Today we're going to talk about setting up a blog tour. This comes way before the launch of your book, several months in fact - if not longer!
As I explained in my post Publicity before publishing, a blog tour is basically sourcing other writer's blogs of a similar genre to your book and interacting with them and their readers via their blog. This could be in the form of you guest posting, running competitions and promotions targeted to your book, or simply gaining a review or Q&A from the blogger. What it means is a lot of preparation is required beforehand (hence the big lead in time) - contacting the bloggers, setting up content, sorting out competitions and prizes, arranging dates for posts... As you know, I like to break things down into their simplest form, so here are the steps you need to take to get your blog tour off the ground: 1) Have your own blog up and running! 2) Identify blogs that match your genre. Depending on the scale of your blog tour, decide how many bloggers you want to contact. Run a Google search to find the blogs and then delve into each one individually to see how effective they could be in helping you promote your book. Remember, you want maximum exposure. The main thing to look out for is how well are they represented in social media - Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Google+ etc. Check their Twitter and Facebook following and see how often they post content. 3) Contact the bloggers. Invite them to participate in your tour by offering a free copy of your book in exchange for a review or a Q&A with you - or both. Link back to your blog so they can check you out and also to show you're willing to promote them. A blog tour is not just about promoting your book, it's also about promoting other authors. The more you include this dynamic in your strategy, the more you'll get out of this exercise. It's a two-way thing. Also nail down specific dates for specific activities to keep the tour moving along. Other ways to entice your fellow bloggers could be getting them to compete with each other for a prize - whoever gets the highest hit rate on the post relating to your book perhaps... 4) Advertise your blog tour on your own blog and through your social media profiles. 5) Lastly, be available for whatever comes up during the blog tour ie. don't suddenly disappear midway through the promotion!
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I just read a terrifying thing - to be effective in marketing your book, you need to be working at it 12+ hours a day! Yes the internet makes it easier than ever before to achieve this, but also the internet can bombard and overwhelm you with information to the extent you don't know what to tackle first.
Thank god this is a publishing "journey"! Taking No.1 from my Publicity before publishing blog post, here are five ways to find the right bloggers to review your book: 1) First, remember to treat this exercise as if you were approaching an Agent or Publisher. Be bothered to research them and their website and blog. 2) If you do your research using social media sites like Twitter and Google+, you'll find good blogger websites and they will have links to other great sites. Keep clicking through and jotting down the sites, making sure each blogger is interested in your genre. 3) Read the individual review policies. 4) Write a query email, but here's the thing - yes emails are quick but they also get deleted if they aren't personalised enough. Spend time over the personalisation. Don't forget, you're asking a blogger to spend 10+ hours reading your novel and then writing a concise review. Show them you've bothered to check out their work too. 5) Follow them on social media sites if you aren't already. So you've written your book, you're looking for an Agent and / or Publisher, but whilst doing that you've decided to self publish.
You're working hard on building your author platform and networking like crazy to get your name "out there". What comes next? The book launch? Not quite yet. A few weeks before you launch, there are some things you can do to give yourself a better chance of making a "splash" with your new book. We'll touch on four items now and then over the next week or so, I'll go into more detail for each of them: Get reviews - contact a few select bloggers and send them a copy requesting a review. You can then link back to their reviews on your blog to build your book's credibility. Setting up a blog tour - best to organise this in advance and start the tour a day after the launch. Identify blogs you would like to feature yourself and your book on and then contact the bloggers. Try to have the material pre-written so it's just a matter of posting it. Cross promotion - join a group of authors (on Twitter) who are cross promoting their respective books preferably in the same genre to yours. Invitations to podcasts / radio interviews - if you can get something like this, you can link back on your website. A week before the book launch, now is the time to really start turning up the heat and pushing your book. Organise a launch party on Goodreads (more on this later) and offer giveaways to the first X number of people who download your book in exchange for a review on Amazon. Make sure you've updated your website with the reviews you hopefully secured a few weeks earlier and any interviews you've managed to pull out of the hat. Put them on your blog as well and use your blog as your main marketing platform because if set up to do so, your blog can cover all bases - Facebook, Twitter etc etc. Less work for you - and let's face it, you're going to be pretty busy! We'll talk more about self publishing as this series of blog posts on The Publishing Journey develops, but for now let's continue with the journey itself.
