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1. Publish with a mighty independent press that creates a beautiful book whose cover warms your heart every time you look at its green and yellow glow. It is very important that you feel this way, as there will be days you’ll need that green and yellow glow to carry you through eleven hours of driving.

2. Find out your publisher’s budget for a book tour, and then figure out how much you can afford to spend yourself. Even if you’ve published with a major house, unless your last name is Kardashian, the amount you can afford to spend yourself will pretty much be your budget.

3. Book many dates in the state where your book is set, and plan for your boyfriend to drive you around that entire state. This may put a strain on your relationship, but it will rest you up for the legs of your book tour when you’ll need to drive. And, let’s face it, the first months after your book comes out are all about you! Except for when you’re taking out the trash, or changing the cat litter, or coordinating doctor visits long distance for your elderly mother. Bonus points if you do any of those things while wearing a sparkly dress within an hour of leaving for or returning home from a reading.

4. Book at least part of your tour with another recently-published author, preferably a good friend, and definitely someone with similar taste in music. When hauling ass from Oakland, California to Portland, Oregon, you want someone who shares your excitement at listening twice in a row to REM’s “Little America” or Neko Case’s “Hold On Hold On.” You don’t want someone who might ask to listen to Air Supply instead. (If you’re an Air Supply fan, simply reverse the above statement.)

5. Also paramount to the travel dynamic: be sure that, whether your travel companion is male or female, you feel comfortable discussing biological functions such as farting, burping, and the need for salty snacks while menstruating. These things will all come up, and not being able to stop for those Kettle chips RIGHT NOW could prove disastrous for you both.

6. When spending the night in a sketchy motel, do not spend two hours wishfully googling nearby hotels while your fellow author sleeps. Especially do not do this if you already feel guilty that your fellow author did so much of the driving because you nearly had a panic attack trying to navigate the windy roads near Mount Shasta, and so there is no way you will wake him up and ask to go to a motel that does not smell of Lysol and floral air freshener with a fungal undertone.

7. When your fellow author says the next morning that he does not smell the fungal undertone, but you are both able to laugh about the Hawaiian-shirted guy at the front desk the previous night – the one who told the bleary-eyed two of you about his upcoming dental work in unsolicited detail, using words like “scaling” and mentioning his own bad breath – when that happens, feel very, very grateful that the only thing you’ve really disagreed on in a week of constant travel togetherness is the smell in a motel that, happily, you will never visit again.

8. If traveling for two weeks, do not pack ten dresses/skirts and only two pair of pants, one of these being the jeans you will wear in the car every single day. By the fourth city, you will no longer have the energy to put on tights. By the fifth city, you will no longer be able to find the tights in your suitcase.

9. If traveling for two weeks, do not pack one huge suitcase that weighs as much as a Saint Bernard dog, one overflow suitcase, one laptop bag and one giant purse/bag. Especially if you can barely lift the Saint Bernard, and especially if your fellow author is kind enough to lift the Saint Bernard for you when you can’t. You will feel selfish and high maintenance for the entire trip, and you will lose the necessary clout for a motel fungal smell opt-out (see #6).

10. Recognize that having a book published is an enormous honor, and the ability to take time off from day jobs to promote said book is a gift. Be as grateful to the three people who show up for that one reading as you are to the forty who showed up for that other reading. Don’t ever publicly complain about your good fortune. EVER. Because there are lots of people out there who would love to have a book published, would love to have a book tour, would love to just have a couple of weeks off from their jobs, even. Yes, a book tour is work, but it’s work of the most wonderful sort. It’s not a shift on an assembly line, or physical labor in the hot sun or freezing cold. Being a writer can be hard, and frustrating, and lonely at times, but this is the awesome part. Enjoy it. Respect it.