Tag Archives: blog tours

Works, News & Contests

The inspiration behind I, Spy—Contest!

This is the second most unusual story inspiration source I’ve ever had. (The first was a commercial for a TV show.)

It was the day before Valentine’s Day. I remember this very well because it’s Peter Tork’s birthday I was shopping for valentines when it hit me. Yep, right there in the middle of the Dollar Tree, inspiration struck. (What? Where do you buy your last-minute 50¢ Valentines?)

Dollar Tree

The piped music in the store turned to an old favorite of mine. As I browsed the valentines bopping along, I started thinking more deeply about the lyrics. The story behind the song is about a guy who wanted more of a relationship with this girl, but totally got “friend zoned.”

I imagined a guy sitting in a restaurant, checking his watch, waiting and wondering. Since it was Valentine season, I thought, What if the girl actually did like him? Wouldn’t that be tragic? What would keep this friend-girl from being there like a girlfriend?

And then my favorite what-if question popped up: what if she were a spy?

Bam. A whole scenario popped into my head (that now makes up almost a quarter of the book). I pulled out my brand new smartphone to make a note—and saw the reminder that my son was getting out of kindergarten early that day. As in right then.

With long lines at all the check stands, my only choice was to ditch the valentines and drag my daughters to the car to pick up my son. Fortunately, the Dollar Tree wasn’t far from his school, and I got there a little early. With those spare minutes, I pulled out my phone again and jotted down a note in my Evernote app so I’d have it when I got on my computer (as if I’d forget):

first note

Notice the black bars? The original title of the project came from the name of the inspiration song, and the Evernote folder and the folder on my computer were the initials from that title. (Still are, in fact, though by the time I started writing I, Spy just shy of four weeks later, I’d changed to that title.)

I have never revealed the name of that song to anyone outside my family and critique group. And honestly, most of them don’t know it, either.

CONTEST CLOSED (but you can find the clues if you’re in my readers group!)
So here’s the contest! As part of my launch blog tour, each I, Spy stop will have a clue about the song that inspired the book! Mr. Nice Spy stops, not to be left out, have clues to another song, which I first heard immediately after finishing the first draft, and immediately claimed as the theme song for the novella.Look for the prizes, full rules, and first clues on Monday!

Oh, and since I know you’re wondering, we went back to the Dollar Tree and found my stack of chosen valentines.

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Marketing

Blog Tours: Finding & Measuring Success

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.

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Marketing

Blog Tours: Keeping it interesting

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

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