Here are 5 things you should be doing whilst you attempt to find an Agent and / or Publisher for your work. Note: I wasn't doing any of these so I know how important they are! Now I am doing them, I'm reaping the benefits - small scale - but still, in my eyes that's progress. 1) Get your name out there by building an author platform through a website, a blog and Twitter and Facebook presence. 2) Start marketing yourself by following Agent and Editor blogs (and your fellow writer's blogs) and commenting on them. 3) Network with local libraries, local book store managers and fellow authors. When visiting libraries and book stores, leave a business card and offer to do a book signing once your book is published. After publication, give them signed copies with Local Author stickers for recommendation purposes. 4) Attend Agent, Editor and Publisher events to get to know them and vice versa. 5) Above all, keep writing. The professionals are interested in your career as a writer so don't be a one-trick pony. Try to stay one book ahead... Carrying on with the theme of proving you have an audience for your book before trying to get a traditional publisher interested ie. going down the self publishing route first, here's an inspiring story that it really can work:
In August 2011 I found myself reading about Louise Voss who put her novel on the Kindle for 96p and landed a six-figure, four-book deal with HarperFiction. At the time I worked out she was making the same amount per eBook as I was - and mine was 5 times the price! As a result of the deal, her eBook would now be printed and stocked in book shops in the traditional way. She promoted it through social networking and by asking independent reviewers (AKA Indie reviewers who specialise in reviewing self published material) to write about it online. Entering the Amazon Top 100 UK downloads must have been a thrill, but she built on that momentum and quickly shot to the top of the Amazon Kindle and Amazon Fiction charts. The book sold 50,000 copies and stayed at the number one UK download spot for the whole of June. It didn't cost her anything to load up the book on Amazon. All she paid for was an image on the front cover. She made around £20,000 on the combined sales of her first novel and second novel using this method. Not bad going at all! My next series of blog posts are going to be about the publishing journey, which is actually very very different to how I imagined it. Once upon a time, not so long ago, I thought you signed a book contract and were instantly propelled to fame. My dream was shattered at a Legend Press event in 2011 where I met real life Publishers, Agents and Editors. So, as promised yesterday, here is some advice from the experts. Ideally, have a good ponder on the pointers in this post before attempting the book proposal… and then try and say that after a few bevvies... Today we’ll be covering: What Agents are recommending you do before you submit your manuscript What Editors are looking for in a good novel What Publishers are expecting from you the author The Agents on the panel were quick to slice through our dreams with the reality. They advised the following:
As you know from reading my blog series, this is what an author platform should contain:
Check out more information on developing your online presence and author platform here. Harder to obtain but pure gold if you can get your hands on them:
Be able to answer the “marketing questions” using these 4 headers: YOU – Why did you write the book? Are you social networking yourself as a brand? Are you marketable as an author? BOOK – What is the hook? Is it marketable? Does the story link back to you and life experience/s? TARGET MARGET – Who will buy your book, and why? APPEAL TO TARGET MARKET – How will your book appeal to the target market? REMEMBER, THIS IS BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONALS ARE INVESTING IN YOU, ME AND HIM OVER THERE YOU, ME AND HIM OVER THERE NEED TO BE A BRAND WE DO THIS BY CREATING AND CULTIVATING OUR AUTHOR PLATFORM Journalists love an easy headline and people are intrigued by real life. We had an Editor from Headline and one from Simon & Schuster on the panel. These were the things they wanted from a new manuscript:
There are only 5 or 6 key book buyers for the UK. Even if an Editor loves your manuscript, they still have to get it passed their marketing and sales team and convince them it’s a winner. Nowadays, Publishers want hard evidence of tangible sales. This is why many debut authors are going down the self-publishing route first. Their aim is to prove there’s a market and readership for their work. If you can self publish, market and sell 2,000 copies of your book, AWESOME. If you can self publish, market and sell between 4,000 to 5,000 copies, that’s exceptional and a Publisher should be knocking at your door! Publishers expect your input in the marketing strategy and campaign. They want to know your REACH – how many people can you target in one hit with each individual marketing idea? THERE IS NO MARKETING BUDGET FOR DEBUT AUTHORS Traditional publishing houses still believe in reviews, but to move with the times, think about the hooks and angles of your story for a book feature. This is much more powerful. From signing the book deal, it’s usually a year until the publication date – and guess what – the publication date is just the beginning… It’s not just about the writing anymore. Check out the 10 jobs of a modern day writer to prepare yourself for this mammoth and exciting journey! I still consider traditional publishing the bees knees even with the advent of self publishing on Amazon and co., so in today's blog post we'll be covering how to write a book proposal and query letter. I'm going to share with you the way I've been taught to approach this task.
