Blog Tours: Finding & Measuring Success

23 July 2012 Jordan

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Marketing: Blog tours

by Rachelle Christensen

I think the most important key to a successful blog tour is organization. It’s tricky when you’ve scheduled 20-25 stops on your tour. You will need to answer questions, give reminders, and make sure each blogger has the information they need to participate fully. I keep a document or spreadsheet for each blog tour and keep track of things like who I invite to participate and their response, most reliable book reviewers, individual review and interview dates, email and web addresses, etc.

Jordan has covered some great information in this series, but you might be asking yourself, are blog tours really worth it? The answer to that is YES if you coordinate one correctly. If you don’t think the advice that Jordan has posted applies to you and that you can run a successful tour with a handful of unknown blogs, then no, a blog tour won’t benefit your book.

Blog tours are about seed-bedding. Have you heard the marketing phrase that a person needs to be exposed to an item anywhere from three to twenty times before they will purchase? Well, it’s true. So when an author decides to put their book on tour, they should be doing so for the exposure. Great reviews are priceless, but go look up a few books on Amazon. You might be surprised to see some well-known authors who have less than ten reviews, or you might be surprised to see some that have over 100. A blog tour creates buzz and plants seeds in prospective readers’ minds. Does this translate to hard sales? Not usually sales that you can measure, but it translates to many results that you might not even realize.

Here’s an example. Perhaps reader Jane hears about your book, then she sees some glowing reviews on your blog tour. The next time she is at the library, she asks them to order in your book. Reader Jane checks out your book and loves it. Now she is excited for the next book and because she enjoyed your book so much, she wants to buy the next one as soon as it’s available.

In the above example, you can see that I’m trying to share the vision of planting seeds. Sometimes you’ll get to enjoy an early harvest, other times the seeds will grow slowly and turn into a towering oak tree. Exposure is great for any business and the same goes for authors.

Say Thank you! I think it’s important to thank your blog tour participants individually and think about how you can extend that thanks in other ways. On a recent tour that I managed, we offered a special thank you gift to each blogger who posted their review on time and also on Goodreads and Amazon. It was a fun way to continue to get the bloggers invested in the tour and get the results wanted.

Stay positive. Look at each stop on your tour as a potential seed. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising and you never know who might see that post and decide to invest in your book. If you don’t see a huge jump in sales, don’t get discouraged. Remember, that you are offering readers many chances to get to know you and the quality of your writing. Think about other marketing avenues that you might use to piggyback on the blog tour. Giveaways are fun, as well as special “buzz-fests” or “book bombs” or hide-and-seek questions in the first chapter of your book. All of these work to increase visibility.

Have fun! Don’t be a stress-case if one of your reviewers misses their posting date. Life happens, and sometimes we have to pick up the pieces and be flexible. If I see that a reviewer hasn’t posted on their scheduled date, I send out a reminder just checking in and offer another date if they are unable to make it work that day. I certainly appreciate it when people are understanding of my brain cramps, so be courteous and keep things on the up side.

Keep a page on your website, blog, or sidebar with all of the participants and dates of the blog tour. When your blog tour is finished, make sure you have that page somewhere permanent in case you need to reference it.

There are many other benefits to blog tours, such as gathering usable endorsements from reviewers to be used for other marketing purposes and making lasting connections with your audience. Be willing to think outside the box to take advantage of every opportunity to create a successful blog tour—but most of all enjoy!

About the Author

Rachelle J. Christensen is an author who enjoys blogging and learning new marketing strategies. She organizes blog tours for a multi-million dollar worldwide company and has developed secrets for low-cost Internet marketing.
Her first novel, Wrong Number, was awarded Outstanding Book of the Year from the League of Utah Writers and was also a 2010 Whitney Finalist. Her second suspense novel, Caller ID, was released March 2012. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Lost Children: Coping with Miscarriage for Latter-day Saints.

Mechanics, Technique

Mass editing with Word Macros

20 July 2012 Jordan 8 Comments

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Gesture crutches

Freshen up your writing faster!

So I recently took a fantastic class from the inimitable Margie Lawson. I discovered that some of the editing tasks I view as drudgery are a lot easier to do when they’re assignments in a class. (I love school.)

One of these drudgerous tasks was to collect all the sentences that used a number of gesture crutches from the first 50 pages and look for repetition and trends, finding the uses you can cut (you don’t need a nod if someone says yes or just complies, etc.), and freshening up your gestures.

The most time-consuming, drudgerous (it’s a word now, okay?) part was actually finding the sentences, cutting and pasting them into a new document. It took me hours to go through my MS 50 pages at a time. HOURS. Not even a quarter of the way through, I knew I had to do something else.

