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Blog Tours?

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Instead of actually writing my book this morning, I spent a little time researching marketing. Apparently, it's a good think to organize a "blog tour." The concept, as I understand it, is to contact at least 20 blogs that a) are relevant to your book and b) have a decent following. Your goal is to have all these bloggers make a post about your book (be it an author interview, a review, or excerpts) within a week period in order to develop "buzz."

Has anyone done this? Is it worth the effort to set up?
 

TWErvin2

Auror
I've known some authors who have done this. For some it makes a postive impact. For others, it fizzled. Didn't hurt, but didn't help.

It works best with authors who have already established a relationship with the bloggers, and possibly the blogger's audience via comments or previous articles or postings. Doing interviews, writing articles or providing content that is of value to the blogger's audience takes a lot of time. Few bloggers are inclined to spam their audience with blog tour "here's my new release, here's an excerpt, take a look and hope you buy it" posts. That's why the hopeful author has to be willing to provide targeted and valuable content, beyond the pitch for the upcoming or newly released novel.

It takes time and effort, and possibly a bit of creativity for this method to work. It's another tool in the shed that can be used.
 
Yeah, I don't understand it myself. I'm trying to learn more about it but it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

This is because I am mentally deficient when it comes to understanding marketing (not the best quality to have if you're in self-publishing, alas) so I can't grasp the logistics or mechanics behind it. Also since everyone I know online is in webcomics, not writing, I don't have a network of contacts to exploi^H^H^H^H^H^H leverage.
 
Blogging is a platform for discussion and people share their opinions and gain some information. Blogs are done for the advertisement of site and also for earning money.
 

JCFarnham

Auror
Blogging is a platform for discussion and people share their opinions and gain some information. Blogs are done for the advertisement of site and also for earning money.

Please try and engage with the discussion.


Anyway I'm going to second the get creative aspect of blog tours. Instead of it being solely about the book, you need to offer something more. Perhaps a tour of guest posting would be more useful? You'd have more time to promote yourself to potential readers as someone intelligent and interesting for sure, if you were writing an article for someone.

As you may already know I'm trying to invite people to do just this on my blog. It's a simple as helping me with the challenge, or getting me to review something, or doing a guest post. I will always attach your author bio at the end of said post, with links to your work.

It's the least I can do.
 
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BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Please try and engage with the discussion.


Anyway I'm going to second the get creative aspect of blog tours. Instead of it being solely about the book, you need to offer something more. Perhaps a tour of guest posting would be more useful? You'd have more time to promote yourself to potential readers as someone intelligent and interesting for sure, if you were writing an article for someone.

As you may already know I'm trying to invite people to do just this on my blog. It's a simple as helping me with the challenge, or getting me to review something, or doing a guest post. I will always attach your author bio at the end of said post, with links to your work.

It's the least I can do.

JC,

I think a successful blog tour, from what I read, incorporates the author doing different things on different blogs. At your blog, doing a guest post is the way to go. At another site, it may be having the blogger do a review. On still another one, you let the blogger interview you. The point is to create "buzz" by deluging the internet with a bunch of stuff at once.

Personally, I think that the internet is too big to deluge, and the people reading one blog don't necessarily know anything about the others. I think getting your book attention on any blog in any way that you can is useful, but I'm questioning if the value of doing it in a tight time period is truly worth the hassel of the logistics.

BTW, as we have discussed doing guest posts on each other's blogs, I've been thinking about what to post. A post about characterization would be about developing characters through action. To make it fit in with the style of your blog, though, I'd title it something like: Your character is what they do.
 
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JCFarnham

Auror
The answer to that is: I'm not sure.

If you're a bigger name a blog tour might work on the principle of the "underground buzz". Perhaps you over hear some people talking about something you didn't know existed (over hear or over read?) and if you know where to look you'll find the information. I mean It's worked for decades in the music industry. People love finding something that they believe is only for them. I think the buzz created by a blog tour could work to this very well.

As an unknown the purpose of a blog tour seem to become, as you said, get the product out there, end of.
 
I've known some authors who have done this. For some it makes a postive impact. For others, it fizzled. Didn't hurt, but didn't help.

Few bloggers are inclined to spam their audience with blog tour "here's my new release, here's an excerpt, take a look and hope you buy it" posts. That's why the hopeful author has to be willing to provide targeted and valuable content, beyond the pitch for the upcoming or newly released novel.

I'll echo the others here: I have my own blog, so I've made lots of friends in the blogging community. When I approached them about my own blog tour this fall, I got a really good response from the blog owners. I could say because it's a great "Free" day for them. They just have to slap your post up and off they go. I'm not saying that's bad by any means, it's just the way it is.

It's easy for them, and sometimes it really blast your hits sky high. Plus, they're really a great bunch of (in my case) gals and I had fun working with them.

You can also look at it as free promo for you. :) Win-win. But it's not as easy to be a guest as I thought it'd be! Trying to think of how to pick apart your novel and how much to give away is the hard part. I much prefer an excerpt/link/bio posting! LOL Other people I've watched do it over the last year or so got mixed results. Either they got lots of responses (usually those giving something away) or no response at all.

It takes time and effort, and possibly a bit of creativity for this method to work. It's another tool in the shed that can be used.

Yes, absolutely. So I say if you can find the right blogs for your book, do it. What the hey? At least it's another place to get your name out. I hope this helps! :)
 
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