Neil Gaiman's Farewell Tour

Good evening constant reader.

No, Neil isn't going to stop writing.
What he is going to do is stop going out on book signing tours.

In talking about his new book, The Ocean At The End of The Lane, due for simultaneous release in the US and UK on June 18th of this year, Neil states his intent to make this the last book signing tour and why. In his own words from his journal:

"This will be my first actual signing (as opposed to reading) tour since Anansi Boys in 2005. I’ll go places and in each place I’ll do a reading, a short Q&A, then I’ll sign books.

I think the OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE tour will be the last actual signing tour I ever do. They’re exhausting, on a level that’s hard to believe. I love meeting people, but the sixth hour of signing, for people who have been standing in a line for seven hours, is no fun for anybody. (The last proper US signing I did, it lasted over 7 hours and I signed for over 1000 people. I'd suspect a lot of the signings on this tour will be like that, or bigger.)

So I’m going to try and make this tour the glorious last US book signing tour, and then stop doing book signing tours for good."
I am hopeful Neil will be signing somewhere relatively close to me. If not, then I am sad, as I had always hoped to go to one of his book signings so I could meet him in person and get a book signed.

However, I do understand his reasoning behind his decision. If not going out on crazy book signing tours allows Neil to relax and have more time to be creative, then I'm for it.

Full text of Neil's journal entry is available here: On The Glorious Last US Booksigning Tour, with Digressions onto Concorde and Australia