Writers and Authors

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Getting The Most Out Of Your Virtual Book Tour, Guest post by Eileen Colucci

So you’ve self-published your book and now are ready to attack the marketing part of your venture. Authors who go the traditional route are lucky in that their publishers usually arrange book tours for them. Of course, this involves traveling all over the country (if not the globe) to book signings with the related lodging and dining costs. As an independent author you can pay a modest amount ($75-300 average) to have your book go on a Virtual Book Tour without leaving the confines of your home.

Engaging a Virtual Book Tour means that your book will be featured on various blogs on the internet, hopefully ones that specialize in your book’s genre. These types of tours have become so popular that even traditionally published authors are using them. A book signing can be a very ego-boosting event but unless you are a bestselling author you are probably not going to draw enormous crowds. A blog however has the capacity to draw many, many readers, depending on its popularity and renown.

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By googling “virtual book tour” and your book’s genre you can find several places to promote your book. Not all the companies may be interested in your book but you will eventually find some that are willing to work with you. The tour organizers will provide you with detailed instructions on content you must provide them. This usually takes the form of a “guest post,” a short essay on a given topic, or an interview in which you’ll be asked to answer a list of questions, some more whimsical than others.

I have already taken my book on one blog tour and am in the midst of my second one, using two different companies. The organizers have been superb in their support and direction. I would like to share with you some tips I’ve gleaned from these tours so that you can get the most out of your experience.

REVIEWS

Reviews are important for a writer. Most tour organizers will try to have your book reviewed on a maximum number of blogs. The actual number however depends on the willingness of the individual bloggers to read and review your book. I found that even though some bloggers featuring my book on their site had not signed up to review my book, I was able to approach them by email and to convince them to do so. In both cases, the bloggers wanted an original copy of the book (one a Kindle, the other a paperback). They did not want to read the mobi, epub or pdf files that I had provided to the tour organizers. So go ahead and contact the bloggers directly to ask for a review.

COMMENTS

The tour organizers will encourage you to visit the blogs on the day that your book is being featured there and to respond to any comments that readers might leave. What they do not say, however, is that most blogs will leave your book on their Home page for several days, if not weeks. During this time, people may leave comments. I have seen authors miss the opportunity to engage with readers because they did not check back a day or two after their blog “date” to see if there were more comments. That said, just because people have not left comments does not mean people have not read the blog post.

REUSE YOUR CONTENT

One of the best things I got out of my first tour was a new image for the Home page of my website. One of the bloggers asked me for a Mood Board. I didn’t even know what that was so I had to google it. It turns out it is a collage of images and text that represents the main themes/aspects of your book. My husband and I worked an entire Sunday on this project and I was so pleased with the result that I incorporated it in my website when I updated it. Other content, such as responses to interview questions, was very useful in organizing my thoughts when preparing for subsequent presentations at Book Fairs and other venues. When people asked me for my inspiration for the book or about my favorite authors I had my response all ready.

You will probably find your own tips to pass on once you’ve taken your book on tour. It can be an exhilarating experience that might hopefully increase your readership. I highly recommend it. Happy travels!

A native New Yorker, Eileen Colucci has been living in Rabat with her Moroccan husband for the past thirty-plus years. She is a former teacher and recently retired after twenty-eight years as a translator with the U.S. Embassy, Rabat. Her articles and short stories have appeared in various publications and ezines including Fodor's Morocco, Parents' Press, The New Dominion and Expat Women. SHE'S LIKE A RAINBOW, which was recently published, is her second novel.

Colucci holds a BA in French and English from the University at Albany and an MA in Education from Framingham State University.

When not writing, Colucci enjoys practicing yoga, taking long walks and playing with her chocolate Labrador Retriever, Phoebo. Now that she and her husband have four grandchildren, they spend as much time as possible in Virginia with their two sons and their families.

Website: https://www.eileencolucci.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/921642.Eileen_Colucci

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2vQzMnD

GIVEAWAY

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There are a lot of PR companies that organise virtual tours to help authors to promote their books, and build their author brand. One company that I have personally worked with for years is iRead Book Tours, run by Laura Fabiani. The company is currently celebrating its 3rd anniversary.

About iRead Book Tours:

At iRead, we give special attention to every book that tours with us. We are passionate about books and we customize all our tours because no two authors are alike.

We don't just market books. We help our authors get the best exposure with traditional tours consisting mainly of reviews. We work closely with our authors and pride ourselves on our highly individualized customer service.

All our staff are book bloggers and authors, so we understand the process and the hard work involved. We've built a solid relationship with our database of reliable book bloggers who are eager to read your books.

