For my novice book tour, my co-publisher granted me a budget of $500. On the one hand, this was hardly anything; on the other hand, it was $500 more than nothing.

The venues along the East Coast included REI sporting goods stores, indie bookstores, libraries, and the Big Daddy, the Barnes and Noble Powerplant store in Baltimore. Before entering I spent ten minutes searching for the right camera angle to capture the enormity of this stupendous brick antique on the waterfront, with smokestacks that echo Britain's Battersea Powerplant featured on the Pink Floyd album cover. I was awed at the scale of the enterprise, and inside it was just as impressive - the biggest bookstore I'd ever seen. It made me feel...notable.

But Barnes and Noble had provided no space for readings. You were expected to stand and speak in the café among the disinterested. This also meant that their was no screen on which to project the slide show that was part of my talk, so I spent a hour with the ‘Community Relations Manager' Eric Lapp, building a screen from the backside of an discarded white banner taped to salvaged hunk of corrugated cardboard. Balanced atop an easel, the screen worked, but there was no way to dim the lighting in any corner of the store without an Executive Order from the Supreme Command in Barnes and Nobles HQ.

No matter. I helped set up the folding chairs in the dimmest corner we could find, then Mr. Lapp made an announcement on the PA: "We are lucky to have the world adventurer Jim Malusa give a reading and slide show tonight, from his new book Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents."

Mr. Lapp retuned and patiently sat in the back and waited. I liked him: genial and soft-spoken, he was trained as an archeologist and had worked near the Dead Sea, one of my destination. Because tonight was the Friday evening before Memorial Day weekend, I was prepared for a low turnout.

But I was not prepared for zero. Fifteen minutes after the appointed hour, I said to Mr. Lapp, "Zero is better than one. I'd feel obligated to give the reading, but now I'm free to give you a personal account of my trip to the Dead Sea." I did, and in return he told me tales of his exploits in Jordan, and his own efforts to find a reading audience for his academic efforts.

As a marketing effort, the evening was an utter failure. Yet later, after I'd boarded the Amtrak to Philly, I popped open a beer in celebration of something more elusive.