| Authors Tour the World with Virtual Book Tours |
Copyright © 2007 by Cheryl Kaye Tardif. Reprinted with permission of the author. Over the years, authors who wanted to promote their books directly to the public had one main option; you had to physically travel across the country conducting book signings and readings in various bookstores and praying that people would show up. This meant spending money on flights, hotels, transportation and meals. This traditional type of book tour is expensive and very few publishing companies are willing to pay for them. But now, authors have a new method of ‘touring the world’―the virtual book tour. Virtual book tours (also known as virtual author tours, guest blogging, blog tours, or VBTs) are a simple concept. The author tours various blogs and sites that pertain to a theme in the book or to writing in general. This way, you can potentially reach thousands of avid readers each tour day from the privacy of your office or home. The goal of marketing your book is to expose it to as many people as possible in an exciting, cost-effective and entertaining way. Guest blogging can achieve that goal. Most blogs are archived, so your post becomes permanent and often viral, spreading from site to site. That is leverage. You are in essence leveraging your internet presence and duplicating yourself with every VBT stop. Your blog tour is working for you even while you sleep. Try doing that at a bookstore signing! Virtual author tours really took off in the past year or two. They began with a handful of authors posting to other blogs in order to promote their works online. They announced those dates just as they would a bona fide book signing. This kind of author tour is now becoming all the rage. Some bookstores are no longer allowing authors to do book signings. Limited space and time constraints are the common reasons. Plus, it just isn't time efficient and monetarily feasible for most authors to do the physical cross-country bookstore tour. Well, unless you are one of the super authors that get paid the big bucks, like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. And since I am neither, I decided to hold my first blog tour this past August―for the entire month―to promote my latest novel Whale Song. Virtual book tour services and book marketing experts are popping up all over the internet. Authors can now outsource the organization of a VBT. I suggest that you thoroughly check out these companies and ask yourself if the price is worth it. Some services cost thousands of dollars, while some cost less but only post your content to duplicate sites―ones they have set up themselves. The latter is not an advantage to you. You need to have wide coverage and exposure to various sites and audiences. Go where your readers are. Planning a VBT is time-consuming, but not that difficult. You may find it more worthwhile to take the time to plan your own blog tour, since you’ll have more control over who hosts you this way. Or you may decide that hiring someone to coordinate the tour is best. Do what’s right for you. I chose to do my own because I wanted to have flexibility in what each site posted and I enjoyed the contact with my hosts. How to organize a virtual book tour: • Start planning at least 1 month before you want to begin, and never before your book is available for sale. I suggest you allow 1 month when planning a 2-week tour and 6 weeks for a 1-month tour. It takes time to get the hosts lined up and on board and you don’t want to shortchange yourself. • Read everything you can find on virtual book tours. There are numerous articles online and many books that give great advice. Check out Steve Weber’s Plug Your Book! for VBT advice and more, and John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market You Books for numerous marketing tips. • Determine the length of your book tour―1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month. • How many hosts will you need? 1 a day is best. If you have a radio interview, you could have it scheduled on a day when you have a text post appearing on another blog. • Make a list of keywords and phrases that relate to your book. • Search for these terms on Google and look for any sites that show up on the first page. Sites on the first Google page are the ones that your potential audience will find more easily. Make a note of these sites or save them in your Favorites under a folder marked VBT contacts. • Search Technorati as well, although personally I found this method more time-consuming and confusing. Look for sites that have a high Authority and high number of Fans. Keep in mind that Authority means that people have voted for this blog, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best site for you. • Use Alexa to get traffic results. Some sites or blogs may not rank well on Google or Technorati but may still be a viable host for your VBT. • Look at the amount of reader participation. Do people leave comments? Is the topic of the site perfect for your book? Often lesser known sites and ones without a Google PageRank are little goldmines. You may find that the host will go out of his or her way to advertise you and your VBT. Don’t ignore sites by friends or fellow authors either. One day these sites