
Heather, thanks so much for having me at your place today to discuss my new novel
CLAWS. I thought folks visiting your blog might find it interesting to hear me discuss my current blog tour and how it works to help market books.
I am currently on Day 12 of a 45-day blog tour to help promote
the novel. This is the first blog tour I’ve ever done, and I’ve only heard of two other authors doing one. So what is a blog tour?
A blog tour is like a book tour except that the author promoting his/her new book writes blog posts (like this one) over a set period of time at a number of host blog sites. So instead of visiting bookstores and libraries, we visit fellow writers’ blogs… or more truthfully, we do this in conjunction with more traditional touring like visiting bookstores and libraries.
As of today, I’ve done eleven previous blog posts on this “tour” and have drummed up two reviews on
Amazon.com for my book and sold a couple dozen copies of the paperback and Amazon Kindle versions. Interestingly, the blog tour has gained momentum and is directly responsible for two additional call-in interviews.
That is, two folks read a blog post I did in the past week or two while on the blog tour and then contacted me requesting to do an interview. A third person contacted me to do a written interview for his blog, and about 2-3 folks have asked me to write a guest blog post like this one for their blogs as a result of seeing me on a blog this past week or two.
It’s a fascinating idea, and it definitely has contributed to some books sold and much more exposure than had I not done it. It’s conceivable that you could do a tour like this for several months, if you were extremely proactive about asking people if you could guest post at their places.
My feeling so far is that 1) it’s extremely cost-effective, 2) it builds a connection with the person hosting you, 3) it generates momentum that leads to further media exposure, 4) it needs to be done for a minimum of 30 days straight (and probably a 60-90 day tour would be most effective), 5) it certainly gets you writing.
In this respect, I think that it is an effective marketing strategy that should be considered part of any writer’s larger campaign when promoting the release of a new novel. I guarantee you that we’ll see more and more of these in the months and years to come.
Thanks so much, Heather, for hosting me today. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy of
CLAWS and writing an
Amazon.com review yourself.
I have been offering and will offer to you and your readers today the following: if you buy five or more copies of
CLAWS at Amazon.com, I will do a Skype call-in interview with you to talk about your book, which I will put on my TV show and on YouTube.
Thanks so much. I hope to hear from you soon!