Yesterday, I happened upon a post about blog tours by Parajunkie.com--the high and the low points. It is a great post, so I hope you take the opportunity to read Dishing Blog Tours.
During my ten years as a published author, I’ve written hundreds of guest posts and traveled throughout the blog world on tour. I’ve hosted authors at my blog and met lots of wonderful bloggers, readers and authors. This year I’ve begun to ponder the benefit of blog tours.
During my ten years as a published author, I’ve written hundreds of guest posts and traveled throughout the blog world on tour. I’ve hosted authors at my blog and met lots of wonderful bloggers, readers and authors. This year I’ve begun to ponder the benefit of blog tours.
From a writer’s perspective blog tours are time-consuming
and sometimes expensive. It takes time away from writing to schedule and write posts,
answer interview questions and to prepare the promotional material required by
each blogger. Once a promotional tour starts, extra time is required to comment
on posts, interact with readers and to do the social media posts necessary to advertise
your tour.
It seems to me that the latest trend with blog tours is to
do a release day blitz or a cover reveal. This is where dozens of blogs post
exactly the same material on the same day. I’m not a fan of this type of post, because
if like me, readers follow many different blogs, they’re bound to come
across posts that are exactly the same.
As both a reader and a blogger, I prefer material that is
original, something that offers entertainment value. I want to learn about the
author and how they came to write their book. I want further information about
the book’s setting or special research the writer carried out while writing
their book. This type of post is more likely to entice me to purchase a book.
While I’m speaking of the downside of blog tours, I might as
well mention those authors who don’t bother to stop by and comment on their
blog post or to interact with those who comment. Very frustrating for the host! Occasionally,
there are bloggers who book a date with a blog and don’t send the relevant
material in a timely fashion. On the opposite side of the coin, there are host
bloggers who don’t post at the correct time.
Confession time—to my shame, I screwed up once and didn’t
get my post up at the right time. I was mortified by my mishap and have made
very sure I haven’t repeated this mistake. The author was very gracious and
accepted my apology, but I still feel bad about this lapse on my part.
When it comes to blog tour companies, not all are made
equal. It pays to ask around because some are more efficient and organized than
others. If an author spends hours writing posts, they need to know readers will
see their efforts. Sadly, some of the host blogs don’t receive much traffic and
excellent, original posts languish and die unread.
This year authors are holding Facebook parties as an
alternative or in addition to a blog tour. Facebook parties are fun and quick,
and although they require preparation time, I’ve found they attract a large
number of readers and generate buzz. Maybe parties of this nature are the new blog tour?
5 comments:
Interesting post, Shelley. I've never done a blog tour, myself, but I have been a guest blogger. I'm always honoured when a blogger invites me into their blog. And you're right, it's good manners to provide the post on time, and stick around to chat with commenters.
Not done the blog tour thing. After reading your post I may consider it. Thanks for sharing.
Marcelle,
It's a different way of getting the word about your book out. In my experience the tours don't seem to work as well as they used to. It's wise to choose the blogs who host you wisely because all those posts do take a long time to prepare.
Rita,
If you have the time, it's definitely worth trying this avenue of promotion.
My publisher scheduled a blog tour (through a tour company) for my last release. It was hugely frustrating because the selected sites didn't read my genre, their regular guests weren't especially interested in anything except the prizes. Time consuming and stressful sums it up.
That said, I've done guest posts on blogs in my genre and found them helpful for introducing a new release (CYPHER - releases next month!).
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