The Best Blog Tour EVER

So, as I am excitedly preparing for my first blog tour, I am realizing just how much time and effort is going to go into it. Not just for me, but for each person who agrees to host me on their blog. And for that, I am so appreciative to those people who are doing this for me! For free!

For those of you getting ready to do a blog tour, let me share with you some things you might want to include.

1) First of all, find the blogs you would like to host your book. It's easy to find the blogs you follow and that follow you, but now is the time to branch out. Find blogs that your readership follows even if you don't.

2) You've found the blogs, now JUDGE these blogs. How often are they updated? Page views per day? Comments? Comments and followers are good indicators of how popular a blog is, but there are some blogs with many readers and few commenters.

3) Next create the excerpt you will send to each blogger to convince them to host you. This is EXTENSIVE. Include a description of your book, a passage from the text, cover artwork (if you have it!), an author photo, and a brief bio. Remember you're trying to convince the blogger (who may have never heard of you) that they want to host you. Your except should also include:

a) book topic and audience

b) title, author name, and retail price (again, if known)

c) blurbs and testimonials (if you have them already!)

d) standard information such as ISBN, page count, publisher

(Note that a lot of this information I don't have yet. Hopefully I will have before the actual blog tour, but I don't have it to convince the blogger of how special I am. You might not either. Carry on!)

4)BEFORE the blog tour, ask the blogger to post parts of your excerpt--such as the summary or sample passage or author photo or biography--somewhere on their blog to up anticipation for the book.

5) The day OF the blog tour, be available to answer reader questions and comments (hopefully there will be reader questions and comments!).

6) Keep checking back over the next week to follow-up any questions and comments that come in late.

7) And if the blogger wants, a follow-up or preceding author interview is always nice. Don't forget to leave inks of where the book can be purchased!

Good luck!