What I Learned on My Virtual Book Tour by Barry Eva (Storyheart)

YOUR BOOK IS PUBLISHED:

So now what?

EXPOSURE!!!!!

Twitter it, blog it, join groups, check Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc, get your name and that of your book OUT THERE!

Try checking your book on something like http://www.fetchbook.info/ where you can put in your ISBN number and see all the locations online that are selling your book and the cost.

Another GREAT way to spread the word is a “VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR”.

Normal book tours where you might go to a book shop, sit there all day and have four people come up to you, two to take a free book mark and perhaps one to purchase a copy of your book (unless you're a big-name author who can bring in a big crowd and sell an impressive number of books). Virtual tours allow you to visit locations all over the world without leaving your desk. Normal tours, once your visit is over it’s over, virtual tours can go on promoting your book for months even years after your event. Unlike the few people in the book store, virtual tours allow you to reach thousand with each interview, each review and each stop along your tour.

I did a VBT back in February; it was a few days after coming out of hospital where I'd had major back surgery. Yet for the whole month I was on my virtual tour, I visited places all around the world while still in my sick bed.

Just think, you do a tour to a book store, you have to cart all your books and supplies along with you, perhaps even donate a few to the book shop itself. Unless you’re some huge star, if you're lucky during the whole day you might manage to get ten people to stop and chat. Three to ask questions, three to ask for directions and four to help themselves to the free bookmarks or whatever you might have to give away. Once your day is finished it’s over and you’re forgotten. On a virtual tour, you can reach sites, blogs and even newspapers that might have hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, and your interview/review does not disappear; it’s there afterwards for people to continue to read.

There are many offerings for virtual book tours. I have been quoted up to three thousand for some tours; others I have seen offering seven days tour for $149.

However the best one I have found and one I highly recommend is PUMP UP YOUR BOOK PROMOTION.

They offer three different packages starting at $249 and they will set you up with a full month's tour, blogs, interviews even radio show stops. As well as information about each stop along the way being shared at several major sites. These are a great group of people I completed my tour with and have stayed friends with ever since.

THINGS TO REMEMBER ON A VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR:

* These tours take a month or two to plan so book ahead of time.

* Be prepared to be part of the tour. Visit your guest stops, reply to comments, and be prepared to send out book copies for reviewers.

* Don’t just leave everything to your tour organizer look for some stops of your own.

* Link these stops/reviews/visits in your blog and on your web site. You MUST have a web site.

* Don’t supply the same dull answers to interviews or post the same guests posts. Be creative, you're meant to be a writer, try and add some humor.

* Like many other things with a virtual tour… What you put in you take out.
Put in nothing and you’ll get nothing.

* You never know where one of your interviews might turn up. During my month I appeared in the Chicago Sunday Times and even the Wall Street Journal.

One thing I will state again is…

Marketing and PR doesn’t sell books - it gets you exposure!

There are always those who expect every stop along the way to mean they will sell another hundred books. Don’t forget the formula -

Publicity=exposure
Exposure=name recognition
Name recognition MAY equal book sales


Born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, Barry Eva, also known as “Storyheart”, left his beloved England in 2000, moving to the USA to be with the woman he'd met and fallen in love with on the Internet.

Better known for his short romance stories on the net and in his book Stories from the Heart, Barry is popular for narrating his stories on local TV or as a guest on other media stations,where his whit, oratory, and old-fashioned English charm make him a popular interviewee. His latest release is the teen romance novel Across the Pond.

At present, Barry is living in Connecticut, with his wife and two children.

You can find Barry online at http://across-t-pond.com/index.htm or his blog at http://acrossthepond-storyheart.blogspot.com/ where he has been sharing a series of articles on book promotion on a budget. And don't miss his entertaining show on Blog Talk Radio.

What I Learned on My Virtual Book Tour by J.W. Nicklaus

I don't honestly recall when I first contacted Dorothy with questions regarding Pump Up Your Book Promotion. Frankly, that part is inconsequential to me because what I gained from her and my resulting tour has been far more important than such surface details.

