On Tour: Reactions to a visible man 

There's nothing like a book tour to take away one's sense of groundedness.

Since Vanderbilt University Press published my book, Becoming a Visible Man, in June of 2004, I've been on the road, or rather mostly in the skies, working to promote sales. This is expected of every author these days, including Bill Clinton, whose autobiography came out at roughly the same time as my book.

Needless to say, Mr. Clinton's tour was much more high profile than mine. He's literally selling a history that everyone has lived through, while at first glance I might seem to be promoting my own transsexualism, something rather rare, and even abhorrent in some quarters. Although my book also contains new historical information about the transgender movement, about the evolution of sex reassignment surgery, and about current developments in the art and science of sex and gender—topics beyond the scope of the usual story of one person's transition—these are not subjects that most people think of as worth their time or money.

Almost every book outlet in the nation would order numerous copies of Clinton 's book sight unseen, while I've had to personally convince some individual store's buyers that my book would be of interest to at least one or two people who might someday come through their doors. If I could get my book into one one-hundredth of the stores that are carrying Clinton 's book, that would be a major coup!

I also suspect that Clinton 's publisher paid the expenses of his tour, as is sometimes done for very high-profile authors. In my case, as is the case for almost every author these days, I have to pay ninety-nine percent of the expenses it takes to help make bookstores and readers aware that my book exists. And while Clinton 's book has been reviewed in nearly every major newspaper, my book has received almost no attention from reviewers, even in San Francisco .

Do I sound like I'm complaining? Actually, I'm not! Given all that I'm up against as an unknown author, I'm nearly ecstatic about how well my book has been received by readers, and how well it is selling: two thousand copies in the first six months! The managers at stores where I have done reading and signing events have generally been very pleased with the turnout and sales, and nearly all of them have had me autograph any leftover books, which means they are confident they will sell them.

When I read at A Different Light Bookstore in San Francisco last summer, they didn't have enough books to meet the demand, so after they sold out I walked the remaining empty-handed customers down the street a few blocks to Books, Inc., where they could buy copies. When the salesperson there watched me autograph the books, she asked if I would come do an event at their store, too. Absolutely! I gave her my card, and we set up something for later in the year.

Giving a reading in a public place, while shoppers are browsing through the aisles, always makes me feel a little exposed. It's one thing to speak frankly about transsexualism and related sexual topics to an audience that has sought you out; but when you are talking about intimacy or altered erotic body parts in front of people who are just within earshot, you notice them turning to stare, or worse, fleeing the premises.

At Common Language bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I read to a small but distinguished gathering that included local GLBT movement figures, university professors, and students, and also a few people lurking around the front of the store, too nervous to come closer. They just heard little snippets of sentences; they glanced away whenever I looked in their direction. In Dallas, Texas, at Crossroads Market Bookstore, someone from the audience had to get up and ask the manager to turn off the piped-in music so the twenty-or-so people who came to listen could actually hear me read over the din. At Black Oak Books in Berkeley, California, over fifty people gathered in the center of the store, and when the time for reading and signing ended, a few of us went to the deli next door for a snack. The deli's manager asked if I could sign one more book: one of the waitstaff's children was gender-variant. This mother couldn't attend the reading, but she had already purchased the book and was thrilled that I had wandered into the restaurant and might autograph her copy. My book had given her hope that her child might have a rewarding life, but she was too shy to speak to me without the manager breaking the ice.

Some of the signings I've done have been in conjunction with bookstore exhibits at conferences like the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (in Chicago last year, and coming up in Portland, Oregon in May) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's “Creating Change” conference for political activists held in St. Louis last year. These are sometimes strange settings. People walk by on their way to their conference session and regard authors as if we were homeless people with our hands out asking for spare change. I think most people prefer their books with the authors securely located in two dimensions on the back cover or the inside flap. They are safer in rejecting the book that way. Book shopping can be brutally arbitrary: What first attracts a reader, and once they begin to handle a book, what causes them to put it aside? Often the answers have nothing to do with the books or their content. Books are often impulse buys. What can an author do?

Authors usually appeal to readers who are already familiar with their work. The majority of people who came to my readings already knew of me, or had already read something of mine, but there were some who had no idea, too. At Modern Times Books in San Francisco, one unsuspecting reader attended because I had engaged her services to help me reorganize my office. She knew I was working in the field of sex and gender studies because she had seen my files and book collection, and that didn't bother her. But she was literally stunned as I began to read about telling my mother I planned to change my sex. She had no idea that I was not a natal male, and that new awareness threw her off balance for almost the entire evening.

That's the point, actually: You can't make assumptions about people, and if you do, be prepared to be wrong. Either men and women are not so different after all, or the difference is much more powerful, albeit subtle, than we had realized before. Learning about gender variance is a bit like riding on a magic carpet—you can't take the world for granted anymore.

After appearing in fourteen cities over six months, autographing a few hundred books, and talking to a few thousand strangers, I can tell you that it is good to be home, though it's taken much longer than I expected to feel my feet firmly on the ground again.

* Jamison Green is a writer and educator specializing in transgender and transsexual health, safety, and civil rights, working internationally out of the San Francisco Bay Area. He transitioned from female to male in 1988 at the age of 40. His web site is: www.jamisongreen.com.