The Savvy Book Marketer

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Writing a Blog Tour Post

As many of my readers know, I'm a big fan of virtual book tours and I've even written a book on the topoic. Today I'm pleased to share a guest post from Bryan Cohen as part of the tour for his new book, 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Writing a Blog Tour Post

Blog tours are taking over the internet. After staring my latest blog tour to celebrate my new book, 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2, I searched for #blogtour on Twitter to see what I was up against. The search came up with tweets for hundreds of blog tours! Blog tours were relatively young when I did my first tour two and a half years ago. Nowadays, you need to figure out how to stand out. Here are five questions you should ask yourself before writing a blog tour post.

1. How is this new?

While "there's nothing new under the sun," there's always a new way to say something. Are you going to write the millionth post with the top five fiction writing tips? Instead, why not go outside the box? Whether you think big or think small to get to your new idea, make sure it hasn't been done one too many times before.

2. Is the post relevant to this blog?

You've done it! You've scored a guest post on a blog with 10,000 followers and you're bound to find new readers and a rabid fan base! Before you start counting up your prospective book sales, make sure your post idea syncs with the blogger's usual subject matter. If you're posting on a book marketing blog, your post on creating unique characters for fiction is unlikely to hit home. Your post doesn't have to be a retread of what the blogger has already written, but you need to make sure your new potential fans are interested in reading the post in the first place.

Sell More Books with a Virtual Book Tour

by Dana Lynn Smith

Virtual book tours (also called blog tours) typically involve making guest appearances on book review sites or on blogs, websites, and/or forums that are related to the topic or audience of your book. You can even do teleseminars, podcasts, or live interviews on Blog Talk Radio as part of your tour.

Virtual tours have several advantages over the traditional in-person book tour:

• It's free (unless you hire someone to organize the tour) and there's no time or money spent on travel.
• You can generally reach far more people and reach a more targeted audience.
• A virtual tour provides quality, lasting links to your own author website.

Look for tour hosts that are a good fit for your book and provide unique content to each host. Here are some suggestions for content:

Top 15 Reasons to Do a Virtual Book Tour

by Dana Lynn Smith

As publishers' promotional budgets shrink and travel costs rise, the traditional city to city author tour is waning in popularity. But what if you could reach a much larger, highly targeted audience from the comfort of home, and get people buzzing about your book? You can, with a virtual book tour.

On a virtual book tour, authors promote their books by making "virtual" guest appearances during a particular time frame on blogs, podcasts, radio shows, social networks, or other virtual venues.

So why should you do your own virtual tour?

1. You will sell books during the tour and afterward as a result of the tour.

2. Virtual tours are less expensive and time consuming than travelling. Generally the only cost of a do-it-yourself tour is the cost of mailing your book to tour hosts.

3. Reach far more people and a more targeted audience with a virtual tour. In contrast, live author appearances by authors who aren't well known may to have low attendance. (For tips on how to boost attendance at your live events, see Book Talk: How to Fill a Room.)

4. The virtual tour provides quality, lasting links to your website. These links have search engine optimization value and may continue to bring new visitors for months or years to come.

5. Making a commitment to a tour gives you an incentive to get out there and promote your book and get content onto other websites.

6. If any of your tour hosts do a review of your book, you'll get the benefit of additional reviews.

7. Tours build buzz for your book and get people talking and sharing with others.

Tour for "Virtual Book Tour Magic" is December 1-13

The virtual book tour for my new Virtual Book Tour Magic book is December 1-13. To make sure you don't miss any tour stops, subscribe to the tour feed by email or RSS feed reader and you'll get notice of each article posted during the tour.

Book Tour Special: Order Virtual Book Tour Magic by December 12 and you'll get an invitation to an exclusive book tour Q&A session with Dana on December 15. 

Here's a list of the tour stops:

Thursday, December 1

What Authors Need to Know About Virtual Book Tours, hosted by Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer

Congratulations to novelist Melissa K. Norris for winning a free copy Virtual Book Tour Magic!

