderly Iowa couple strike up a conversation about where Kozak’s from and where she’s going. Kozak hesitates momentarily, then tells the couple she’s a writer on a book tour and whisks a couple of bookmarks from her handbag.

Potential readers are everywhere.

The time commitment is intense, although the pace is more tedious than strenuous. The days are long and the events redundant, like a political campaign without the scrutiny.

Kozak worries about not remembering the faces of old acquaintances who come around to see her. She worries that bookstore owners and managers are going out of their way to give her time but that she’s not drawing enough customers. She frets long distance with her husband about what school to enroll their daughter in this fall, a decision that has to be made now even though Kozak is far away.

But mostly, she says, the difficulty of being on the book tour comes from what she’s not able to do. “The bad part about this,” she says, “is all the time you’re spending on the book tour takes you away from the writing.”

It’s dusk, and the setting sun has splashed the Nebraska sky with curling sweeps of pink and magenta, colors a painter would ache to capture. More than 40 people have already gathered at Lee Booksellers in a Lincoln strip mall, and the crowd will double by the time the evening is over.

Harley Jane Kozak has come home.

She arrived at her friend Michael Trutna’s apartment around 2 p.m. After throwing in a load of laundry, Kozak went for a run, hit the shower and then went shopping. Black jeans, brown shoes -- something, obviously, had to be done. A department store doesn’t have black shoes that Kozak likes, but Payless does.

In a hurry now, she wears the shoes out of the store and heads for the bookstore 15 minutes early, hoping to get the hugs and “How are yous?” with old friends out of the way before the reading begins at 7 p.m.

She enters the store and steps into arms and smiling faces, some she had seen just a month earlier in more trying circumstances, when she came back for the funeral of her friend, Dan Reinehr. Others she hasn’t seen in more years than any of them can remember.

The reading has a lighter feeling than the events in Houston and Dallas. Kozak takes questions. A middle school-aged girl wants advice on becoming a writer. Someone else wants to know whether it’s true Kozak finished the new book in a bathroom (true; it was the only room in the house where she could write in peace). The final question is whether Kozak, the pride of Lincoln East High’s Class of 1975, will be back June 10 for the 30th reunion.

“I am so sorry about the reunion,” Kozak says, explaining that she’s committed to a mystery convention in Pasadena that weekend. “Otherwise, you know that I’d be in Lincoln.”

The line of autograph seekers forms quickly, curling along the front of the bookstore and back past the cash register. Each has a momentary chat with Kozak, mostly about friends in common or memories of shared experiences. The clock ticks and a woman who is hosting a small post-signing reception hands out directions to the invitees, and then heads home to prepare, Kozak still signing away.

By 9 p.m., the last of the stragglers has drifted off. Kozak scrawls her name across the title page of the store’s unsold stock and then, after thanking the shop owner, she, Trutna and another friend are out on the sidewalk, discussing logistics for getting to the reception.

Plans set, Kozak heads to her rental car, Trutna in tow, the cool night breeze washing them with the earthy and fertile mustiness of spring, the smell that makes farmers -- and writers -- think of the rows they will sow, and the crops they will reap.