I needed a macro.

A macro is a bit of code you can use with a program to automate a task. Abby Annis introduced me to macros, and Margie classmate Greg Henry provided a few useful writers’ macros in class. I know lots of great writers who use macros to catch clichés;s, throwaway words (just, really, very, etc.). I wanted to take this a little further.

Why use a macro?

I know (because more than one person has said this to me) this sounds needlessly complex. “Can I just use Find/Search?” you might ask. And more than one person has told me about Word 2010’s navigation panel, which shows your searches, excerpts where the text is found, gives you a use count (which you can do in any version of Word, but I digress), etc.

You are more than welcome to continue using Find-and-Replace. If you’re going to highlight or bold your terms, please use Find All (or Replace All + Formatting).

But here’s the advantages of using the macro:

This bit of code pulls the full sentences the term appears in (not just the 15 or so closest words) into a new document.
The new document is searchable.
The new document is ready to edit.
The new document lists the sentences side by side, instead of having to flip back and forth, wait for load times, etc.
The new document contains results for all of my terms, so I can find cross-term patterns, repetition and echoes more easily.
But most of all, it’s a lot faster & easier. The macro takes three mouse clicks to run over 40 searches, and cut and paste the results into a fresh document. It would take me 1800 mouse clicks just to go through each use of each of my terms. Plus highlighting the sentences and cutting and pasting them into a document for better comparison (instead of relying on my memory and the excerpts in the navigation pane)? Oy.

Can I just say that again? Once you spend 10-15 minutes setting up the macro, it takes less than five mouse clicks to “harvest” the results of 40+ searches (using find all word forms, too!).

If you’d rather click that Find button 1843 times, go for it. But I found that method much more time consuming. Again, it took me hours to get through a quarter of this task. It now takes seconds of effort. If that. The next manuscript? Three clicks. The one after that? Three clicks. The one from the drawer? Three clicks.

That’s the beauty of macros.

The EASY/Non-Techie Way

The immensely helpful Paul Edstein wrote a macro to do this all automatically for you. Download the Excel file he posted (you’ll see a security prompt to enable macros; do enable them). In that workbook, enter the word you want it to look for in A1 of Sheet 1, the next work in A1 of Sheet 2, etc. Put a ‘1’ in B1 if you want to search for ALL word forms (smile/smiling/smiles/smiled, etc.).

The macro runs on a folder rather than individual files, so unless your manuscript is the only Word document in the folder on your computer, you’ll need to make a new folder for it and copy or move the manuscript into that folder before you run the macro.

Again, all you have to do is put the words in the spreadsheet, and run the macro (click Developer > Macro. Named GetData, it will probably be the only one there!). Super easy, super user-friendly!

Read message #8 for a tip on how to edit the macro to include page numbers! (This does get a bit more technical, but it’s really just cut-and-paste!)

The MANUAL Way

I’m part of a family craft blog, and we reeeeally like to do things our own way: no patterns, no instructions. It’s either crafting by Braille, or, as we like to call it “being Wayward.”

I think that bled into this project. Before I saw Paul’s workbook, I spent hours configuring my own macro. To make your own macro, enable macros in Word Options. Check out Abby Annis’s detailed macro instructions for more help (except we won’t be recording this, but entering the code directly).

In the Developer ribbon, click Macros. Type a new name into the text box prompt and click “Create.”

Then cut and paste the below. (Delete the line Sub GrabbingCrutches() or you’ll break it!)

VBA:

Sub GrabbingCrutches()
     '
     ' GrabbingCrutches Macro
     ' by Jordan McCollum, http://JordanMcCollum.com
     ' With massive help from http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/135517-Macro-to-copy-from-one-document-to-another
     ' I'm not responsible if this breaks your computer!
     ' Please don't strip my name off this and redistribute it. Don't use my name for endorsing your project.
     ' Enjoy!
    Dim r As Range
    Dim myword As String
    Dim ThisDoc As Document
    Dim OtherDoc As Document
    MsgBox "Remember to open a new document for the results, and close others!"
    If Documents.Count <> 2 Then
        MsgBox "Must have two (and only two!) documents open."
        Exit Sub
    End If
    Set ThisDoc = ActiveDocument
    If ThisDoc = Documents(1) Then
        Set OtherDoc = Documents(2)
    Else
        Set OtherDoc = Documents(1)
    End If
     ' The next bit is the actual search. Cut and paste the code from here to the next green line, and change the word in quotes, to add more terms.
    myword = "nod"
    OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter mystring & vbCrLf
    ThisDoc.Activate
    Set r = ActiveDocument.Range
    With r.Find
        Do While .Execute(FindText:=myword, MatchAllWordForms:=True, Forward:=True) = True
            r.Expand Unit:=wdSentence
            r.Copy
            OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Text
            OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Information(wdActiveEndPageNumber) & vbCrLf
            r.Collapse 0
        Loop
    End With
OtherDoc.Activate
Selection.Collapse 0
Selection.GoTo wdGoToBookmark, , , "\EndOfDoc"
Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak
     ' End of the actual search. Paste the code again below (but before End Sub) and change the word in quotes.
End Sub

