The Savvy Book Marketer’s Advice on Virtual Book Tours

POSTED BY prbythebook ON January 10, 2012

Guest post by Dana Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer. Original post from San Francisco Book Review.

Virtual book tours (also called blog tours) typically involve making guest appearances on  book review sites, blogs, and/or forums that are related to the topic or audience of your book. You can even do audio interviews as part of your tour.

Virtual book tours have several advantages over the traditional in-person book tour:

• It’s free (unless you hire someone to organize the tour) and there’s no time or money spent on travel.
• You can generally reach far more people and reach a more targeted audience.
• A virtual tour provides quality, lasting links back to your own author website.

Look for tour hosts that are a good fit for your book and provide unique content to each host. Here are some suggestions for content:

• Virtual interviews, where your host asks questions and you respond
• How-to articles in your area of expertise
• Excerpts from your book
• Articles about how you developed the plot or characters for a novel
• Book reviews written by the tour host
• Podcasts or teleseminars
• Video or radio interviews with you
• Book promotion videos
• Articles about how you wrote or published the book or what you’re doing to market it

Make the tour more interactive by encouraging readers to make comments or ask questions. Sometimes the host will encourage readers to submit questions in advance.

You can create buzz by giving away a free copy of your book or a related item at some of the tour stops. For example, invite people to make a comment on your guest blog post, then hold a drawing to give away a free copy of your book to someone randomly selected from those who left comments.

Virtual book tours are ideal for launching a new book, but even if your book has been out for a while, a virtual tour can book create buzz and bring in sales.

Tours typically last 5 to 20 consecutive days, with a different tour stop each weekday or every other day. If you want to do a long tour, you might schedule a 10-day tour and then do a second tour a month or two later. It’s never too late to promote your book with a virtual book tour!

About Dana Lynn Smith

Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, helps authors and indie publishers learn how to sell more books through her how-to guides, blog, newsletter, and private coaching. Learn how to organize your own successful virtual book tour with her comprehensive guide, Virtual Book Tour Magic, and get more book marketing tips at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com.

PR by the Book offers conventional book tour management, as well as packages for virtual blog book tours. Blog book tours are offered in full publicity campaigns, and are offered in more precise and shorter campaigns through as an à la carte option. If you’re interested in a working with PR by the Book on your next tour, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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