Photos (including feature photo) by Scott Eisen/Getty Images for Abrams Books

Jeff Kinney is on the road again. A new “Wimpy Kid” release and subsequent road trip by the author and his team have become an annual event each fall.

Kinney arguably occupies the kind of rare status in publishing that doesn't require a tour to support sales. Whenever he releases Greg Heffley’s latest adventure, the best-seller list isn’t far behind. But Kinney doesn’t take anything for granted.

“I still need to tour,” he says sincerely.

Besides, he wants to.

“There's such an opportunity, it's a payoff, right?” he says. “I do all this work in isolation, and then myself and my team, we get to go out on the road and have fun and travel in a van and do karaoke and get pizza and meet all these fans.

“The miracle of publishing is that I dream up this, sometimes in my car, sometimes in a cemetery in Plainville, MA. And then, just like a few weeks later, it's out in the world. So I get to see that miracle of publishing firsthand when I interact with kids who come up on stage, and I look over the audience. It's a powerful trip, for sure.”

For Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess, the 19th book in the best-selling series, Kinney scheduled a tour of 14 interactive shows, as well as three planned school events and at least five spontaneous pop-ups along the tour route, stopping at bookstores, libraries, and outdoor areas. At the schools and pop-up visits, Kinney will give kids the opportunity to choose a free book from a diverse collection provided by First Book.

“Last year, the thrust of our tour was supporting libraries and librarians,” says Kinney, whose tour for Book 18 was a response to the book challenges and harassment faced by librarians. “This year, I wanted to put that into the affirmative. I have come to realize that when a kid picks out a book, that’s a time when they get to exercise their agency. When I was a kid, I got to pick what I wanted to read, and it helped shape the person that I became. So, especially with the change at the top of the Democratic ticket and an emphasis on freedom, we wanted to embrace the freedom to read.”

While being a proponent of the freedom to read is not controversial or risky, invoking the current presidential campaign is for any public figure.

“It's scary what we're facing in this national election, and whichever way it goes, it's going to change our reality,” Kinney says. “It's important for people to step up and say what they believe in or act in the way that they believe in. Politics used to be something in the background of most people's lives, and now it's in the foreground. And you have to walk the walk.”

Kinney took his idea of offering other authors’ books on the tour to his team and asked the children’s book buyer at his Plainville bookstore, An Unlikely Story, for some books to bring along. The buyer, Leo Landry, picked out a range of high-interest diverse titles, including books by Jerry Craft, Kelly Yang, Raina Telgemeier, and Dan Santat.

“When I grew up, there were lots of books that reflected my reality,” says Kinney. “Reading a book was like holding up a mirror. I've really come to realize, as a bookstore owner, and as an author, that not every kid gets that chance to see themselves in the pages of a book. Publishing started to catch up right at the moment when the culture wars started to rage, so I think it's more important than ever to make sure that people who don't always get a voice or a seat at the table are elevated.”

First Book complemented the buyer’s choices with some selections of its own, and the team filled the Wimpy Kid Hot Mess tour faux “Food Truck” and hit the road.

Kinney enjoys watching kids make their selections and seeing the joy and pride of ownership when they pick up that new book.

“Some of these communities that we're going into, the kids don't have any books in their home," says Kinney. "So just to own a book is very novel for them—no pun intended. Sometimes you see a kid hug the book to their chest because it's so special to own their own book. It's great.”

Writing in reverse

Kinney believes Hot Mess is the best storytelling he has done in the series, which is particularly impressive when you learn that he had the title before he came up with the story.

“What drove everything this time was the time of year that I was releasing the book,” he says. “I knew I was going to be touring right before the presidential election. I figured it wasn't going to be pretty, and it sure isn't. So I felt like I couldn't put out a book that didn't have at least a winking acknowledgment to the circumstances that our country is in. So Hot Mess felt like the right thing.”

The story he wrote finds Heffley and his large, extended family cramped into a small beach house for a summer vacation that becomes a series of mishaps and power struggles, along with a quest to learn the secret ingredients in Greg’s Gramma’s famous meatballs.

“I think this one's the best story,” says Kinney, adding that he didn’t get serious about storytelling until the ninth book of the series, The Long Haul. And didn’t get any good at it, by his own assessment, until book 12, The Getaway.

“Since then, I've gotten incrementally better at it over time,” he says. “Now I feel like I can hold my own in storytelling. I've always considered myself to be a gag writer, and a lot of my earlier books have good jokes, but the storylines are paper-thin. I'd be a little bit horrified to put some of those out these days.”

Nearly 10 books into the series, the live-action movies altered his writing approach.

"The screenwriters had to change almost everything, because the stories weren't structurally sound,” he says of the early movies. “If I hadn't gotten involved in the movies, I probably would be doing things the way that I used to. But movies taught me how to structure a story properly and to deliver an emotional payoff.”

It's a different process now than it used to be, but maybe one he's tired of? During the Hot Mess Tour shows, Kinney announces that instead of writing the next book, he wants to open a restaurant.

“It’s fun,” he says. “I get a lot of boos.”

“Wimpy Kid” fans, don't worry—it’s just a joke. There will be a 20th book and, no doubt, a fall tour to follow.