could score an 8 or 9 on Google. • Install and use Google PageRank. This is a simple tool that allows you to view the Google Rank of sites and blogs, which is Google’s interpretation of how important the site is based on the authority of inbound links that lead to the site. Go through your list and check their Google PageRank. List them in order of importance and contact the highest ranking ones first. In the beginning, contact about 25% more hosts than you actually need. Not all will say yes. • Write an email that you’ll send individually to each potential host. Let them know what you’re doing and what you can supply. I always like to point out the benefits to hosts―more traffic, new visitors, fresh and interesting content, prizes, and a link on my website. What’s in it for them? That’s what they want to know. Make sure you hook your host, just like you would with a query letter to a publisher. • Internet radio and promotional sites that charge small fees also make wonderful hosts. ArtistFirst Radio Network and Passionate Internet Voices Radio are online radio networks that interview authors in exchange for a donation or small fee. For an a la carte or membership fee, Author Island is another excellent site for authors holding a virtual book tour. You can post a book trailer and excerpt, plus advertise your contests and tour. • Confirm hosts’ dates, topics and ask them to post the night before. This way you are not waiting all morning for them to post your content. Let them know you’ll send them the information 3-5 days before their date. If you send it too early they may lose, misfile or delete it. What will you submit? Each blog or site will usually feature one or a combination of the following: a book cover, a summary or synopsis, an interview, book review, an article that fits the site’s theme, a short story, an excerpt, a contest, an audio-cast or a book trailer video. • Advertise your VBT via online and media press releases. It is a great investment, since it’s no good doing a virtual book tour if no one knows about it. One leading press release distribution service that I use almost exclusively is 24-7PressRelease.com, where you can pay from $10.00 to $299.00, depending on your distribution requirements. However, I can attest to the fact that a $45.00 release is the minimum you’ll want and its effectiveness is worth it. Other online services include PRWeb and WebWire, and don’t forget to send releases to the free services too, like ClickPress.com and FreePress.com. Press releases can be extremely beneficial if written correctly and distributed extensively to the right audience, and this means submitting them to your local media (newspapers, TV, radio) as well. • Publicize your virtual book tour and other events on BookTour.com, a free site that connects authors to readers by listing author events and making it easy for readers to set up reminders and track their favorite authors. • Promote your VBT on all your websites and blogs on an events page. Put up a schedule with your hosts’ home page URL. I found it more exciting to post a weekly schedule the day before the week began. It prevented people from going to host sites too early and kept them coming back to my website to see where I’d be going next. I promoted the mystery, which worked to my advantage since I’m a suspense author. This also gave me 1 extra blog post each week, and therefore new content. The day before each virtual stop: • Send out a reminder to your host and ask them to post that night. Make sure they have book cover jpgs, your photo and anything else they might need. The morning of each stop: • Confirm that your host has posted your content. Check the site. Copy the full URL that leads directly to your post. The home page will change and you want your links to always lead to the exact page that the host has created just for your content. • Change the home page URL on your schedule to the exact page link. This is how you really leverage yourself. Now when someone stumbles across your schedule and clicks on the link, they’ll be directed to your post, not your host’s ever-changing home page. • Write an introduction about the day’s stop and post it everywhere. Copy the first paragraph or two of the interview or article and use that for your intro. Post intros to all websites and blogs that you have access to. Don’t forget to post to your Amazon blog, MySpace blog, and MySpace bulletin. The latter goes out to all your MySpace friends. Make sure you have some! Follow-up: • Check your host site frequently throughout the day for comments and answer any questions directly on your host site. Do this every other day afterward for about a week. Offer to write a possible follow-up article, depending on what you posted originally. • Assess the success of your virtual book tour. Set up TitleZ and/or Charteous to monitor your book’s Amazon sales rank throughout the VBT. You should see some lower ranks (lower is better!) during your blog tour, particularly if you have a contest or incentive that inspires more sales of your book. Be creative and have fun! Authors are now starting to comprehend the full potential that blog tours have to offer and how they benefit everyone involved. You could sign books at a bookstore for three hours plus driving time and reach a few hundred people yet sell only to a few dozen, or you could organize a VBT and promote to millions of people worldwide. Virtual book tours take time, patience and research, but as I have discovered, they are definitely worthwhile. