Author Tip Book - Helpful - Tour with Review - The Author's Guide to Book Blog Tours
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Title: The Author’s Guide to Blog Tours
Author: Tiffany Shand
Genre: Nonfiction
You’ve put a lot of time and effort into writing your book and sent it out there into the world. Now it’s time to start marketing it – but you don’t know where to begin. That’s where book blog tours come in. Blog tours are a great way to market your book and find readers at the same time.
In this short eBook, you’ll learn what the benefits of blog tours, how to find tour hosts and organise your very own book blog tour.
Review
3.5 Stars!
This was a fast read filled with tips. I've taken part in many tours from being a host, to setting up the whole tour. I read this to re-brush up on my tour hosting skills. This was a fun read. I did find the author repeated herself a few time but I see why she must do that. She did point out many great things that I had to learn the hard way. I do think this is a good place for writers who are wanting to learn more about tours to start. Tiffany also has links some great websites that are helpful too.
What is a blog tour?
A blog tour is a virtual blog tour. Instead of going to different locations and doing a book signing, you’re hosted on different blogs used by book bloggers. Blog tours are a great way to promote your book, get reviews and generate more sales.
How blog tours helped me
When I published my first novel I literally spent hundreds of pounds I couldn’t afford on two awful editors who did a lousy job with my book which left no money over for any kind of marketing. So I started searching around online for ways to market my book and I read a lot of different books about book marketing.
I became overwhelmed as there so much information out there by authors who say do this, do that. Their recommendations included spending hundreds on ads or PR packages, going to book signing events or giving away dozens of paperbacks. None of these options were financially or realistically possible for me. I started searching around for free ways to market my book. Aside from using a Kindle promo, where I made my book free for a few days and promoting on Facebook groups, the other result I had was of doing a blog tour.
I had heard about blog tours from other authors in my writing group but I wasn’t sure how they worked. So I queried another author from my group and she explained that blog tours are virtual book tours. Instead of going to bookstores and other places to do book signings, you are instead hosted on a blog where they promote your book via different kinds of posts.
Once I figured out how blog tours worked, I had a look around some different blog tour companies for the type of services they provided, but it still seemed a lot of money for my non-existent budget. So I decided to learn what I could and go down the do-it-yourself route.
Using a site called blogtour.org I started going through dozens of different blogs. This site isn’t as well indexed as other blog directory sites. I had to go through and search each blog individually.
What are book bloggers?
Book bloggers have only been around for the past few years since the use of blogs became much more popular and website platforms became much more affordable for the everyday user.
Since the growth in popularity of blogs over the past few years, dozens of booklovers have taken to writing about their favourite books. A book blogger is someone who loves reading books and writes blog posts about it on their blog. This can include thoughts on books, excerpts and posts about different books and reviews.
The different blogs reflect their owner’s tastes and vary in focus. Many readers will read a variety of different genres; other blogs will focus on a specific genre such as romance, fantasy, or young adult, etc.
Different blogs will have different kinds of audiences depending on what genre that blogger chooses to read. A blogger who likes to read a lot of different genres will probably have an audience who likes the same thing and chooses the type of posts they read on that blog.
Not every blogger will want to read your book, don’t ask a romance reader to read your sci-fi novel to help you promote your book. Choose a reader who enjoys your type of book. This may seem obvious but a lot of authors mass email book bloggers in any genre to try and promote their books, regardless of whether that blogger reads their book’s genre or not. There’s no point in trying to contact them if they don’t like your particular type of book, it’s just a waste of your time and theirs.
Querying book bloggers
Now you know what book bloggers are and what they do. After you’ve found some bloggers in your genre that you want contact, it’s time to write the all-important query email. It can be good beforehand to comment and respond to some of their posts.
This is where you want to start approaching bloggers and find out what they can do for you. If you were trying to get your book published by traditional publishers and agents, you would send query letters asking them to consider your book for publication. It’s very similar when contacting bloggers as you’re asking them to consider reviewing or possibly promoting your book.
One word of warning before contacting any blogger: make sure you to check the reviewer’s particular reviewing style. Some reviewers can be quite snarky or may even post bad reviews if they don’t like a book. So as I said before it’s important to choose bloggers who like your style of book.
Can bloggers leave bad reviews? Yes, it does happen. I find you have to be thick-skinned to be an author. Don’t take reviews personally, not everyone is going to like your book. You can’t please everyone.
Now you’ve got your list of potential bloggers, start by approaching the first blogger on your list. It’s a good idea to always check their review policy again before you email anyone as review policies often get changed, especially if the blogger decides they are no longer taking submissions. Read through the page again and see how to contact them. Some bloggers have a contact form on their website, some will give out their email addresses or some prefer you to fill out forms such as Google forms.
Some review policies will state what kind of timeframe they have to review your book. Some bloggers may have a waiting list several months long. I have even seen blogs that have a waiting list of up to a year or two. So take that into consideration before contacting them if you want your book to be reviewed quickly. Remember it’s their blog and they make the rules.
Tiffany Shand started writing short stories when she was a child. She has always done writing in one form or another and started writing novels in her early teens.
Tiffany loves to read books and discovered her love for fantasy and paranormal romance. She writes both non-fiction and fiction, and love helping writers to build their author platforms.
After doing a creative writing course in her early 20s, she is now a freelance writer and professional editor.
Tiffany lives in Essex with her two spoiled cats and one very nutty hamster.
Links:
Amazon Link (For Blog Tour Book)
Tiffany’s blog
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