Indie Guest Post: Book Blog Tours – What are your options?

If you have been on the book blogging scene for a while, you might already be aware of all the book blog tours that are so successful. You might be or have been part of those tours as well. I do. 

But as an indie author what are the choices you have and how far are they effective as a tool for your book promotion? We have an insider talking about it. 

Say hi to Nicole

Nicole writes across the spectrum of sexuality and gender identity. She lives in Melbourne with one of her partners, two cats, a whole lot of books and a bottomless cup of tea.

Co-creator of Queer Writers Chat. Also likes tea, crochet and Gilmore Girls.
Her books are available on: 

Amazon | Smashwords | Netgalley

Let’s get on with it shall we?

So, you’re an author who is just about to release a book and you want to get the word out. If this sounds like you, and you’re unsure about what to do, this post may be for you as blog tours are a very good way of doing this.

I’ve typically been bad about this myself, but talking someone else through it recently made me realise that, even if I haven’t bee motivated to get up and do this myself many times, I know the theory of it, and it’s information that I’m easily able to pass along that might be of help to others.

So what is in a blog tour?

Typically a book tour is a handful of tours, somewhere between 7 and maybe a dozen, within a week or fortnight period. The idea is to get your book seen on various different blogs, of course which you also promote.

Your side of things (as an author) would be putting up different information, excerpts, interviews, guest blogs on different topics, in each area so that people have an interest in following the different blog posts which also gets the bloggers exposure. 

In that way, it manages to be a good thing for people on both sides of the blog tour. Some people also do promotional images. I’ve included a couple of those in this post as an additional assistance to help with visualising the whole set up.

What do you, as an author, have to provide?

But here’s a question you might be asking yourself: How the heck are you, as the author, supposed to cough up original content for upwards of 7 different blogs from one upcoming book?!

First of all, you probably want to pick a place that offers an exclusive cover reveal. Exclusive, as in, this is the place where people go to get their first glimpse of the front cover of your upcoming book. As in, don’t post it up on Twitter like I know you are wanting to (if you are anything like me), no matter how awesome that artwork is, and how cool that cover artist was to work with. Save it for the start of your blog tour. 

Trust me, all that energy is going to come in handy when it comes to you promoting these blogs and YOUR BOOK. LGBTQReads and Gay YA are both great resources that offer this.

What about book excerpts?

Excerpts from the book are another wonderful thing you can offer to bloggers potentially hosting you. One of these is probably enough, two if you’re going for an extended blog tour. Think of the kind of excerpt you might see as a preview/hook at the end of Book 1 in your favourite series, something that’s going to make readers want to see more.

And author interviews?

Many bloggers will offer to do author interviews. They’ll either ask you a set number of questions or give you a list of questions to choose from. Your job is to find different questions with each blog (if possible) or to bring fresh content to your answers each time. Their job is to find questions that are going to stimulate those kinds of responses. A great example of this kind of interview is Corey’s Book Corner interviewing Cole McCade.

Also character interviews!

Some bloggers will want to do character interviews. This can be an incredibly good alternate option if you feel as though your author interviews are getting a bit repetitive! You choose the character/s from the book from whom you want to answer questions and go from there. I offered one of these interviews with Dahlia and Bianca, out of my novel Changing Loyalties.

Write a few guest posts

Finally, the other very common post featured in a blog tour is the guest post. I do a lot of those on this blog, such as Lynn O’Connacht’s guest post on Demisexuality in Fantasy Worlds, and J. Emery’s guest post on the Connections Between Characters and How They Develop. These give you a lot of scope to write mini essays on any area of your writing process, the reason you wrote the book you’re about to release.

You likely already know some people who would be very happy to host you. Authors, readers and bloggers have a way of moving in very similar circles. A way of getting people to self opt in is putting a post on Twitter, or whatever networking platform you use, asking for people who would be willing to host you. Reach out to people who might have offered before you had a book that you wanted to do a blog tour for.

Thanks Nicole!

And I am back to thank her for taking time off her busy schedule to write us a guest post. You can follow and contact her through these links. 

Twitter | Blog | 

If you have something to add to Nicole’s story, drop a comment here or send her a word of thanks on the social media. Both of us would love that.

Also, if you are interested in writing a guest post for the independent publishing community, write to me right away. I am still accepting guest post submissions.

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Let us chat!

Are you an author who has or is going to promote your book through blog tours? Tell us how are they working for you. If you are blogger who takes part in such blog tours, which option do you prefer? Also share your favorite blog tour providers. Let us talk.