Welcome to the iRead experience!

About Laura Fabiani:

In 2008, Laura began blogging about books shortly after she published her first book. She started Library of Clean Reads, a book review blog, and discovered the joy of reviewing a variety of genres. Her children have joined her in this venture and they spend many happy hours reading books together. A Special Care Counselor by profession, Laura has co-led and developed programs for seniors with dementia, including Alzheimer's Disease. She has a passion for the topic of neuroscience and wellness.

Throughout the years she has met and worked with wonderful publishers, both traditional and indie, as well as publicists and authors. Best of all, she discovered the world of book bloggers--a community of special people who spend their precious time sharing their love of books and all things related to books.

Taking part in book tours has always made Laura feel more connected to authors and the publishing field. She organized her own virtual tour when her book was published and she learned several things. As an author, it exposed her to actual reader views and social media. As a book blogger and book tour organizer, it taught her the amount of work it entailed. And she loves it!

You can find Laura blogging at Library of Clean Reads and Essentially Italian. She is the owner of iRead Book Tours, Italy Book Tours, and Je Lis Blog Tours.

Giveaway:

Win $50 cash or a Basic Virtual Book Tour Package (2 winners, open int’l)

Ends Feb 4

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Taking Your Book to the World, guest post by Lauren Carr

Back when my first novel was published in 2004, my then publisher hooked me up with a publicist to teach me the ins and outs of book promotion. In our initial conversation, she asked, “Are you willing to do book events?”

After over twenty years of dreaming of the day I would become a published author, this question was a no-brainer. To my surprise, the publicist said how many authors won’t do book events.

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Over the next decade, I found out why. Book events are hard. They cost the author in time and money—with no guarantee that they’ll sell any books. So you would think that when virtual book tours came to being, that authors would snatch up the opportunity to promote their books without having the leave home—or even get out of bed and get dressed.

For these authors, online promotion doesn’t cut it. Some authors feel like they aren’t really promoting their books unless they have a table set up someplace. They don’t actually see the reader buying the book. One author told me in a desperate tone, “I need to get out there and promote my book.”

As for me, I’d rather sit in my scruffy bathrobe, or even less if no one is home, while selling books across the world wide web on a virtual book tour.

Virtual book tours have been the rage for writers for years. In spite of the advantages (like saving on gas money driving to and from the event), many authors are gun-shy to try it out. A few years ago, I was on an author panel in which one of the author declared that virtual book tours aren’t worth the investment. While I strongly disagree I can understand why she would have said that.

There are a ton of virtual book tour coordinators out there and I have used more than one. Some are better than others. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad ones out there. So, it would be easy for an author who has had one, two, or more bad experiences to conclude that virtual book tours are a waste of money. I know more than one author who was burned by a bad tour coordinator, or one who was a bad match for their book.

When dealing with virtual book tour coordinators, it is definitely a case of author beware. Many book lovers have the mistaken impression that being a book tour coordinator is an easy endeavor that they can do at home, only to discover that it is a demanding job that requires massive organizational skills. Tour coordinators are dealing with authors (some who are quite needy), bloggers, and reviewers. It doesn’t take long for a new and inexperience tour coordinator to find herself in over her head. One author I know booked a tour with a new coordinator who offered tours for a rate that was much lower than anyone else out there. The writer went to all of the trouble writing her blog posts and doing the interviews. She sent them in to the tour coordinator, who in the meantime had decided that coordinating a book tour was too hard and got a job at Starbucks, leaving the author high and dry.

One author told me recently that she paid a tour coordinator for a month long review book tour and it never happened. The tour coordinator took her money and ran. Never answered her emails, etc.

When looking for a tour coordinator, check out the authors who have toured with them. Are they all newbies? Check out the rankings of their books on Amazon. Are they getting book sales? How long has this tour coordinator been in business? If they are brand new, maybe you’ll want to wait to see how long they stay in business.

Also, select a tour coordinator whose bloggers and reviewers fall in your book’s genre. I once had a tour coordinator place my clean-reads mystery on erotica blogs that you had to be eighteen years old to enter. She claimed she was expanding my audience. My thought, anyone visiting an erotic site is not looking for a clean mystery that doesn’t have even one sex scene.

I use iRead Book Tours and have been very happy. They have never let me down.

Another reason that many authors don’t see any success on their books tour is because they think that all you have to do with a virtual book tour is pay the tour coordinator and then sit back and wait for the sales to come in. Nope! If you want a successful book tour, you need to work at it!

