This morning Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, posted more details about his upcoming tour promoting his new book The Heroes of Olympus: The Mark of Athena which will be available October 2nd.
For each event Disney -Hyperion, the publisher, will be giving a t-shirt to the first 1,000 people to buy a signed book. Participants will get to choose between Camp Half-Blood or Camp Jupiter.
Rick also posted details about how the events are structured to give fans an idea of what to expect:
When I arrive on location, before the event, I will be signing a thousand Mark of Athena books. These autographed copies will be available for you to buy. In some cases, they are your ticket into the event. In some cases, you can choose to get a ticket without a book, or both. At each event, if you buy one of the signed copies, you get a t-shirt, either Camp Jupiter or Camp Half-Blood.
The event will be about an hour long. I’ll tell you all about how and why I wrote the books. I’ll show you behind-the-scenes cover art that was never used. I’ll make stupid jokes. I’ll read a never-before-released section of an upcoming Percy Jackson story. And of course I’ll answer your questions, as many as we have time for. It’s always a blast!
We WON’T be doing a signing line. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it all boils down to the size of the crowd. About three tours ago, I realized that so many people were coming through the signing line that nobody was really getting a chance to meet me. We had to move so fast, just to make sure everyone got through the line, that it just wasn’t a quality experience for anybody, including me. I would either have to do a brief “Hi, how are ya?” speech and then launch straight into signing, or the store would sit me right down to sign. Kids would wait for two or three hours to get a two-second face-to-face with no chance to really interact. I couldn’t sign all your books. I couldn’t do pictures. I couldn’t personalize the books. There was maybe time for one quick question, maybe. Well . . . it just wasn’t working. Back in the old days, I was able to do all of that stuff, and of course everyone understandably wants a picture and wants all of their books signed, but even if I only spent thirty seconds with each fan (which is too short) if a thousand fans show up, the signing would last eight hours. You see the problem? Also, to be honest, I’m getting older, and sitting in a chair for so many hours each night was murdering my back.
Because of all this, I decided if we didn’t have time to do a quality signing line (and with a thousand folks, there really is no way) we would make it a quality evening, with tons of time for the presentation and lots of Q&A. Don’t bring all your books from home, because I won’t be able to sign them, but I wouldn’t be able to do that even if we were doing a signing line. The good news: You’ll still get a signed copy of The Mark of Athena. You’ll get a cool t-shirt ONLY available at the events. You’ll get a chance to ask your questions and really feel like you got to know me a little. And you won’t have to wait in line for hours and hours!
You can see a full listing of tour dates here. Are any Leakies going to one of these events? Which t-shirt will you be choosing?
