Sunday, April 13, 2014

A Brief Thought on Blog Tours

So Living Dead Girl hits its last set of tour stops tomorrow, and I just wanted to share a few thoughts on book blog tours in general. Would I recommend one? Yes, absolutely...as long as you go into it with realistic expectations. Obviously the first thing is to research who you're handing your money to before you do it--that should go without saying, but as I've discovered there are TONS of tour companies out there, and I'm not sure they're all worth the cash. So a bit of research definitely goes a long way. I chose Bewitching because I had other other friends who used their services and were pleased. What I found was a well organized tour company, and for the money I spent ($75 I think??) I got a fair amount of exposure and a few reviews. On a whole, I'm very happy with what I got and I'll definitely go back for book two.

I think the real key to remember is this--a book tour isn't a magic formula to zillions of sales. I have no idea if I even gained any readers. What I did get is exposure. That's twenty-plus blogs who posted about my book, and my feeling is, the more people who talk about it or even just know about it, the better. Another big thing is reviews. Sure, the publisher sends out copies to reviewers, but they're a small independent publisher with limited resources. There's only so much they can do, so a lot of that falls on me.

ANY indie author will tell you that it can be extremely difficult to find people to review your book, particularly when you're approaching review sites on your own. They're inundated with requests, so many never get back to you...and all that time spent sending requests, I could be doing other more productive things. Plus, I'm kind of lazy. It's like querying all over again, because you've got to research the sites you're approaching, then send them info with your request. VERY time consuming, and I don't have much of that to spare. But I'm babbling...

With the book tour I signed up for, I was guaranteed at least some reviews, which I got. And no, you're not paying for reviews, you're paying for the tour company to find the bloggers willing to do it. So there you go :)

Happy Sunday, everyone!


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