VBA tags courtesy of www.thecodenet.com

Click Save, and you’re ready to go!

Before you use this, you need to open your manuscript, and another file where you want the sentences to go. (This will probably be a new file.) In your manuscript window, click on Macros, select the name you just gave the macro, and click “Run.” In minutes, every sentence using the words you listed will appear in your new file!

The output file is a little bit messy. I use Find-and-Replace (okay, well, actually another macro) to take out the extra returns and tabs, ~~and I have to separate the sentences by keyword~~. ~~I’m also trying to find a way to get it to print the page numbers~~ UPDATED 23 July: found the code for both of these last two wishes and updated the code above! If anybody has any more solutions there, I’m open to your help!

EVEN Easier way

Lee Korven reached out (a reeeally long time ago, sorry!!) with this code:

Sub OverusedWords()
' OverusedWords Macro
    Dim r As range
    Dim ThisDoc As Document
    Dim OtherDoc As Document
    ' Set your own word list here
    Dim badWords() As Variant
    badWords = Array("nod", "shrug", "smile", "grin", "beam", "smirk")
' You can add more words in this list, just make sure they have straight double quotes around them and are separated by a comma, and the list ends with the parenthesis
    MsgBox "Remember to open a new document for the results, and close others!"
    If Documents.Count <> 2 Then
        MsgBox "Must have two (and only two!) documents open."
        Exit Sub
    End If
    Set ThisDoc = ActiveDocument
    If ThisDoc = Documents(1) Then
        Set OtherDoc = Documents(2)
    Else
        Set OtherDoc = Documents(1)
    End If
     ' The next bit is the actual search.
     Dim badword As Variant
    For Each badword In badWords
        OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter mystring & vbCrLf
        ThisDoc.Activate
        Set r = ActiveDocument.range
        With r.Find
            Do While .Execute(FindText:=badword, MatchAllWordForms:=True, Forward:=True) = True
                r.Expand Unit:=wdSentence
                r.Copy
                OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Text
                OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Information(wdActiveEndPageNumber) & vbCrLf
                r.Collapse 0
            Loop
        End With
        OtherDoc.Activate
        Selection.Collapse 0
        Selection.GoTo wdGoToBookmark, , , "\EndOfDoc"
        Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak
   Next
End Sub

I haven’t tried this yet, but it’s worked for Lee!

Wait, Now What Do I Do?

To get started, follow Abby Annis’s instructions on enabling macros through Figure 4.

In the Developer tab, click the Macros button.

This will bring up a box. Type in the name for your macro at the top and click the Create button.

This opens Visual Basic. It should have a line at the top reading Sub YOURMACRONAME(), so don’t copy Sub GrabbingCrutches() from the code above (unless you want to paste over it and use my great name). Paste the rest of the text (through End Sub) below the ‘ YOURNAMEMACRO macro line. Make sure there’s only one End Sub at the end of the file.

Now, look at the lines in green. Where it says ‘ The next bit is the actual search. Cut and paste the code from here to the next green line, and change the word in quotes, to add more terms., copy the code between that line and the next green line, and paste it as many times as you want the macro to run. Change the word in the first line in double quotes to the word you want to search for.

And Save!

Now, open your manuscript and a new file, and close everything else. In your manuscript, bring up the Developer ribbon and click Macros. Select your new macro from the list and click Run. Click OK on the reminder message that comes up, and that should do it!

My Word List

Is long. It includes gesture crutches, the most common body parts used in body language and visceral responses, and words to describe how dialogue is delivered.

nod
smile
grin
beam
smirk
laugh
lip
mouth
jaw
brow
eyebrow
eye
face

expression
look
gaze
glance
stare
glare
glower
scowl
face
head
frown
tears

hand
fist
arm
shrug
sigh
breathe
breath
blood
pulse
vein
adrenaline
energy

heart
stomach
gut
lung
chest
rib
ribcage
swallow
tone
voice
pitch
volume

My current manuscript is 275 pages long, and my (double spaced) output file from this macro is 100 pages long. I’m hard at work catching echoes and freshening up my body language. I use other macros to highlight words I overuse, “empty” words, and even sequencing words.