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So why not start today? You have the entire world at your fingertips! If you found this article helpful, please consider picking up a copy of Cheryl’s newest novel Whale Song through Amazon. Cheryl Kaye Tardif is the author of The River, Divine Intervention, and the Amazon bestseller Whale Song. Among her peers, she is known for her perseverance and tireless dedication in book promotion. In August 2007, she was the first Kunati Books author to hold a virtual book tour with 35 stops. In September 2007, Cheryl will be speaking about book marketing strategies at the 8th Annual “Express Yourself…”™ Authors’ Conference in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Over the years, she has appeared on television and radio, and in newspapers and magazines across Canada and the US. Labels: author tours, book marketing, book tours, bookstore signings, Cheryl Kaye Tardif, virtual blog tours, Whale Song |
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John Kremer's Ten Million Eyeballs Internet Marketing Event
9 Comments:
I'm not sure I understand this. Is this to promote self-published authors?
This seems to me, an advertisment to the highlighted words.
Do agents and publishers partake in this?
I find many of the blogs substandard to the publishing industry. They are rants or tales of life, without a story.
Keep in mind this is my opinion, but I am curious about how this VBT really works.
1. Self-published authors, small presses, regular publishers, and published authors have all used blog tours as a way to market their books. It's not just for self-publishers.
2. It is not an advertisement for the highlighted words. The words are highlighted as links for those who want to follow up on the services the author of this article used or recommends.
3. Agents do not partake in blog tours. Publishers do -- if they are helping their authors.
4. 90% of blogs are rants or tales of life without a story. 10% are legitimate sources of information, tips, inspiration, etc. If you do a blog tour, you want to tour on those useful blogs.
Thank you, Anonymous, for your comment and questions.
And thanks, John, for clarifying things. I was out most of the day and just had time to check the article now.
Anonymous, the article was written after I completed a one-month virtual book tour. There are many articles that explain WHAT a VBT is but not many that explain in depth HOW to organize one. So I wrote this to help other authors, traditionally published and self-published. I know of major bestsellers who have done or will be doing a virtual tour; and I know of first time self-published authors plus everyone in between who want to do one but have no idea where to begin.
As John pointed out, I highlighted and linked certain words and services that I found very useful, rather than making people search for this information. These are just my suggestions. There are many services for instance that will coordinate a virtual tour for an author. I am not affiliated with these companies.
My publisher at Kunati Books (a traditional publisher) is very keen on VBT's and he's striving to encourage all Kunati authors to have one. Not only are they a great way to promote a book, they are a lot of fun (and yes, they are work :)
And really, an author can visit any blog that has an audience that would read their book. I found that it was a wonderful way to connect with readers, and I tried to make my VBT exciting and fun for everyone.
Thanks again for leaving a comment.
Cheryl Kaye Tardif
Something Cheryl said in this article I would like to comment on. She said, "Some services cost thousands of dollars, while some cost less but only post your content to duplicate sites―ones they have set up themselves. The latter is not an advantage to you."
I feel she is wrong about this because she does not understand the intricate parts of what makes these tours successful. I run a tour service and I do have my authors on a few in house blogs. The reasons for this is that if you were a tour coordinator who has spent hundreds of hours scouring the net for certain kind of blogs and come up empty handed, the first step would be to create a blog for this certain purpose. In order to fully understand this, I’ll give you an example. I have a client coming up whose book is about coaching a baseball team. He specifically requested to be placed on baseball blogs. If you go on a baseball blog hunt, you will find that they all are talking statistics and no one wants to even talk books, much less host an author trying to sell his book there. I contacted the author and told him this and he agreed as he has been trying to get baseball bloggers to appear on before he signed up. There are ways around it, e.g. friends who love baseball. Okay, so you end up on your friend’s blog who loves baseball and no one buys your book because a) the friend updates irregularly and b) his friend must not have networked because he has no friends who visit.