Friday, December 2

Top 15 Reasons to Do a Virtual Book Tour, hosted by John Kremer, Book Marketing Bestsellers

Review of Virtual Book Tour Magic by Sue Collier, Self-Publishing Resources

Monday, December 5

How to Plan a Successful Virtual Book Tour, hosted by Nick Daws, Nick Daws Writing Blog

Review of Virtual Book Tour Magic by Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer

Tuesday, December 6

How to Create Terrific Content for Your Virtual Book Tour, hosted on the BookBuzzr  blog

Review of Virtual Book Tour Magic by Jan Bear, Market Your Book

Wednesday, December 7

Should You Hire Someone to Organize Your Virtual Book Tour?, hosted by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Sharing with Writers

Thursday, December 8

How to Find the Best Venues for Your Virtual Book Tour, hosted by Sue Collier, Self-Publishing Resources

Friday, December 9

Top 10 Ways to Promote Your Virtual Book Tour, hosted by Roger C. Parker, Published and Profitable

Monday, December 12

Review of Virtual Book Tour Magic by Nick Daws, Nick Daws Writing Blog

Monday, December 13

Virtual Book Tour FAQ for Authors, hosted by Judith Briles at AuthorU

Learn more about Virtual Book Tour Magic and order your copy today!

Build Your Author Platform Through Guest Posts

Doing guest posts on other blogs is a great opportunity to build your author platform and gain exposure to potential book buyers that you may not reach in any other way. Getting backlinks from relevant websites is an added benefit of guest posting that will enhance the search engine optimization of your own site.

 Guest posts are win-win for everyone. Readers get useful or entertaining content, bloggers get additional content for their sites, and guest posters build their reputation, get links to their websites, and have the opportunity to sell books.

Your guest posts can take the form of how-to articles, essays, interviews, or case studies, and you can even create audio or video clips. Fiction authors can discuss the writing process or topics related to their novel.

Look for blogs that are a good match for your book's target audience, then make comments on some of their posts before proposing a guest post. Check with each blogger to see what their requirements are for the length of the post, the topic, and whether they accept previously published content. Some bloggers post their guidelines on their site.

Be sure to write a good "resource box" containing a one or two sentence bio, a call to action, and a link back to your website. The call to action should include an incentive for people to visit your site, such as a free report or sample chapters. It's a good idea to include a link to your book's page on Amazon as well.

One terrific way to do guest posts on other blogs is to organize a virtual book tour where you will visit a series of blogs, radio shows and other venues during a certain time frame. Learn how to organize your own successful virtual book tour in my new book, Virtual Book Tour Magic.

Learn More About Virtual Book Tours

In a recent post, Sandra Beckwith shared some terrific tips on how to organize a virtual book tour.That article has been very popular with readers, so I wanted to share some other tips.

For my own tours, I create a web page that lists each tour stop and the topic I'll be discussing. This page makes it easy for me (and my tour hosts) to  promote the tour in advance. After the tour, I leave the page up, but delete the dates so that it doesn't appear outdated. Here is an sample virtual book tour page from my most recent tour.

For some ideas on conducting virtual book tours for novels, see Virtual Book Tours for Fiction Authors.

To learn more about the advantages of doing a virtual book tour, see Why Authors Should Do a Virtual Book Tour by Nikki Leigh.

If you're wondering whether virtual book tours are really worthwhile, read Blog Tours for Authors – Do They Work? by Fiona Ingram.

If you haven't yet done a virtual book tour, give it a try!

 

How to Plan Your Virtual Book Tour

In today’s guest post, publicity expert Sandra Beckwith shares some terrific tips for planning a virtual book tour. Be sure to take a look at the book tour pitch letter template that Sandra provides, along with a real-world example of a pitch letter.

What is a virtual book tour, why do you want to do one, and how do you make it happen?

A virtual book tour is a promotional tactic that lets you interact with bloggers and online media outlets in ways that help you get the word out about your book. Just like an in-person book tour, you select a timeframe for the tour and work to schedule specific appearances. The possibilities include:

• Live Webinar presentations
• Blog Q&As
• Guest columns on blogs
• Reviews of your book written by key bloggers
• Articles that you write and place in key locations 
• Podcasts
• Video interviews hosted on the blogs or sites of others
• Blogger hosted contests that offer your book as a prize alongside information about your book

Virtual book tours are worthwhile for any author whose target audience is online. They allow you to connect with readers personally, share enough information about your book to help people decide if they want to buy it, and – this is my favorite part – include a link to a site where people can purchase it immediately. Who doesn’t like instant gratification?

