The Penurious Promoter #5 -- All about virtual book tours

There are two ways to reach readers and potential readers.

One is to arrange book signings at various physical book stores. Sure, it sounds like fun, but reality is you’re lucky to meet twenty people and sell more than one to four books in the couple of hours allotted to you. I’ve done some signings (and of course, documented my experience.) My success (???) was pretty much on par with the statistics I’ve found. Not very efficient, nor profitable.

The other is to arrange an internet tour of various blogs and book reviewers, giving you the opportunity to interact with hundreds (or thousands) of readers around the world and for a much greater time. (Nothing ever dies on the internet.)

Books don’t sell themselves. (If only….)

There’s a lot of competition out there. For us authors, trying to break through the din of the plethora of books published each year, getting attention and sales proves to be a difficult task. (That’s understatement.) Here’s why. Approximately 550,000 books were published in the U.S. alone last year. That’s about 1,550 a day.

Even if yours is the next great masterpiece, (which you’re sure it is) who’s to know?

One way or another, you have to reach out to your audience, tell them you’re there, and convince them yours is the one book they should most assuredly put on their to-read list.

Now, you can try and reach out to all those indie book stores, hope they’ll accept you out of all the authors clamoring for a signing, travel all over the place at your own expense, putting yourself up in motel after motel for a measly few book sales per visit, shaking hands with people who will forget you the moment they leave the store. (They probably didn’t come in there to meet you, anyway.)

Or, you can stay in the comfort of your own home, dressed in your jamies, with hair uncombed, swigging back cheap red wine while listening to television and reach even more people through the miracle of modern technology, and your efforts will be long-lasting, as rarely are the reviews, the guest blogs, the interviews deleted.

You choose.

Aside from the above? You need more?

The idea is not only immediate book sales, but visibility as an author. The goal is to improve your “platform” beyond family, friends and Facebook acquaintances (most of whom are pushing their own books when they’re not inviting you to play Farmville,) and anyone who might be actually paying attention to your Twitters.

With virtual book tours, you have the benefit of enticing an audience over several days, or weeks, or months, or perhaps years as opposed to a short few hours in a crowded bookstore where no one really wants to talk to you and hides in the rows and rows of other books.

At the end of your tour, you’ve left a body of work behind, a lasting testament to your book ready to catch the attention of anyone who Googles your name, your book’s title, your book’s subject matter, or who simply stumbles on to you – kind of a wordy spider web.

If you are proactive – and you’d better be if you’re serious about selling your books – you can establish relationships and a fan base for many months to come, simply by taking a few moments to respond to reviews, reader comments and focus on giving answers that are meaningful (and entertaining – you are, after all, trying to sell yourself as an entertaining writer.)

Well, there’s always the chance a reviewer doesn’t like your book – (infinitesimal as those chances are) – and then that unfavorable opinion is as equally stuck in posterity as the favorable ones.

It happened to me. One reviewer out of the dozens who’ve published their critiques, took moral exception to the basis of my story and hated it, not for reasons of craft but because it offended her sensibilities. You can find that disapproving blog any number of places, the reviewer’s site, Goodreads, Amazon… There it is, that final insult where she wrote off my work as an immoral, perverted romance (gasp – not a romance, please!)

And there’s not a darn thing you can do about it. I made the mistake of trying to defend the book. Don’t!

Best thing: leave a short comment such as “Thank you for your opinion” and leave it at that. It does no good to try and argue. Tell yourself the reader just didn’t get it, has no taste, is small-minded and narrow-viewed, has an uptight moral compass, wouldn’t know good writing if he/she tripped over it, apply balm to your wounded pride and move on to those with something constructive to say.

But questions of ego aside, it is quickly apparent the plusses outweigh the negatives, so let’s assume you’ve decided to go ahead.

You can do it yourself, but it takes a lot of time, research, preparation and patience. Here’s how in easy steps.

• Determine your audience. A book that appeals to all just doesn’t exist. (Sorry but it is so.) The first step required is to target your readers. In my case, the book was written for women and mature girls (though my male readers tell me they enjoyed it immensely,) but, as I found out the hard way, not all women are open to the somewhat controversial relationship that forms the core of the story. And as to the mature girls: I found young adult readers, some as young as 12 to 14 to be the most enthusiastic supporters, even though societal conventions required a rating of 18+. So be careful in making assumptions.

• Identify the blogs and online media outlets that reach your target audience. This is easy enough to do through the use of search engines, followed up by site visits and review of content. But there are some other things to keep in mind. Is a blog getting enough traffic to make it worth your time to pursue or comment on? To find out how much traffic it gets, you can download any number of programs that let you see the popularity of that site. One such is Alexa’s “Sparky” from Firefox, free and easy to download.