So, should you take the plunge and do a tour or not? And if you do, how do you make sure you get your money’s worth? Read on.

What Is Your Goal? Do you want to create buzz before your book is released with a spotlight tour? Maybe you want to get reviews and generate publicity for your book that has been out for a while. Or do you want to get reviews coming in as soon as it is released? For most of these goals, you’ll need to launch your blog tour before the release date, which leads to the next point.

Schedule Your Tour: Good tour coordinators who know what they are doing require time to set up the book tour. That means pitching your book to their bloggers and reviewers who in turn decide if they are interested in having you on their blog.

Keep in mind that most bloggers and reviewers don’t get paid for their blogs and reviews. They do this out of a love for books. They have jobs and families. Book reviewers get tons of review requests and will usually have a pretty tall TBR list. So it is an honor when a blogger or reviewer wants to feature or review your book on their blog. For this reason, you need to allow them plenty of time (my tour coordinator requires six weeks) to read your book for a review. If a blogger doesn’t have time in their schedule to review your book, many can offer you a book spotlight. In other words, don’t expect to email a tour coordinator on Monday and have a tour running the next week.

Get to Work on Your Tour Postings. If you want your tour to be a success, and you don’t want to write guest posts or do interviews, let your coordinator know that up front. To make appearances at blogs with inadequate, poorly written guest blog posts or lack luster interviews will not be doing you or the bloggers any good. I knew one writer who wrote one guest blog post and sent it in to be repeated throughout the whole tour. None of those bloggers ever invited him back.

Publicize your blog tour. Here’s a news flash: No one is going to come to your party if you don’t tell them that there’s a party going on! Make a big deal out of your tour. This is your tour! This is your book that is being featured across the WORLD WIDE WEB! People all over the world are seeing your book! I’m not kidding. On my last two tours, one giveaway winner lived in Croatia. The next one lived in the Netherlands!

Post details on your website and social media sites like a rock star launching a worldwide tour. And during the tour, post anywhere and everywhere until your fingers bleed! This is your time to shine!

Followup. The day your entry is posted, be sure to respond to every comment, even if only to thank the commenter. Be sure to stop by days later as well.

Scheduling a blog tour is all about coordination and hard work. But I have found it to be a labor of love—not unlike writing a book. Good luck.

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries—over twenty titles across three fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!

Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr’s seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, romance, and humor.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Connect with Lauren: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook

Virtual book tours can be a great way to help spread the word about your books. They do need to be done right though or you could end up wasting your time and even damaging your author brand.

Search engines like fresh, unique, content. Readers like fresh, unique content. Bloggers like fresh, unique content. So we're all agreed then. We all want fresh, unique content. So why is it that authors doing virtual book tours often send out the same information to all/ most of their hosts?

We've all seen those virtual book tours that "blast" your book on numerous sites. Maybe you've even done one yourself. Copy and paste posts with your cover, book blurb, links, and maybe an author bio, are easy content for you and your host. It doesn't involve much time or effort for either of you. What you need to ask yourself though is "what is it actually doing for me and my book sales?"

A blog that posts the exact same content as other sites will be damaging their ranking with Google and other search engines. Search engine providers want to provide customers with a varied group of results, not 10 or 100 pages all with exactly the same content. You can find out more about duplicate content penalty here) Host sites like Blogger and Wordpress both dislike this "copy posting" method are are cracking down on blogger that post duplicated content. Many blogs have been suspended or even blocked permanently for this reason. Not good for the blogger.

This video by Google talks about their take on guest blogging:

Authors that do these duplicated posts are offering nothing new to readers. Whilst you might argue that each site will have its own audience (which is of course true), readers who happen to see the same post on different blogs will associate that author with spam. Not a good thing for your author brand.

A virtual book tour is about spreading the word about your book but it's also much more than that. It's about growing your fan base, strengthening your author brand, and building your reputation within your niche. (You can find out more about virtual book tours and how to carry out a successful one in my book Virtual Book Tours: Effective Online Book Promotion From the Comfort of Your Own Home).

Spotlight features are great but they need to be personalised where possible to keep them fresh. Guest posts should be unique to a singular site. Interviews should be as original as possible... even when answering the same questions.

When I do a virtual book tour, I always include some sample questions and answers in my media kit. I try to include a variety. Some about my book, some about my writing process, some more personal "get to know the author" ones. Hosts can then do copy and paste but pick and mix so it's not the exact same interview others have posted. I also provide various images to help make each post different from the others.