Our in house blogs are set up to accommodate any type of book. They are all optimized with SEO and we promote the stops intensively. While we do limit the amount of in house blogs our authors appear on for variety such as Blogcritics, Bookseller Chick, Beatrice, Galley Cat, Trashionista, other high profile blogs, we do a successful business with almost ten authors a month going out and this is every month so it must be something we are doing right. Our clients have been NY Times bestsellers, small press authors, ebook authors; it varies, and they are all happy with the results.
Our tours are one of the cheapest around and I have every intention of keeping it that way because it’s about time someone was for the author and not for their almighty dollar.
Sometimes more expensive doesn't make it better.
Hi Dorothy et all:
I've been researching blog tours for over 3 years and have followed around a number of authors, watching what works and what doesn't. I guess I'm a bit of a voyeur! lol
I also just finished my own 1 month blog tour, so I feel confident that I have a good grasp on how things work. Plus I have been involved in internet promotion for over 10 years.
I don't know if it was your company I had noticed or another, Dorothy, but one stood out as having far too many duplicate or clone sites. I followed one author's tour and they didn't stray too far from the clones. And that is what I'm talking about.
There are forums, blogs and sites on nearly every conceivable topic and with the right approach, a VBT organizer should have no problem adding some to their list. Yes, it does take time and work.
From your other list of blogs (Blogcritics, Bookseller Chick, etc) that feature your authors, it sounds like you are hitting some major blogs with high traffic, so you probably aren't the one I was referring to. Keep in mind, I was simply pointing out that clone sites are not the most beneficial to authors. And they aren't. They need exposure on a variety of sites and blogs, with different traffic. Unfortunately, clone sites tend to see a lot of the same traffic, same visitors.
It's really great that you aren't overpricing your service. It's nice to see in this industry. :)
Really, my article was for those who want to organize a VBT themselves. I wanted to show the pros and cons of a service vs. DIY. In the end, every author has to decide whether they want to spend time or money. I personally loved the control of doing my own. It was a lot of work, weeks of preparation, but I've made great connections. And I know my market. :)
Cheryl
I'm on a Viritual Book Tour with Dorothy's company. The sites are diverse and highly promoted. Like all forms of promotion, the more the author participate, the more successful the tour will be. Not only does the author have to be available for interviews, but she or he needs to promote the tour. The interviews not only promote the book, but help to create a name brand for the author.
Hi Cheryl,
Just stumbled on this article and really appreciate the practical details. It's so much of what we authors need to get our arms around this. I'm a published author looking to create better buzz about my newest book and I know a blog tour will be helpful, but feeling a little in the dark about getting off the ground. Great help to me here. Thanks again.
Hi, Cheryl,
You are not only a wonderful writer, you're obviously exceptionally smart when it comes to promoting your books. I too am Canadian, but from the east coast and have a couple of books published by a major NY publisher, finished the new one and searching out new and ingenious ways to promote it. (As soon as I find a new publisher. -:)) VBTs sounds terribly involved, and I would probably opt for someone like Dorothy to do the organizing for me, who could do it for a reasonable fee. Thanks for this very helpful article, Cheryl. Looking forward to your next novel
Hi, Cheryl,
You are not only a wonderful writer, you're obviously exceptionally smart when it comes to promoting your books. I too am Canadian, but from the east coast and have a couple of books published by a major NY publisher, finished the new one and searching out new and ingenious ways to promote it. (As soon as I find a new publisher. -:)) VBTs sounds terribly involved, and I would probably opt for someone like Dorothy to do the organizing for me, who could do it for a reasonable fee. Thanks for this very helpful article, Cheryl. Looking forward to your next novel
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