Once again, regardless of whatever Richard Carpenter was going to include on his solo album,
if there was going to be little promotion by him, I fail to see how the album would have charted any better....
---as far as Richard's "Time" is concerned, we read:
People Magazine, October 26th, 1987:
"Record business wisdom would have Carpenter go out on tour to support his new LP,
but he plans to stay home for a while, he says, “because I don’t want to leave my baby yet.”
Source:
Four Years After His Sister Karen's Death, Singer Richard Carpenter Makes His Debut as a Solo Act
The timing of his family commitments certainly wouldn't have helped the album's cause, but I don't know if a tour would have made all that much difference to its sales. Would he have been able to attract much of a crowd without Karen and what format would it have taken, given that several of the songs on Time were sung by other people than him? It's hard to avoid the idea of it leaning very heavily on the Carpenters' back catalogue, as his 1997 shows were to do, rather than showcasing him as a solo artist.