Promote Your Book Online the Offline Way – Part 2: The Virtual Book Tour

This is part 2 of a series of articles exploring new ways to promote your book or ebook using traditional venues adapted to the digital world. In part one, we explored adapting the use of publishing magazines articles to promote an upcoming or published book. In part 2, we look at another great classic of the publishing industry: The book tour.

Ah, the book tour. Aspiring writers dream about it. Seasoned writers often dread it (nothing is more ego-deflating that waiting for hours at an empty table while people walk by pretending not to see you). So why bother?

Well, although the book tour may seem dated in today's digital world, it is still a staple of the book publishing industry. Perhaps because it offers potential clients some of what Social Media excels at: a chance to interact with the author.

This allows them to put a human face to the book and to establish a connection – on a certain (if somewhat superficial) level – with the author. This connection creates an attachment to the author and although I have no data to back this up, I would advance that this attachment pays dividends down the line. People who have met an author are more likely to recommend the book to their friends and family (generating buzz) and to buy future books from the same author.

So how do we modernize the book tour to make it relevant to the digital age? Well, the beauty is that you can promote your book across the planet without incurring a dime in travel expenses.

In simple terms, this is how it would work: You will tour different sites/blogs and offer to answer comments/questions during a set period of time.

Now, if you search on the internet, you will find different variations and definitions of what a virtual book tour is. For some, it is simply having a presence on varying sites. Others equate it to guest blogging. These all lack, in my humble opinion, the key ingredient witch is the interaction aspect.

Here are some handy steps you may want to consider to make your tour more successful and productive:

• First, if you have a publisher, let him know what you are planning to do. This is free publicity to them. They may even be willing to help by pitching in some $ for online advertizing and link to your blog from their main site

• If you don’t have a publisher (if this is an ebook for example) or if your publisher is not interested in helping, then find some sponsors – sites willing to highlight your book tour on their sites and to follow you on your tour (i.e. link to whichever site you are touring on at a given moment)

• Get some early reviews.
  -Send out your book to potential influencers in the subject your book is on and ask for reviews or comments.
  -Always be very polite and somewhat humble, especially if you are not already a star in that particular field.
  -Make sure to ask if you can quote them.
  Let them know about the book tour (they may want to help or even sponsor your tour).

• Approach websites and blogs and pitch your book took to them.
  -Highlight the advantages to them (free content, visitor engagement, links to their site from your sponsors)
  -Highlight what you have done so far, if anything, to promote the book (include distribution stats, copies sold, links to online reviews or celebrities/experts who have supplied review/comments on your book)
  -Explain the process (how it will work, the duration of the tour, etc)
  -Use some of the tactics from Part 1 to make your offer more interesting

• Put up a calendar of your “appearances” on your own site or blog. Allow enough time at each site so that a cross section of the site’s visitors can interact. Set up specific times (example, between 7:00 pm to 9:pm EST, December 15 to December 20) when you will be online responding to comments/questions. This is where you make connections

• Prepare a blurb with links to you book tour that you can post on the social networking site where you already have a presence (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc). Be cautious, the line is fine between alerting your friends to your tour and spamming (and alienating) all of your connections.

• Prepare material in advance for each “appearance”
  -A list of interesting sites that complement your subject
  -A list of experts that support your position
  -A list of any reviews you have gotten from the requests you sent out or from sites like Amazon
  -A blurb that describes the event (You are touring to promote your new book – Social Media for pets ) and that includes a link to where the participants can purchase the book
  -Short blurbs on different topics that you can post intermittently to invite visitors to comment or ask questions

• Get a friend or to drop by one the day of your appearances in case no one asks any questions. You can supply them with the broad picture of what you would like to accomplish but don’t “plant” questions. This is meant as a measure to stimulate engagement in the event of a lull in the conversation – don’t try to fool visitors by creating a bunch of fake and obvious interaction. Fake always stinks and makes you look bad. People have to deal with too much that is fake already; they are searching for something genuine in their interactions with you.

A word of caution!
Virtual book tour services and book marketing experts are popping up all over the place. Many of these services charge thousands of dollars for what is essentially just getting you a few guest blog posts. If you do elect to go with one of these services, check them out thoroughly first. Ask for references and make them specify exactly what you can expect them to do to promote your book.

Some pioneers of virtual book tours:
-Angie Pedersen for her book The Book of US: A Guide to Scrapbooking about Relationships
-Rolf Potts – Marco polo didn’t go there
-Post2Post: A Virtual Book Tour of Jack’s Notebook

Interesting resources on the web:
BookTour – Where authors and audiences meet

And of course…
Promote Your Book Online the Offline Way – Part 1

If you have anything to add, any suggestions for your fellow writers, please add them in the comments!