By making my media kit as complete as possible I know I'm offering more material than can fit into one blog post. This means that even the few hosts that want to copy and paste, without putting their personal spin on the post, have a wide choice of material to pick from and lowers the chances of them posting the exact same content as another site.

You can, of course, re-purpose content and therefore get more mileage out of it. Create an infographic or record a video based on an article you wrote for another site. Develop one of your interview answers into a guest post in its own right.

Virtual book tours are a lot of work. They require time and effort. If you're not prepared to put in that time and effort it really isn't worth you doing one as you won't get the results you're after.

If you don't have the time to put together a big virtual book tour, try a smaller one instead. It's much better to have a week of fresh, unique content, on targeted sites, than to pump out a month load of duplicated content that doesn't nothing to build a connection with potential readers and fans.

Thank you so much for letting me showcase my forthcoming steamy action-romance novel SHANNON’S LAW. It’s the second in my PASSION PATROL series - stories where sassy female cops lock up the criminals and always get their man.

February marks the start of my “Pinterest Reveal Virtual Book Tour” in the run-up to the launch on the 28^th February 2014.

Every day there are feature posts on topics relating to SHANNON’S LAW on blogs all around the world. They’re all linked together on one big Pinterest Board. Each post replaces a ‘mystery’ silhouette that was posted in January. I saved all my notes and photos as I was writing, on a private Pinterest Board and now I can share them with you.

Today’s subject is Avington Park

I was once a tourist in a group visiting a pagan stone circle. A member of the party asked how old were the stones. The guide replied that all stone is as old as the world and indeed the big bang. Of course, I understood what the tourist meant. It is the hand of man and his clocks that define human time. Shannon's Law revolves around the village of Fleetworth-Green and its stately home Bloxington Manor. Our grand English houses are the work of the architects, dreamers and craftsmen who made them.

When I began to research the book I needed to feel the atmosphere of this house. To create this I re-visited the stately home of Avington Park which is close to my Hampshire home in the UK. Lists of historical facts can be boring but for me it is easy to imagine the religious turmoil of England under HenryVIII. It was he who gave away the original house to a courtier when he broke up the lands of the catholic church. Then, following civil war and the beheading of Charles I, the rise and fall of a republic under Cromwell, Charles II, son of the executed king, was restored to the throne in the year of 1660. Again the house was given to a courtier and extended to accommodate the new king and his mistress Nell Gwynn. As the relationship develops between characters in Shannon's Law, they walk in the footsteps of such lovers. They breakfast and take tea in the orangery. They eat fish and chips at the scrubbed wooden kitchen table Let's not think about beds at this stage.

My first sight of the house was when I cycled there with the poet Oscar Sparrow who was to become my partner. The building is magnificent and appears to enhance the beauty of nature. Few modern buildings have that effect! We stopped and sat on a bench at the edge of a lake looking across to the columned grand entrance of the house. It is here that I set one of the early interactions between the main characters.

Excerpt from this scene:

He hadn’t looked at her. The touch not touched and the look not looked hung like a great weight on a rope which tied them together, pulling them closer and closer.

The house at night is on the front cover of the book and the VIP launch party is being held here on the 3^rd March 2014 (visit the Facebook page for Shannon’s Law to win tickets if you are in the UK!). We will be having a tour of the house and of course, English Afternoon Tea in the Orangery.

By Emma Calin. SHANNON’S LAW comes out on February 28^th 2014 in print and digital formats for all e-readers. Amazon are offering some great discounts for pre-orders of the paperback version (29% off in USA, 12% off in the UK). You can pre-order the digital version at a pre-launch special price from Nook, Kobo, and iTunes. It will also be available in all digital formats on Smashwords. See this post and others from my tour as they go live on Pinterest or click the Goddess Fish panel below to visit the other blogs in the tour. Follow Shannon’s Law on Facebook.

Emma will be awarding a $30 Amazon Voucher to one randomly drawn commenter, a print copy of Shannon's Law will be awarded to two randomly drawn commenters and a digital copy of Shannon's Law will be awarded to three randomly drawn commenters during the tour. ALL ENTRANTS get emailed a digital cookery book of recipes (including photos!) for meals/food eaten in Shannon's Law. The book is called 'Cops Cuisine'. One host will receive a signed print copy of the book, a swag package, and a $30 Amazon voucher at the completion of the following tours: Cover Reveal, Launch Day Book Blast, Kindle Free Days Book Blast, and Name Before the Masses Review Tour (one entry for each time they host).

I encourage you to follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here:

http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2014/01/virtual-book-tour-shannons-law-by-emma.html

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