One thing of importance I do recall prior to my involvement was a day in mid-February 2009; I'd received a package from my publisher. I'd waited anxiously for it for quite some time, and yet even as I held it I had a mild sense of trepidation. Gently, carefully, protectively I held her, hands encased in cotton gloves so as not to outwardly soil her skin. My eyes drank in every detail: her size, her gentle heft, her color. She is now and always will be my first. After indulging in a few profoundly quiet moments with her I knew I needed to begin planning for her future.

I'd done some research into virtual book tours and they seemed perfectly suited to a society which increasingly gets its information from online sources—myself being one of them. Why not avail myself of the innumerable, faceless users who blog, or simply read and follow blogs? The decision was a no-brainer for me. I honestly believe that I was somehow guided to Dorothy and her crew. There are other VBT entities, assuredly, but PUYBP—as I'd told Dorothy early on—provided me with something I hadn't expected, but hoped for: The Human Touch.

I learned there are people whom you may never meet that still care not just about your product or their service, but about you. These same people will go to great lengths to help you out or make things right if events go astray.

I learned there are people in the Great Cloud who, while faceless, embody all things human. They laugh, they love, they get frustrated, they rant, they suffer heartbreak and celebrate love. Perception by many blog/internet initiates seems to border on sterility and cold objectivity. In my experience the complete opposite is true. You, sitting there reading this, perhaps sipping your tea, coffee, or soda, are equally flesh-and-blood as I. The only thing sterile between us is this text, and even the words themselves carry power in their static state.

I learned that I'm never too old to make friends.

I learned that in doing a VBT the work doesn't stop when you turn in all your interviews and such . . . the fun really begins when you get to interact with the hosts and blog readers. They're the lifeblood of your tour. Go back to your host blogs, repeatedly. Do your best to interact with those folks, even offline if you can. Walk on the beach instead of using the boardwalk, know what I mean?

I learned that the coordinator's job is far more involved than I ever imagined. These people are on your side, playing to win, but they have teams in other leagues too, not just yours. They're frantic behind the scenes. But month after month they pull off small miracles with the success of each tour.

Speaking of success, I learned that it's a two-way street. I never had the expectation that one blog tour would be my ticket to fame and fortune. NEVER. It's a vehicle for getting name recognition, for getting your name to come up big and bold in the big search engines. They can do everything possible on their end to fulfill all the stops and make sure hosts are prompt, but their promotional efforts only extend just so far. You have to be an equal partner in the success of your tour. Blog about it, send e-mails about it, Twitter about it. Do everything in your power to drive people to each of your stops if you can. Believe me, if you do your part as a writer in keeping the stops interesting there will be those who follow you the whole way. And that's a lot of following, folks! If you build it, they will come.

As an author there are times I may feel like I'm an island unto myself, but I'm not blind enough to accept that as truth. On my tour I had support, guidance, and in the end—I believe—success. It wasn't my doing entirely, rather it was very much a team effort. My coordinator was the best cheerleader and coach I could have wished for. My tour is long over, but the efforts of everyone remain for anyone to search and read online. Ultimately that's the goal.

Friendships and solid business relationships are possible from keyboard-to-keyboard. I learned that both extend far beyond the boundaries of a page . . . and both are worth far more than the initial cost.

Regards,
J.W. Nicklaus
Author - The Light, The Dark, and Ember Between


J.W. Nicklaus maintains his own personal space between the soul and soft machine in the arid southwest amongst the snowbirds and the Arizona Diamondbacks. After graduating with an Associate of Arts in Journalism and Photography and a B.S. in Telecommunications he’s spent the better part of twenty years experiencing life and working in trades as varied as a small advertising firm to a litigation service bureau. Born and raised in Arizona, he has been fortunate to have seen and experienced parts of this wonderful country, West coast to East.

He maintains a small website at www.avomnia.com and a blog found at avomnia.wordpress.com.