Virtual Book Tours for Fiction Authors

On a virtual book tour, authors visit a series of blogs, websites, radio shows or other virtual venues during a certain time frame – usually one to three weeks – to promote their book. Most tour stops involve making guest posts on blogs (either by writing an article or being interviewed by the blog owner) or having the blog owner review the book.

Virtual book tours can be a good way to promote fiction. When planning your tour, look for book blogs related to your genre, general book review websites, and blogs that cater to the specific target audience for your book. Here's an example of an interview-style tour stop on a highly targeted blog, Suburban Vampire.

It's best to create a web page with a schedule listing the stops for your tour. Here's a great example for the tour for TimeSplash by Graham Storrs.

For best results, seek out sites with good traffic. You can estimate website traffic by comparing the Google Page Rank or Alexa ranking of different websites.

What kinds of topics can fiction authors talk about on their blog tour? Of course, you can talk about the characters and plot in the book you are promoting. But, many people are fascinated by the writing and publishing process, so you can also cover topics such as these:

 

• How do you come up with story ideas and characters?

• When and how do you write?

• What other authors inspire you?

• How did you find your publisher?

• How long does it take you to write a novel?

• How do you overcome writers block?

• What's your next project?

• How long have you been writing and how did you get started?

• How does your background influence your books?

For tips on organizing your virtual book tour, see my detailed how-to guidebook, Virtual Book Tour Magic.

Comments

[Graham Storrs]

I've just completed a 2 month virtual book tour. It had its ups and downs. Andy Shackcloth was with me all the way, interviewing me as I did it. He is currently publishing the result on his blog in a multi-part post. Any of your readers thinking about doing one of these might want to have a look at what Andy and I had to say about the experience.

[Andy Shackcloth]

Hi Dana, Thanks for linking to the posts that Graham and I did about his tour. I hope they will be useful to anyone considering doing their own tour.

I liked this neat article that you have posted, especially since you call the tours "Virtual Book Tours", which Graham and a few others would tell you, is a personal hobby horse of mine. See, I just couldn't resist making that comment. :)

And those are good links that you have included, thanks I have booked marked them.

One thing I would like to say to any author considering promoting their upcoming book by a virtual book tour is;

** Get involved in someone else's tour first, preferably more than one. **

I have learned so much by assisting Graham and I know he has appreciated the odd bit of support that I have given him. There is a real difference between reading about tours and getting involved, working to dead lines, having schedules fail, hosts disappearing, etc.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks for that great tip Andy (and for catching my typo!)
Dana

[Jessie Mac]

As a newbie wandering around the labyrinth of links in the writing community, this is the first time I've heard about virtual book tours. Such a great idea.

Thanks for the links to Graham Storrs's website which I wandered around a little in - Graham, you really have everything set up - a main site with main blog and the TimeSplash site and blog. Got to say it all looks good and I really like the storyline. Congratulations on getting it published.