Promote Your Book with a Virtual Book Tour

In today's guest post, Carol Denbow explains why a virtual book tour is a great way to promote your book to a targeted audience.

Virtual book touring is fast becoming the best and most effective way to promote and market an authors' book. With gas prices and all travel expenses souring to an all-time high, authors can no longer afford to "hit the road" to sell their books. Therefore, new means are needed to compete in our quest for book sales. Virtual touring may just be the simplest answer.

As long as there have been published authors, there have been book tours. Let‘s face it, books don‘t often sell themselves. Strong promotion and marketing is the key to most merchandise sales, and it‘s no different with books. When a customer looks at a product, most often, it‘s very clear what exactly the product is, or does. But with a book, the story is hidden inside. Even with an original and eye-catching outer design, i.e., the cover, rarely would a customer purchase such an item without knowing the contents and what they will get for their dollar. So how does an author present the contents to a potential buyer to garner buyable interest in their book?—they tour.

Author book tours are the best way to sell books, but traditional touring is costly and time consuming. Simply filling the gas tank can use up a days wage for most of us. Then there’s the issue of endurance. Yes, you will sell books at your tour stop, but will those tour visitors who don‘t make the purchase remember you after the tour event is over—not likely. So how does an author make a lasting impression? The answer may be a virtual book tour.

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:

 

Blog Tours for Authors – Do They Work?

Many authors do virtual book tours, making scheduled appearances on blogs to promote their book. But do these tours really work? In today's guest post, children's book author Fiona Ingram shares her experience based on her own tour.

Do blog tours work? In my experience the answer is a resounding yes. My tour literally propelled my author profile into the stratosphere and I still get Google Alerts from it. Here are some reasons why I think blog tours are effective:

• Massive exposure to an audience you possibly would never have found on your own. Each blog stop has its own followers. There are also people who enjoy following the complete tour, so new blogs get new readers, and you, the guest, get a whole lot of attention.

• You are invited to write posts about yourself, your work, your book, and your writing techniques that give more interesting angles to you as an author. I felt challenged in a positive sense because many of my blog hosts asked me for posts relating to kids’ literacy, making reading more interesting for kids, how to get kids back into books, how to write for kids. It was great!

• Within a short space of time those blog posts start appearing on other people’s blog pages, pop up in Google Alerts, and there is a general spread of awareness as more and more people either follow the blog tour post by post, or simply pass on the information they have found through their own feeds. This can also be through emails, Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. When people enjoy something, they comment on it.

Why Authors Should Do a Virtual Blog Tour

Today's guest post is by author and marketing expert Nikki Leigh, who shares her expertise in the area of virtual blog tours.

The simplest description for my idea of a virtual blog tour is: a cyber “tour” which includes various blogs, websites, radio shows, newsletters, etc. The more effective sites usually contain themes or content from the book that is being promoted. This “tour” gives authors the chance to reach many people as they travel the World Wide Web.

A tour includes a series of appearances with blogs, website interviews, reviews or guest posts, etc. that are posted on various sites during a specific amount of time. Various site owners host you and may ask interview questions about your book or request that you write a piece about a specific part or element of your book.

Use a Virtual Book Tour to Promote Your Book

Today I'm pleased to have author Carol Denbow share her advice for using virtual book tours to promote books.

Welcome Carol.  I understand this is the final day for your virtual tour for your latest book, A Book Inside: How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Story. So, what exactly is a “virtual book tour?”

CAROL: Virtual book tours, or virtual author tours, are basically when an author makes guest appearances on various Websites, blogs, or forums, typically, related to their book topic, story line, or writing in general. An interview with the author is posted on the day of the tour stop and viewers can make comments or ask questions through the postings comment box, giving the author or host an opportunity to respond. Virtual tours can be set up for a week, two, or a month, whatever you’re comfortable doing.

DANA: What are the benefits to virtual touring?

CAROL: Through the Internet, authors can reach literally thousands of people without ever leaving their home or even getting out of their pj’s. It’s much more cost effective than travel.

DANA: How do you find blogs or Websites to participate?