The Power of a Blogging or Virtual Book Tour

The Power of a Blogging or Virtual Book Tour

It’s time to learn more about blogging or podcasting book tours, also called Virtual Book Tours.

Just yesterday I was on a webinar about books and how to find readers. This is a subject Tom and I spend a lot of time studying.

Marketing a book is a task that falls on the author, regardless of how she is published.

The day of the publisher-sponsored book tour is over. Truth is, it’s been over for a long time.

It would be great, super, fantastic if your publisher – whoever that is: Hybrid publisher, Small Press, or Traditional Publisher – sent you on a book tour. How wonderful would that be? Can you see it now? They will send their PR master – not an underling, you deserve the master – to travel throughout the country with you, to assigned bookstores and libraries. 

You’ll stay at great hotels, maybe not too fancy, but fancy enough. And on your first leg of the tour, there will be flowers and a fruit basket sent by your supportive publisher. To keep you energized and encouraged.

And then, you’ll enter the first bookstore and take a deep breath, inhaling the wondrous scent of books. So many books! And a whole shelf of your book! You go to the lectern at the designated time and thank everyone for attending. And you WOW the crowd as you read Chapter Three of your book. Q&A follows where everyone asks a question or tells you how much they love your book before you let the PR Master lead you and the crowd to the table set up right by the entrance where your signing will begin.

There you are, with stacks and stacks of your book, and a beautiful fountain pen to give your personal signature to each and every person who approaches, as the PR Master gently manages the crowd. In the end, you’ll sell cases and cases of books and your publisher will be eager to sign you for book #2.  

Time to wake up. That’s a dream. I am sad to have to wake you up from it, but wake up you must. Because book marketing and sales are your jobs. Not your publisher’s job – unless the publisher is you, of course. According to Publisher’s Weekly, the day of the author’s book tour has come and gone.

If you’re an Indie publisher or self-published author, oh, do send yourself on a book tour! But if that’s not in your budget…

Enter the blogging/podcasting book tour. Or, Virtual Book Tour

Blogs and podcasts are excellent ways to meet and engage with your reader. This is a proven and successful way to build a platform and sell more books.

Let’s talk about the power of blogs and podcasts – the Virtual Book Tour – to help both promote you, as the ‘author of’ your book and to sell your books.

The goal of any author is to reach influencers in the genre of their writing. This does not mean you have to find a superstar actor or a YouTuber (as in video podcasting) with 4 million followers.

It means you do have to find groups of people who blog and have podcasts who might both be interested in speaking with you or promoting you by having you and your book featured on their site.

When we say influencer, it can be someone with 5000 followers or 50,000 followers. Or any number in between. You do want someone with more than 500 followers. Although, if they have a truly engaged audience, that is a good thing. So don’t count all of them out.

The goal here is to find several of these influencers and create a Virtual Book Tour. Where you get to stay home and be comfy, but appear on their shows one after the other, either on the same day or over a week or two.

This gets you and your book noticed by Google, because you’re being mentioned all over the place in a short period of time. And it gets you and your book noticed by all of the VBT followers, who just might become readers. It also gives you great content for your social channels and your media page.

Here’s How To Find Them – Yes, It Involves Work On Your Part

In our Outline of a Blogging/Podcasting Virtual Book Tour, we go into this in more detail. It’s free to you if you DM me on LinkedIn and ask for it.

Here’s what I’ll share now:

• Use Google to search for the blogs or podcasts you want to appear on. <your topic or genre + bloggers + forums + groups>
• Use Apple iTunes to do the same – luckily, Apple includes a “related podcasts” link with your search results
• Make a list. You might want to create an Excel spreadsheet. Understand that not all results will work out for you. Be selective.
• Look for patterns. (demographics, interest, etc)

Now you must reach out to the bloggers/podcasters you chose to include in your list. I hope your list has dozens not just two or three. You cannot be guaranteed that any of them will respond positively. The more you have on your list, the more success you will see.

Most bloggers and podcasters have their email addresses or the way they prefer to be contacted (a form, perhaps) right on their site.

Before you connect, make sure you’ve reviewed their content. Read at least 10 blog posts. Listen to at least 5 podcasts. Get a feel for what they prefer and how they prefer to share it.

Reading the blogs and listening to the podcasts also gives you insight into their audience. It’s all about the audience. Not about you. Or your book. It’s about the hosts serving good content to their audience.

When you reach out, mention the blogs or podcasts of theirs that you’ve read or listened to. Mention why you like the particular blog post or podcast episode. Ask for permission to send information about you and your book.

Be polite and respectful of their time. Don’t write a novel of your life’s story! Keep your note short.

Your Homework BEFORE Contacting Anyone

Be prepared to wait weeks, if not months before appearing on anyone’s blog or podcast. If they are truly influencers, they are very busy. You are not the only person contacting them to be on their show.

Look carefully at the blogs and podcasts. To measure authority, check their Google page rank. Look at their sites and measure the comments and engagement. Visit their social channels and review their postings and engagement. Your goal is to determine their value and to get a hint of both who their audience is and how engaged they are. You want engagement!

Some sites will list this in their media kit or on their media page.

Note whether they only do book reviews, and if they like having the author on the blog or podcast. Make a note if they allow guest posting on their blog. Remember, it will be an original post only for their blog. You cannot reuse a previously published post.

For podcasting, be prepared to ask if they know of other podcasts you should connect with. This is a community – these people do know each other.

Most bloggers and podcasters will want a copy of the book. Don’t fret, it doesn’t have to be a physical print book. A PDF of your book should suffice. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have print copies ready to be mailed out. I prefer print copies, myself. Makes it easier to showcase the actual book when I do my video review.

What You’ll Need To Send Them

Have all of these items on hand to deliver to your influencers relevant to your Virtual Book Tour:

• A good, clear 3D image of your book – maybe several of them
• Your PDF of the book
• The blurb about your book
• Your book trailer
• Links to all of your social channels
• A teaser – a page or two of the book to create interest for the audience
• Your author website
• Your Amazon sales page (and any other places your book is available)
• The master schedule of the Virtual Book Tour

The management of the VBT is up to you. Unless you hire it out. Yes, there are folks who will create VBTs for you. The link here is just one. Do your own research if you would like help with a book tour. Can Master Book Builders help? Sure. But we would only be advisors – guiding you each step of the way. We don’t do VBTs.

Remember – while this takes time and effort, it’s free publicity. Other than giving the hosts your book, and sometimes it will be the print version, you aren’t spending a dime.

Keep Track of Everything!

You aren’t through once the VBT is over. Now it’s time for thank you notes.

It’s time to follow up with any listeners or viewers who contacted you. And anyone who ‘won’ a book in a quiz or Q&A session. Bloggers and podcasters can get creative and have games on their show, to allow their audiences to win something – like a signed copy of your book. Which you will be tasked with signing and mailing out.

It’s time to share the VBT again, on your social channels with kudos to all the blog and podcast hosts.

If you have a chance to use the VBT to promote other versions of your book, do so. Your audiobook. Your digital book. These are important, also. Both versions are growing in popularity.

Stay in touch with your hosts. They may do gift guides (bloggers) or events (podcasters and bloggers) that you can be part of as a speaker or presenter.

A Virtual Book Tour with bloggers and/or podcasters is the same thing as the worldwide book tour you dreamed of. The 2023 version.

Give it a chance.

Any questions? Put them in the comments, please.