• Begin to form a relationship with the blog site. Start becoming “known” on the sites by offering helpful, informative comments on blog postings. Refrain from talking about your book; make meaningful comments about the subject at hand. Why? Because nothing is more irritating than someone who wants to talk about themselves when you’re talking about yourself – right? You can’t just show up and post links to your book. That would make you spam, and you’ll be treated accordingly – reviled and deleted. Never try and steal the spotlight. But once you have made a connection, you can move on to the next step. (While we’re on the subject of good promotion etiquette, here’s an excellent article addressing those points.)

• Pick your tour dates, preferably a time frame three to six months in the future. It will take time to get all in readiness.

• Send out a pitch letter to the authors of each blog site you’d like to have host and review your work. Just as you’d written pitch letters to agents (hundreds of them) and publishers (ditto,) you want to use the same kind of format to potential hosts for your book tour. Catch their interest with a hook. Provide a brief (very brief) synopsis, and possibly a teaser, a passage or two from the book to highlight your subject matter and writing style. Give them the dates you’ve chosen and ask which date works for them. Be flexible. Offer a free review copy, either print or electronic, and perhaps a copy as a “give-away” for the site’s readers. Offer interviews, Q and A’s, guest blogs – whatever the site’s author seems to prefer.

• Form your schedule. When you have enough feedback from bloggers and reviewers, put together your schedule. Try and have a new stop each day for the duration of your tour.

• Now get busy. You have a lot of work to do.

Or, you can hire a promotional firm to do all this for you.

This was my choice, for many reasons. Not the least of which was my limited time. (Whoever knew retirement would be so busy?)

Other reasons included the fact professionals know best. They already have connections with the best bloggers, can pinpoint the best sites for the specific needs of your book, can run interference when there’s a difference of opinion or other problems, can do all the synchronization for you, have tried and true methods of publicizing the event and because all your input is funneled through them, they can hit the brakes if you’re getting out of line and steer you back in the right direction.

But you want to be careful in selecting your promotional firm. My first foray into the VBT world was with a new promoter. Not only was she my first book tour, I was her first author. It was a one week, getting my toes wet kind of thing and it went reasonably well, though the stops on my tour were not high traffic blogs, one reviewer was only fourteen years old (which shocked me a little, but I learned a lot about the young adult book market from this amazing girl with whom I developed on ongoing correspondence,) and it was on this tour I encountered the reviewer who’s highly conservative moral sensibilities were insulted by my book, resulting in a truly horrible review and experience. (Not that this can’t happen on any tour. )

This time around, I was serious. So I did my research and chose to contact Nurture your Books, owned by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy and with a proven track record. (Okay, so the fact she’s a fellow Canadian and lives in Alberta did have something to do with decision process.) What truly impressed me was that she read my book prior to making any suggestions – not everyone does you know.

I asked her for a comment for this article:

“Traditional Book Tours can be prohibitively expensive at any time, but in this economy…with venue bookings, time off work, lodging and transportation expenses, a Traditional Book Tour can cost an author several thousand dollars or more.

With the increasing popularity of online readership, eBooks and eBook sales, authors should be looking for other, more successful alternatives to Traditional Book Tours and a Virtual Book Tour service might be the right solution.

When you are searching for the right Virtual Book Tour Company to promote you and your book, be sure to take your time; ask for referrals and email addresses from past clients and ask lots of questions before you spend your hard-earned promotional dollars.

Don’t forget that Customer Service is a very important factor; if a Virtual Book Tour Company isn’t quick to reply and communicate with you before you pay them, what are the chances that things will improve once they have your cash in hand?

Do yourself a huge favor and make sure that they are quickly and easily reached by phone and by email before you make any firm commitments or hand over your money.”-- Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Bobbie is the CEO, Founder & Owner of Nurture Your BOOKS™ and the Senior Tour Coordinator at Nurture Virtual Book Tours. When she isn’t busy promoting authors and their books or reading, Bobbie is busily running the Bloggers Unite Book Club and networking on various online social media sites. “Nurture Your BOOKS™ stand for and believes in quality, not quantity.

Nurture Your Books has a U.S. presence, Jaidis Shaw, Bobbie's right hand here in the South.

So, Bobbie and Jaidis did all the foundation stuff mentioned earlier, but I still had much to do. (Lots and lots, actually, but it was fun.)

