Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hello everyone. I have read many posts on here about book tours. I have an image in my head of what a book tour is, and I have google of course, but I am curious if it means the same thing for independent authors when they say they have done a book tour. Do you mean physically going to places with your books to an event that has been pre-arranged? Or is it something you do online? Or both? What is it like and how did you do it? Did you see any sales from it? Thank you.

In-store book tours and virtual blog tours are excellent ways to promote your book and form relationships with potential readers. As indies it is inexpensive to reach out to retailers and bloggers and set tours up yourself. There are, however, several excellent companies that will set up virtual blog tours for you.

I am actually in the middle of a ten stop blog tour hosted by Goddess Fish. It has been pretty easy so far. The company sets up the blogs and they notify you when your tour is about to start and where you will be featured. Each day of the tour it is up to you to promote the feature as well as the host blog on your social media as well as visit the comments section throughout the day and answer any questions/acknowledge any comments. It is also recommended to personally email each blog host and thank them for the feature.

As for sales i don't really know. I ran a promotion at the same time as my blog tour so I don't know which sales came from where. If I had to guess, however, I would say that blog tours are more beneficial as far as exposure than actual sales. They say it takes 5 repititions of exposure before a buyer is ready to commit, so the more your book is out there the better. It's also a great way to provide content for your own author website/blog. Lastly, it is a great way to solidify your web presence and beef up your SEO rankings.

Thank you for the information, Tara!

Sure thing :)

Marie, I was published by a small press so had to set up my own author tour. I called a few colleges, book stores and societies that seemed like good matches. I did this for about a year (maybe 2 /month). I sold almost 2,000 books. I also got asked to do a teaching gig, which was fun. However, truly if I add up all the expense of travel (the farthest I travelled was to Kansas, from NJ) it wasn't exactly a great return on investment, financially.

***However,*** I had an enormous amount of fun meeting people, and that experience of connecting with my audience helped me understand my readership -- and know that I had one! I would say it depends what you're in it for! I have not yet set up readings for my latest book, but when I do I plan do to a lot more locally. And maybe try a blog tour. Mainly to save the time and expense --and the hassle of travel. I'm kind of a home body : ).

Thank you for your reply, Cynthia!