How to Plan a Successful Virtual Book Tour
Today's guest post from Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, is part of the virtual book tour for her newest book marketing guide, Virtual Book Tour Magic.With a virtual book tour, authors can reach a large targeted audience of potential book buyers by making guest appearances on blogs, podcasts, radio shows and other venues.
Organizing a virtual book tour isn't hard, but it does take good organization. Here is a list of the steps involved in planning a virtual book tour:
- Before you start, have basic promotional tools in place, including a blog and social networking accounts.
- Begin planning at least two months in advance of the tour.
- Determine your goals for the tour and the type of tour you want to do.
- Determine the length of the tour and tour dates.
- Set up a recordkeeping system to keep track of the details for planning the tour.
- Decide what kind of content, giveaways or contests to offer on the tour.
- Make a list of prospective hosts and research them to find the best fit.
- Write a compelling invitation and send it to the top prospective hosts.
- Correspond with hosts, sending confirmations and details.
- Set up a schedule of tour stops, assigning hosts to specific dates.
- Develop a promotional plan and materials for the tour and begin pre-tour promotions.
- Write articles and interview questions and send to hosts.
- Monitor and promote daily during the tour.
- Coordinate giveaways and contests.
- Evaluate the success of the tour and take care of follow up tasks.
There you have it - the steps to organizing your own successful virtual book tour. Learn more about the details of planning a book tour in my new Virtual Book Tour Magic guidebook for authors.
Book Tour Special: Order Virtual Book Tour Magic by December 12 and you'll get an invitation to an exclusive book tour Q&A session with Dana on December 15.
About the Author: Dana Lynn Smith (right), The Savvy Book Marketer, helps authors and indie publishers learn how to sell more books through her how-to guides, blog, newsletter, and private coaching. For more book promotion tips, get her free Top Book Marketing Tips ebooks at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com.
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Many thanks to Dana for sharing her tips in this post as part of her Virtual Book Tour.
I will be reviewing Virtual Book Tour Magic on this blog on Monday 12 December, but I'm probably not giving away too much to say that I was hugely impressed with it.
You can also read my reviews of these other guides by Dana by clicking on the appropriate title in the list below:
If you have any comments or questions for Dana (or me), as ever, please feel free to leave them below!
Nick at 6:00 AM
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6 Comments:
Nick, thanks so much for posting this article and participating in my virtual book tour.
Authors, virtual tours are a fun and effective way to promote your books and I encourage you to give it a try!
Thanks, Dana. Always a pleasure to work with you.
Great article. Organization is a big key.
Thanks for your note, M Pax. There are many details involved in doing a virtual book tour and good organization is essential. In fact, right now I am working through my checklist of things to do each day of the tour!
Thanks for the step-by-step outline! Defiantly useful information.
Thanks Heather, I'm glad you enjoyed the article. Good luck with your books!
Dana
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