The Big Virtual Book Tour Question: Dana Lynn Smith Give You the Answer!

Dana Lynn Smith is the amazing possessor of two related skills, marketing and Internet know how of the tech dimension.  Today she is my guest in honor of her own book tour for her new book on, yep! Book Tour Magic!

Should You Hire Someone to Organize Your Virtual Book Tour?

Today's guest post from Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, is part of the virtual book tour for her newest book marketing guide, Virtual Book Tour Magic.

The beauty of a virtual book tour is that you can reach a large audience of targeted book buyers by appearing on blogs, podcasts, social networks and other venues, all from the comfort of home.

Organizing a virtual book tour isn't difficult, but it does require good planning and organization, along with an investment of time. Some authors plan their own tours, while others turn to outside help. Here are three ways to organize your virtual book tour:

Do It Yourself

The main advantages of organizing your own virtual book tour are that you will save money and you'll have complete control over the entire process. As the author, you're in the best position to understand your audience and who would make ideal tour hosts. You'll also have more opportunity to develop relationships with your tour hosts, who may be valuable contacts in the future. The disadvantage of the DIY approach is the investment of time.

Hire Assistance

Another option is to use an assistant to help you. You'll need to consider all of the tasks involved in planning and executing the virtual book tour and decide which ones can be delegated. Researching tour hosts is one task that's commonly delegated.

Hiring help will save you time, but you'll still need to do some of the planning yourself and you'll probably need to write all or most of the content for the tour.  If the person you're working with isn't familiar with researching venues and organizing virtual book tours, you'll need to educate them.

If you don't already have an assistant, you can search online for an "author assistant" or "virtual assistant" or hire someone from a freelance service such as Elance or Odesk. 

Hire a Tour Manager

If you don't have time to organize everything yourself, or you'd just prefer to have someone else handle the details, you can hire a virtual book tour manager. But keep in mind that you will still need to devote time to creating content and promoting the tour.

One advantage of hiring a tour manager is that someone who specializes in doing tours in your book genre may have valuable contacts with bloggers who would be good tour hosts.  The disadvantage is the cost and the lack of control over details.

Some book publicity and promotion firms offer virtual book tour management as part of their services, and there are also individuals and companies that specialize in organizing virtual book tours.

Tour services and prices vary widely, so be sure to compare services and be clear about exactly what you're getting. Also, find out if the company specializes in any particular type of book and how much experience they have.

Regardless of which method you choose, you'll still benefit from a thorough understanding of virtual book tours and how to produce compelling content to showcase you and your book.

If you're organizing your own tour, you'll find everything you need to know about planning and creating tour content in my new Virtual Book Tour Magic guidebook. It's also a good tool to educate your assistant in how to help you.

If you hire a tour manager, the information in this book will give you a thorough understand of the process, help you find the best tour manager and work effectively with them, and guide you in choosing the style of tour and creating great content.

About the Author

Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, helps authors and indie publishers learn how to sell more books through her how-to guides, blog, newsletter, and private coaching. For more book promotion tips, get her free Top Book Marketing Tips ebooks at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.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 Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; 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 . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

How to Sell More Books on Amazon by Increasing Your Book's Visibility

Dana Lynn Smith, well known to most authors who spend time social networking, is guest blogging for me today. I have read her e-book on marketing online and highly recommend it. It's very complete. I follow her on Twitter, too!

By Dana Lynn Smith

A good way to sell more books on Amazon is to increase your book's visibility in the Amazon search results.

Amazon.com customers typically search for books by author, title, or keyword. Like search engines, Amazon uses several criteria in deciding which products to display on the search results page and in what order to display them. Popularity (the number of books already sold on Amazon) and how well the book matches the keywords are major factors in determining the results of keyword searches.

The more books you sell on Amazon, the more books you will sell in the future, because your book will appear higher in the search results. In addition, many customers assume that the best-selling book must be the best one on the topic.