Promote Your Book Online the Offline Way – Part 1

In the rush to find new and exciting ways to promote our books, let's not forget the tried-and-true. Inspired by Chris Brogan’s article, Promoting Your Book Online, a post by the way that got just about everybody in the blogosphere commenting on his blog, I devised this piece about adapting offline book promotion techniques to the online world.

In the olden days (pre-web), authors had limited personal means of promoting their books. Even if you did somehow get someone to publish your book, it didn't automatically imply that the publisher would spend a dime to promote it, the advertizing budget usually reserved for their award winning authors. So, authors had to become creative.

One way authors found to get some buzz for their books was to write practical, hard-hitting articles drawn from the content of their books and submit them to magazines and other publications. If readers found the information valuable, they would be tempted to buy the book to get the additional info. Publishing excerpts of your book in ebook format does a bit of the same thing but without one key element: endorsement!

In Get Slightly Famous: Become a Celebrity in Your Field and Attract More Business with Less Effort, author Steven Van Yoder suggests you write and publish magazine articles in order to establish yourself as an expert in your field. This works because as far as readers are concerned, the magazine printing your article is de facto endorsing your expertise. In simpler terms, they published you so you must know what you are talking about!

This can still be done today, online, with a twist. You can guest-post on different blogs. Many big blogs are regularly seeking out new content. But in order for this to work, you should follow these simple rules.
(See pro-blogger tips)

1- Pic blogs that are relevant to your subject, not just because they are popular. Don’t approach a tech-review blog with a pitch for your new romance novel.
How to do this? You can start with Google Blog Search and search for the topic of your book or for the sub-topics you would like to do as blog posts. See who the players are and don’t just go for the biggies. Smaller blogs that seem to be posting less frequently might be more open to a guest post. Do the same on Technorari and cross reference your results so you can choose the best for you.

2- Try to pic topics that are hot at that moment
Go to StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, or Delicious. Look at what topics people are digging, stumbling, etc. Is there a chapter of your book that relates to any of these topics? Have a look at the national and international sections of top news sites. What is hot in the news right now? Is there a tie-in to your book? If so, it could make a great post. A blogger will be much more interested in your offer if there is a strong likelihood that your post will bring in a lot of traffic.

3-When approaching a blog, offer tailored pieces that will fit in with the blog’s usual content.
Even if you did steps 1 and 2 and have already located great blogs and the perfect topics, make sure that the tone and style of your post fits in with the rest of the content. Some blogs are all about controversy. Others very news slanted or factual or all about reviews. Don’t approach PerezHilton with a bland, factual piece. It just won’t fly! Taylor your piece to the style and tone and voice of the blog and you will increase your chances exponentially.

4-Offer your post for free!
It might be tempting to try to make a few extra dollars by selling the post but the goal here is publicity, not straight cash. If the blogger or blog owner offers payment, I would turn it down and suggest that if he/she would like me to write guest posts for them in the future, on requested topics, then we can negotiate proper remuneration but for now, it’s a freebee.
The object here is not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg but to feed her and get her squawking about your book!

5-Be ready to answer comments
Once you have posted the article, subscribe to the comment feed for that post and go and answer each comment. Try to provide value and a sense of connection – it can go a long way to convincing the commenter to buy your book. It will also serve to answer any negative comments that might pop-up. Remember that every commenter is a potential lifetime fan of your books.

6-Include a link to your book
This may seem overly obvious but it is often overlook the very obvious. Include a link to your site for more info, your contact information, and link to Amazon if the book is listed there.

7-Offer something that is only available to readers of that particular post.
This is very interesting for the blog owner and potentially for his/her readers. Offer to have a draw for a few signed copies of the book. You can even offer to dedicate it according to what the winner(s) put in their comments (an incitation to comment on the blog). Maybe you can even offer to pick the winners from “the best comment according to my 6 year old daughter (or son, or nephew, etc)” This will incite people to comment and will help build the connection with the reader by revealing a little bit of personal information about you.

8-Let the blog owner profit from referenced sales
I would even suggest to the blog owner that he/she become an Amazon Affiliate so that they can profit from anyone buying a book from the link on their site. Yes, here again, you might loose a few dollars in the short term but this might be enough to convince the blog owner to put you in their blogroll or to post a more permanent link (side menu for example) to your book on Amazon (if they are not an Amazon Associate already, you can suggest they sign up) and this in turn will mean long term revenues for you.

Also in this series: Promote Your Book Online the Offline Way – Part 2: The Virtual Book Tour