For more information on services, costs and availability, you can contact Nurture Your Books through the link given in the schedule listed on the right. (First entry.)

That will vary, depending on the needs of each host. Not all hosts will review the book. Some will prefer a guest blog, an interview, a ‘question and answer’ session. It all depends. Not all book bloggers have time for every book they’re asked to host. Some will review the book and ask for an interview. Certainly, I would be happier if every host read and reviewed the book, sharing with the world how wonderful it is, but…

Review copies must go out to each host who requests one – at your expense. It’s best to offer both print and e-copies. (I’m always relieved when someone wants an e-copy. I can send them a copy of the final book block at no cost. I shed a tear for every print copy I send out; I had to buy them, after all.)

You will receive the requests for interviews and guest blogs from the hosts, hopefully a few weeks before posting date. If you’re doing this through a professional promotion site, they will gather and forward them on, and you will send your responses back to your coordinator.

Here’s the complication. Twenty to thirty stops on a tour, you can bet your bottom dollar the same questions will come up time and time again. As the hoped-for result is interested fans and readers following your tour, you can’t post the same thing several times over. Nope. You’ll have to find a new angle to the same questions.

Here are some of the questions I've been asked:

• What made you decide to write "This Bird Flew Away"?

• Tell our readers a little about yourself?

• Can you give our readers a few tidbits on your next project?

• Do you feel a deep connection to your characters in "This Bird Flew Away? Why?

• Who do you credit for your biggest accomplishment? Why?

• What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

• If you could change anything in the world what would it be and why?

• Describe what it’s like to be an author in three words.

• What is your favorite genre of literature?

• At what point in your life did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

• What would you consider to be the best book you have ever read?

• Describe the process of getting a book published.

• What message, thoughts, or ideas do you want readers to take away from The Bird Flew Away?

• Any sneak peeks at what is upcoming from you?

• What is it that you like to do when you’re not reading/writing?

• If your book was made into a movie, which actors would you choose to play your main character.

• Describe a typical day in your life.

• What does your family and/or significant other think of your writing career.

• Does your life-partner read your work?

Well, you get the idea. Are you whimsical? Clever? Humorous? Good with one-liners? Knowledgeable in the field of entertainment? (Do actors actually have names?) If not, you’d better become so. Each of these questions are worthy of an essay, but you won't have the space to do one.

Are you able to present your life story ten different ways? Do you want to? How much of yourself do you want to share with the public? You need to have a good handle on your personal boundaries.

And then there’s questions like:

• If you could have superpowers, which would you choose?

• If you had to be an animal, which would you prefer?

• If you could be a character from a book, who would you be?

When you’re sitting ear-deep in questions, interviews and guest blog prompts, questions such as these can seem almost silly. I mean, what does this have to do with me as a writer and the message I worked into my book? Nothing really, but you must treat all questions with the same diligence. (And I would choose to have the ability to fly. As an animal, I'd like to be a grizzly bear (you get to eat till you're obese, sleep all winter, giving birth is so simple it doesn't even wake you up, and you don't have to shave your legs.) A character from a book? I'll choose Miss Marple from Agatha Christie, an independent woman of means possessed of a good mind and who seems to be warmly welcomed everywhere she goes.)

Try and find fresh and respectful answers to any and all questions, but make sure you are true to your own sense of what is and what is not the public’s business. If you don’t feel comfortable answering a question, don’t. On many occasions on this tour, I simply stated, “I am a private person.” Which I am.

Most hosts will give you a prompt for your guest blogs -- happily. Nothing makes my mind empty faster than a request for '500 words on the subject of your choice.' I pull a complete blank.

Give me a subject, any subject and I can whip out an essay in no time flat.

I was offered some interesting ones. Here are a couple of examples:

• an interview with one of your characters (I chose to interview Jack, the one main character who is not a narrator, and one often misperceived.)

• how is your novel different from others in your genre (I wrote about the difficulty of placing this novel in a genre.)

It may be difficult and certainly exhausting to churn out twenty or so essays in a matter of a couple of weeks AND keep them fresh, entertaining and hopefully, error and typo free, but it must be done.

Your virtual book tour is a chance to show off your skill, to prove yourself a writer worthy of a reader's time and often your introduction to could-be fans and readers. It's worth the effort to make it all as best it can be.

So, dear friends, once again I'm dragging you with me into a new experience. I hope you find something of value as I share my learning curve.

I also hope you'll drop in on my ongoing tour. I'd love to see you there.

To the left is a link to my book's website. All tour events can be navigated from there.

Thank you.

Lynda M Martin

September 7, 2011