There’s nothing like a whirlwind book tour! You know the drill: your pub date is set, your book hits store shelves, and your publicist spends hours tweaking your book tour itinerary. No doubt you’ll be crisscrossing the country, checking into 5-star hotels, where naturally a personal assistant will make certain signings and readings run smoothly, not to mention dinner with the Hollywood mogul—the one dying to buy the movie rights. Yes, your book tour will be demanding. But you’re a pro; you’ll power through. In fact, you’ll barely make mention of it when darting for that poorly planned redeye, flying from L. A. to New York. On second thought, maybe someone’s head should roll. What will your fan base think if you stride puffy-eyed onto the set of Regis and Kathie Lee?
Oh, wait. This isn’t 1997.
And another thing, chances are you’re not a New York Times bestselling author.
Welcome to 2015 and modern-day book promotion, which for many authors centers around a virtual book tour. With the reinvention of publishing and the impact of bloggers on the book buying public, virtual book tours are a popular destination. But how do you go about creating a book tour that actually helps sell books? What are the benefits for authors, readers and bloggers? This week Lisa Munley, founder of TLC Book Tours, is visiting with me and offering her keen insights. TLC Book Tours has also put together a top-notch, ten-stop tour for Ruby Ink, starting May 4th! You can check out the dates here.
1. Tell us how a virtual book tour benefits authors, bloggers and readers.
A virtual book tour is simply an efficient way for authors to get the word out about their book to a large number of people in their targeted audience in a short period of time, with minimal effort. The advantage to the author is obvious. They don’t need to travel or make public appearances to get their book in front of potential readers. Bloggers get first crack at new books and enjoy increased traffic to their blogs during the tour. Authors, publishers, and the tour company drive traffic to the blog through their social media channels. One nice thing for bloggers on a tour is that it’s great to be able to hear from other bloggers who’ve read the same book – almost like an online book club. In this day and age you don’t have to be in the same room with people to share an experience. Bloggers on the same tour frequently chat about the book on Goodreads, Twitter, and Facebook. Readers get to follow along with the tour schedule and get many different perspectives on a book. They get to hear from the author through guest posts or Q&A’s, and sometimes have a chance to win a copy of the book.
For more thoughts on the benefits of using a virtual tour company, see: Why TLC?
2. TLC Book Tours is your company. What prompted you into the virtual book tour business?
I was a book blogger beginning in 2007, very active in the blogging community, fielding review requests from a variety of sources. Some of the requests were ridiculous, for books that I had absolutely no interest in. It occurred to me that I could do a better job. I was in a unique position to do a little matchmaking between bloggers and authors/publishers. It made sense to use a more customized approach to find the right type of reader for each book. I contacted another blogger friend, Trish Collins, with the idea for TLC, and was thrilled that she was interested in working with me. We launched in August 2008.
3. What do you think are the indicators for a good book tour? Are there standards that most book tour companies aim for?
I think a tour is successful when it raises the visibility of a book online, since that really is the whole goal. As for standards, I can’t answer that for other book tour companies, but we only work with blogs that have been around for at least a year, are active, well written, and have a decent readership. Our approach is a little different than other companies in that we don’t have a sign up process for tours. We reach out to those bloggers we feel will be a good fit for a particular book.
4. What kinds of books fare best on a virtual book tour? Are there certain genres that perform better than others? Does TLC Book Tours ever turn down a book?
We do tours for all genres. We have a database of more than 2500 bloggers, so we aren’t hitting up the same set of bloggers for every tour. We seek out bloggers who are interested in the type of book we’re touring. If it’s a dystopian novel, for instance, we’re not going to market that to a romance blogger. Literary fiction is not going to go on a blog that reviews chick lit. It seems like common sense, however if you look at the way other tour companies go about it, you’ll see that we are somewhat unique in that regard. We try to make a good match from the beginning in an effort to garner the best possible outcome, which in my mind is a thoughtful review and a lot of interested readers.
Unlike most other tours, TLC tours are review tours. We guarantee a minimum number of reviews on every tour.
We have a policy against touring *most* self published titles, for the simple reason that the majority of bloggers have a policy against reviewing them. If we can’t find enough reviewers, we can’t put together a tour. However, we make exceptions to the rule depending on a number of factors. If the book was professionally edited and we feel it will be marketable to bloggers, we may take it on, depending on our workload at the time. But we are honest in our assessment. If we don’t think we can ‘sell’ it to bloggers, we say so.
5. Obviously you work a lot with bloggers. In your opinion, how have blogs changed in recent years?
When I started blogging in 2007, the book blogging community was much smaller, with a wonderful feeling of camaraderie. It is different now, just in the sheer volume of blogs, and the community feeling isn’t the same. A lot of blogs have monetized and on some of those blogs, it’s less about the love of books and more about advertising and money. However, there are still a lot of really awesome bloggers. To me, the best blogs are those where the personality of the blogger shines through, where there is discussion of books, and real reviews, rather than cover reveals and blitzes (honestly, I’m not sure what a ‘book blitz’ really is…)
6. Publishing has changed so much in recent years. Has the onslaught of self-publishing changed the way you manage book tours? Are bloggers more open to reading self-published authors, or is there still a divide?
Times have definitely changed, but I think there’s still a divide. Bloggers are inundated with requests and they have to draw the line somewhere. The bigger bloggers can be extremely choosy. That said, a tenacious self published author can still find bloggers willing to review their book. It just takes a lot longer to ferret out those bloggers. For that reason, we tend to refer self published authors to other tour companies that have better luck finding bloggers to review their work.
About Lisa:
Lisa Munley studied business and marketing at Central Michigan University before moving to Southern California. She worked as an executive recruiter for 10 years until she left to stay home and raise her babies. She is the co-founder of TLC Book Tours, which opened in 2008. For more information visit TLC Book Tours and read author testimonials. Also visit TLC Book Tours on Facebook and Twitter.
