Book Marketing Tip #21: Organize a blog tour

NOTE:  In January 2018, an updated and expanded edition of The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide was released, offering 65 book marketing ideas and new "Deep Dives" sections exploring social media strategy, how to work with beta readers, and how to earn free press coverage. 

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The information that follows on this page is from the 2013 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which will remain here for historical purposes only.


Book Marketing Tip #21:  Organize a blog tour 

Many authors go on tour to promote a book by organizing book signings at bookstores.  But nationwide and worldwide tours are too expensive for most authors and publishers.  With the Internet, consider a virtual blog tour instead.  With a blog tour, you arrange to have news of your book published in multiple blogs, with each story timed to appear on a separate day.  In a well-run tour, all of the participating blogs cross promote each other (this gives the blog owner incentive to participate), and readers are encouraged to follow the author day by day as the tour progresses.  To keep the interest of readers, work with each of the blog owners to cover a different aspect of your book, or you as an author, for each day’s story.  Maybe one blog does a Q&A interview with you; another allows you to write a guest post; another examines a specific aspect of your book; etc.  For an example of a well-orchestrated blog tour, and how to set one up yourself, see the Smashwords Blog for our story on Alan Baxter’s blog tour at http://blog.smashwords.com/2009/07/interview-with-alan-baxter-how-to-set.html