Always start with The Writers & Artists Yearbook. This is a great resource for finding potential Editors and Agents in your genre, but be sure to double check the information listed by them on individual websites. People come and go all the time and you want the most accurate information. If you find the book doesn't match the website and you're still not sure (because the website looks like it hasn't be manned for several months), make a phone call to the company to find out the name of the Editor or Agent. The number one rule is to address your proposal / query to a named person, so it is worth all this extra effort. If you simply write Dear Sir / Madam, expect to find yourself on the slush pile in no time at all. Before you write your proposal, make sure you have a completed manuscript and it's edited to the best of your ability. In the past, I've let potentially great opportunities slip through my fingers because I'd only written five or six chapters and that's all I had to show. In the good old days I used to write query letters that were three A4 pages long because it was ok to do so. Nowadays, however, it's preferable to write just one A4 page with approx three to five paragraphs. Remember, you want to hook the Agent or Editor in within the first few seconds, much as you do when writing a book, so keep your proposal succinct and to the point. Even if you're emailing the query, keep to the structure and format of a letter and don't send attachments unless you're allowed to. Only include your website or blog in your signature because they are unlikely to click through to these unless you've impressed them and they are keen to see more of what you can do. Everything you want to pitch about your book should be expressed in the confines of the letter, not tucked away on your website or blog. So that's the basic principles of the layout covered. Now, what should the proposal contain? Start with a paragraph about your book. This is a chance to pitch your story in a way that will simply blow the Editor or Agent away. Show them your irresistible hook and they will already be thinking about possible marketing opportunities. Tell them about the authors you admire and who of those you write like. X meets Y with a touch of Z. Don't be too cocky (setting yourself up for a fall), but be confident in your style, flair and content. Next, write a paragraph about yourself and link it back to your book. Explain why you're qualified to write this story. Also mention you're a first time novelist, active on Facebook and Twitter, running a website, blogging regularly... All of this shows to them evidence you're aware of the importance of author platform and social networking. Most marketing filters through these channels if the budget is limited. If you do have a publishing history, now is the time to sing your praises. This "history" can include published articles, web copywriting, etc etc. It all makes up your published portfolio. You need to clearly state your chosen genre, where you think your book will sit in a bookshop and which authors it will sit next to. Research thoroughly and don't make up a genre. Be sure to let the Editor / Agent know what's available if they request to see more ie. a complete manuscript. Finally, check the submission guidelines and most important of all - follow them. If you are being asked to send the first three chapters with a short synopsis, ONLY send the first three chapters with a short synopsis. Using this format won't necessarily guarantee success, but what it does do is take you out of that fiction bubble and drop you into the publishing industry world. Putting your marketing head on and getting you thinking like a pro. The easy part is writing the damn book. The hard part is pitching it for sale. I'll be continuing with this subject tomorrow and sharing tips from real life Editors and Agents. |
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