As you get more involved in Internet marketing, you’ll hear the term “virtual book tour.” What is that, anyway? Basically, a virtual book tour is where an author or publicist has arranged for several different blogs or sites to feature the book within a relatively short period of time. These posts should include the book’s cover, price, purchase link, and a little blurb about the book—and hopefully a review written by the blogger or a guest post by the author.
Virtual book tours are an excellent way to spread the word about your book. They can be as simple as asking five or ten of your good friends to blog about your book, or you can take it a step further and ask bloggers from all over the Internet and all walks of life to talk about it. You can determine for yourself how complicated or how easy you want the process to be, and whether you want to include any giveaways with the promotion. They can be inexpensive, or they can be a little more of an investment. It’s all up to you.
Regardless of how you set up your tour, there are a few simple steps you should take to ensure the best results.
1. Choose bloggers whose readers are likely to be interested in the topic of your book. Your favorite aunt might be really eager to blog about it, but if her readers are only knitters, and your book is about exploring coral reefs, this might not be the best fit. However, keep in mind that we can’t prejudge who will enjoy what books. For the most part, see if you can match readership with your topic.
2. Choose bloggers who have more than fifty followers. Of course, the more followers the better, but at least fifty is a good number to start with.
3. Provide the review copy to the reviewer. It’s bad form to ask them to review the book and then tell them where they can buy it … I had someone do that to me, and needless to say, I deleted the e-mail instantly.
4. Ask them to post their reviews on Amazon and GoodReads as well as on their blog. This will get you a ton more exposure, and it’s really only a few extra minutes on their end.
The Internet is the way everyone is marketing now. If you can utilize the Internet to spread the word about your book (or other product), you’ll be better able to keep in step with the future of marketing.
About the Author
Tristi Pinkston is the author of thirteen published books and works as a freelance editor. If you’d like to learn more about her new book Virtual Book Tours: Harness the Power of the Internet, click here.
Great advice, Tristi.
Why, thank you, John Waverly!