One way to increase your book's popularity, and therefore its search results placement is to direct all of your online book orders to Amazon.com rather than offering links to several online bookstores or selling directly to consumers.

It's also important to make sure your book matches popular search terms entered by customers. If your book is not yet published, you can add important keywords to the book's title and subtitle. Some publishers use long subtitles in order to pack in as many keywords as possible.

To capitalize on keyword searches, enter important keywords or "tags" into Amazon's Search Tag feature. About halfway down your book's page on Amazon, look for "Tags Customers Associate with This Product." Add a check mark next to existing tags and add new tags by entering keywords in the little box below.

Word order matters, so create different search tags with variations on your most important keywords. You can personally submit up to ten search tags for your book. If you have additional tags to enter, ask a colleague to enter some for you.

Another way to increase your popularity on Amazon.com is do a virtual book tour or an "Amazon best-seller campaign," designed to push up your Amazon sales rank by generating a large number of orders on a single day.

There are a number of other ways to sell more books on Amazon, including getting lots of good book reviews on Amazon, writing reviews of other related books, participating in the Look Inside program, enhancing your book description, participating in Amazon forums for your book's topic, and creating Listmania lists and So You'd Like To guides.

For a more in-depth look at how to sell more books on Amazon, I recommend reading Aiming at Amazon, by Aaron Shepard.

Author Biography:

Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides. For more tips, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, visit Dana's blog at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com, and get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips e-book when you sign up for her free newsletter at www.BookMarketingNewsletter.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 two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is 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. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". 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 .

If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about it:

Dana Lynn Smith Gives You 21 Things to Tweet About

This guest article from Dana Lynn Smith is part of the virtual book tour for her new book, The Savvy Book Marketer's Guide to Successful Social Marketing. See the complete tour schedule at http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour/.


Twitter is a great way to meet people, develop relationships, and promote yourself and your book. But it's important to avoid being seen as someone who just promotes themselves.

Most of your tweets should be about helping others, but you also need to inject some personality, to put the social into social networking and help people get to know you. Here are 21 ideas for tweeting:

1. Link to helpful or entertaining articles, websites, and blog posts. Add your own comments or ask for feedback.

2. Re-tweet good posts by other people, but don't go overboard—most of your tweets should be original. Include "re-tweet" or "RT" in your post to indicate that you're re-tweeting someone else's post.

3. Another way to re-tweet is to add a thank you to the previous tweeters at the end of the message. This works well if you have edited the original post.

4. Comment on someone else's tweet by hovering your mouse over it, then clicking the arrow. Be sure to refer to the original message in your reply, because your followers will not be able to see it.

5. Invite people to subscribe to your ezine, blog, or group, and offer an incentive.

6. Announce your live and virtual events, such as book tours and teleseminars.

7. Introduce other authors or experts in your field who are also on Twitter.

8. Teach a mini lesson in 140 characters.

9. On Fridays, recommend your favorite tweeters by using the #followfriday hashtag along with their user names. It's best to say why you recommend them.

10. Send congratulations to other Tweeple when they share good news.

11. Link to your own articles and blog posts, but do it sparingly.

12. Link to photos or videos (yours or others) on Flickr, Twitpic, or YouTube.

13. Ask for advice or ask questions that encourage responses.

14. Comment on someone's interesting Twitter background or clever bio.

15. Offer a free downloadable ebook or sample chapter, with no strings attached.

16. Thank others for mentioning you on Twitter.

17. Recommend a book, product, or service, other than your own.

18. Mention your hobbies, pets, kids, or personal activities. Just don't talk about what you ate for lunch!

19. Talk about your writing or what you're doing in your business.

20. Post an inspirational quote or message.

21. Welcome new followers.


Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer's Guide to Successful Social Marketing, www.SavvyBookMarketer.com. To view other articles in the Successful Social Marketing book tour, visit http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour/

To buy Dana's book go to: http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/savvy_book_marketer/successful-social-marketing.html

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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 two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is 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. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". 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 blog.