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10 things I’ve learned from arranging my own blog tour
I guess I
should start by introducing myself. Hello everybody my name is Gillian Felix
and I am a citizen of the world, daughter, big sister, entrepreneur, and author
of 2 novels; Changes and The Banovic Siblings, both make up
the Family
Portrait series of novels.
I published Changes
back in October of 2013 and The Banovic Siblings on December 3,
2013. As you can see I am new to this business, and I’m sure if you ask me ten
years from now, I’ll still say I’m new to the business because I am learning
new things everyday.
What I’m about
to share with you are things that I have learned from putting together 2 book
blitzes and my current full blog tour.
- Research your prospects. Before sending out a query to a blogger, be sure to check their review policies. Some may not be accepting reviews or tours at the moment. Bloggers have lives outside of the internet and sometimes they need to catch up. Also make sure their blog is suitable for your book. If they mostly post erotica, it makes no sense if you send them a query for a self help non-fiction book, unless they state that they are open to that in their policy.
- Addressing your query letter. In your query letter I suggest addressing the blogger by name. I usually tailor my letter to the individual blogger. By learning who your prospect is you can find common ground, that blogger may even turn into a reader or friend. I’ve developed friendships with a lot of bloggers based on common interest. I’ve had many instances where a blogger didn’t have time during my tour to read my book, contact me to read it after the tour.
- Be flexible. If you are putting together your own tour you
have the option of tailoring the dates of your tour. That is a HUGE
advantage over doing it through a tour company. Sometimes a blogger may be
booked and cannot do it on your dates, in that case, give them to option
of scheduling it at a later date. I’d rather have a blog post months after
my tour have ended, than not at all (think about the benefits of that for
a moment) ;-)
- Give smaller blogs a chance. The thing that I have found with large blogs is
that they host multiple tours a day. They have a bigger audience BUT your
post will get lost in the shuffle. With smaller blogs you have a better
chance of being the top post for a longer time. To me smaller blogs are
niche marketing opportunities.
- Time and work. Understand that hosting your own tour takes a lot of time and is a lot of work. If you don’t have the time to plan your blog tour, I suggest hiring a tour company. If you have the time, begin planning your tour at least a month in advance (I’ve already started planning my tour for my third book).
- Be organized. I use Excel to create a spreadsheet of all the
bloggers who participate in my tour. The first time you do a tour it is
the hardest and takes the most time because of all the research. It gets
much easier as you do more tours; I’ve used some of the same bloggers from
my blitzes for the tour. Some bloggers have asked to be included in my
next tour. To me that’s equivalent to a 5 star review!
- Make it easy for bloggers. Make it as easy as possible for bloggers to sign
up for your tour. I’ve started using Google forms and embedding it into my
email to potential bloggers. Google wonderfully compiles the signups in a
handy dandy spreadsheet which can be incorporated into Excel. This saves
so much time!
- Be prepared. Prepare all your materials before hand, (hence
point 5). Some of the materials that you will need are guest posts, jpgs,
a banner, biography and anything else you want to include. If you are
doing a review tour, have your manuscript converted into 3 formats: .pdf,
.mobi, .epub.
- Links. Do not forget to include all your links;
purchase, newsletters, blog etc. I also hosts tours on my site, and you
will not believe how many authors send me their post info without the all
important PURCHASE link. It takes time to track down their book on Amazon
(I’d rather be doing something else). It’s the same for bloggers.
- Drop box. Utilize drop box. It is free, easy to use and
saves you the time of having to upload the same information over and over
to different bloggers.
So there you
have it. Top 10 things I’ve learned from putting together my own book tour.
Like I said I am still learning and figuring out quicker and more efficient
ways of doing things. My hope is that this information helps another person
just like the many teachers on the web who have helped me. “When the student is ready to learn, a teacher will appear.” This
rings true to me because I am always ready to learn and teachers have always
appeared.
More about Gillian Felix:
Contact links:
Plain Talk Book
Marketing blog: http://Plaintalkbm.com
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .
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