Now you’ve got all your crutches collected—now what? Check out these strategies for editing to the top 10 gesture crutches.

Photo credit: crutches on orange background—Christian Guthier

Technique

How to Avoid Nine Ways to Ruin Your Novel

18 July 2012 Jordan 2 Comments

Oh, you don’t want your book to totally suck? Huh. Well, maybe this is the right post for you—how to avoid those nine ways to ruin your novel.

No conflict

Even in literary fiction (actually, especially in literary fiction), we read to experience life through the characters. There really is no better way to relate to a character than to root for them, to really understand what they want and need and hope that they’ll get it, to feel defeat at their setbacks and catharsis at their final victory.

They need to want something, and that something needs to be worthwhile, worth struggling for 300 pages. Conflict is necessary, on every level. Your characters should want something (“even if it’s only a glass of water,” to quote Kurt Vonnegut) in each scene and in the book overall.

Need more conflict? Read more about plotting to add it on a macro level, or tension & suspense to add conflict to each scene and page. Or skip straight to 37 ways to add tension & suspense to your book!

No Emotion

I’m going to be saying this a lot, but readers read to connect with someone else’s life experiences. Humans are emotional creatures, and tapping into those emotions is almost like a powerful short circuit button for authors: show your characters’ emotions so vividly that your readers can’t help but experience those feelings themselves, and you’ll have your readers laughing, crying—and hooked.

Need more emotion? Read more about adding emotion to your novel!

No Effort

Like most people, I can be pretty lazy. Sometimes I hate hate HATE editing, especially the drudgery of scouring my work line by line for every little “JUST.”

Yeah, that’s lazy. Lazy writing can go even beyond that, though: not just using but relishing cliches, the automatic, trite phrases that have been used so often that we don’t think about them and they barely retain their meaning anymore.

Another culprit in this area can be telling—rather than digging in deep to really show what the character’s feeling and thinking and doing, we deliver a distant summary, holding our readers’ at arm’s length (when, once again, they want to experience this character and his life and his feelings!!)

Ready to put in more effort? Learn the difference between showing and telling (or bad telling and good telling)!

Too Much Effort

Wait, what? After she tells us to put more effort into our writing, now she says that too much will kill it? Crap for crap.

Okay, chill. When I say “too much effort,” I mean trying too hard to look like a good writer. Instead, you just end up sounding writerly. Or as agent Ann Collette tweeted in her Today’s Twelve roundup of queries:

#3: Horror. Saleable premise but overblown prose. New authors should try to avoid “Look Ma, I’m writing!” syndrome. Pass.

— Ann Collette (@Ann_Collette) June 21, 2012

And what does that mean? Ann elaborated a little:

@JordanMcCollum For some, it’s a stage. For others? A perdurable affliction.

— Ann Collette (@Ann_Collette) June 21, 2012

Get it? Get it?

How can you make sure you’re not overwriting? Um, some no-nonsense critique partners? (Sorry I’m not more help. It’s a toughie!)

Starting Too Early

Beginning your book long before you begin your story is a major problem. (Beginning too late is less common, but it can be as difficult to overcome. Or not.) Without the conflict to help readers develop that emotional connection to the characters, readers are left floundering, frustrated and . . . bored.

There will be a lot of events that impact your story that happen before the story actually begins. This is called backstory, and you have to be very careful about how you place it in your present story, to inform without bogging the reader down.

Want to get your story going? Be sure to start in the right place, and brush up on backstory!

Not Trusting the Reader

You don’t have to overexplain everything every single time you introduce a new concept (everything) or character or setting or . . . or . . . or. Resist the urge to explain! The exposition of explanation bogs you down, and constantly re-explaining things is frustrating to your readers.

Not everything requires two paragraphs of explanation. Some things are better left mysterious, drawing out the reader’s curiosity. Other things do require a short, simple, direct explanation. And once you’ve explained something, you don’t have to rehash it every two chapters. If you’ve taken such a big detour that readers need the reminder that Agatha was killed and pretty much everyone suspects Agamemnon, your book has gone off the rails (or just gotten on them).

Explaining everything multiple times, constantly bringing the readers (via the characters) up to date on events they’ve already witnessed, and other failures to trust the reader are annoying. Repetition repetition repetition…. See what I mean?

This is a fine line for me, and I have a tendency to go too far the other way. I have a good memory (in general), so pulling facts from several chapters back out of my brain isn’t too hard. That might be a bit much to ask of everyone though.

How can you learn to trust the reader? Again, outside readers are often the best gauge!

Characters We Don’t Care About

Coincidentally, the first syllable of “characters” is “care.” Readers don’t have to love or even like your characters—but they do have to care about what happens to them. For the kabillionth time, we read to experience. Underpinning that experience is caring. Even if we’re rooting for the character to die a thousand deaths, we care. We want to read on. We want more.

But if we don’t care about the character? We don’t really care about finishing the book.

Want to get readers to care about your character? Read more about creating sympathetic characters—even unlovable ones!

Giving Up

The worst mistake you can make with almost any novel is to give up. Your book will never match the glorious vision in your head if you give up. If you want to let little black marks on the page defeat you, give up.

But if you want to be a writer—an author—this is the one weakness you can’t afford. You can fix everything else on this list—I know, I’ve done them all!—but there’s no way to fix giving up.

Just say no to giving up.

Is your persistence flagging? Read more about perseverance in writing and just keep swimming!

What do you think? What are the best ways to ruin your novel?

Photo credits: book heart—Jennuine Captures; baby with book—David Wuertele

Marketing

Blog Tours: Keeping it interesting

16 July 2012 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Marketing: Blog tours

Blog tours are great for introducing new audiences to your book. But for your existing audience, they can sometimes get a little . . . repetitive. Boring.

Most blog tour posts consist of the back cover copy and a review of the book. We definitely want the blogger’s review in the post, reading the same back cover over and over can get tedious, and even your biggest fans won’t read 25 identical posts, even for the reviews.

What’s the solution? Variety, of course!

But first, Announcements!

TODAY, July 16, is Sell Books for Steve Day! Steven Kerry Brown is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating, a really useful book if your character is a PI (or if you want to be one, you know, if you want to look at the intended audience. Whatever). I’ve had a chance to “meet” Steve online and see how much he gives back to other writers, and have been the beneficiary of his expertise more than once.

Steve has leukemia, and recently had to undergo a bone marrow transplant. As a PI, he’s self-employed and doesn’t have insurance. The transplant comes with a price tag of $500,000. To help someone who has helped so many people, Jeffrey Phillips has brought together more than a dozen authors who will donate part of their proceeds from today’s sales to Steve’s treatment. You can see all the available books or donate directly on Jeff & Steve’s blog, Handcuffed to the Ocean, where Steve is also reporting on his recovery.

Next weekend, July 27-28, I’ll be presenting on HTML at the iWriteNetwork Conference. If you’ll be in the American Fork area, it’s only $50 for two days. Check out the schedule in the sidebar of the iWriteNetwork blog.

Finally, remember that every comment on this blog in July is a chance to win a free 15-page critique from me!

Now, back to blog tours.

Encouraging variety to keep your blog tours interesting

Although bloggers are endlessly creative, it’s up to the author to encourage bloggers to use that creativity. You might include a list of ideas for bloggers so they know you’re open to them thinking outside the box when it comes to their posts.

Author interviews—answer a few questions for the blogger, about your writing journey, the process of writing this book, your characters, or even you.

Character interviews—if a blogger has a favorite character, you can answer questions as that character, which is not only fun but helps to draw potential readers into a character more.. I’ve also seen fellow authors have one of their characters interview one of the characters from

Giveaways—these are generally sponsored by the author and often have a big, overarching prize (I’ve seen Kindles and the like). However, if the individual blogger wants to also sponsor a giveaway. The blogger might offer their [hard] copy of the book, or if the author provided them with an extra copy to giveaway. If the blogger is an author, Another option might be a book of theirs in the same genre, though that might be a little sketchy.

Book features—this is my favorite, because you can go so many directions with it. My friend Annette Lyon had someone on her book tour blog about the smells in her book. How cool is that?

What do you think? What are the coolest blog book tour posts you’ve done or seen? (Links welcome, but if you use more than 2 I’ll have to manually approve the comment.)

Photo by Kevin Dooley

Technique

Nine ways to ruin your novel

11 July 2012 Jordan 12 Comments

Some books totally suck. Here’s how to make sure your book is one of them.

No Conflict

There are people out there who’ll tell you that you need tension on every page, or tension in every scene.

They’re wrong.

The less tension, the better. Conflict is for aggressive people, and passive-aggression sells books. Besides, everyone knows people read just to enjoy the words you put on the page. Give them more words to mull over, less forward movement and action. If your character wants something, either have him/her give up, or give it to them quickly. Nobody wants to feel compelled to keep reading that way.