Blog Book Tours Growing

Book publishing has a new tool, the blog book tour, which is defined by The New York Times as a tour "in which an author pops up on a series of blogs, usually over days or weeks, variously writing guest posts, answering questions from the host or sitting for a podcast, a video interview or a live chat. The blogs’ readers may comment and leave more questions." These appearances in different blogs have links to the author's book or books, giving readers access to online stores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and others.

In the last quarter of 2008, I followed one author's blog book tour. Tania Hershman, author of The White Road, toured more than ten blogs in different countries for eleven weeks. I came to know about her tour through one of the host blogs, Thoughts from Botswana, where the blogger, Lauri Kabuitsile, interviewed her. The Botswana trip, which Hershman did without leaving Israel, was her tenth blog stop. All the entries which featured interviews, there were interactive reader-author comments, and most of the people claimed to have bought and read the book.

In these book tours, the blog readers and followers are informed of the event in advance and are given links to the book so they can purchase and read it. When the tour occurs, usually an interview with the author is posted, the author may make a guest entry on the blog, or a live blog chat is organized to allow readers of the blog and hopefully of the author's book to ask questions. There are people who are happy leading a large part of their lives in the virtual world, so with everything acquiring a virtual version, it is no surprise that the virtual versions of book tours are gaining popularity as well. But how do such tours benefit the writers in terms of sales?

In one of her answers on the Thoughts from Botswana interview, Tania Hershman said:
" I don't know about sales, I really have no clue. We authors aren't told about this sort of thing. I've really enjoyed it, though, but it has been a bit difficult for someone who likes to spend most of her time alone, in a fictional world, to talk about myself so much, every week for 11 weeks. I can't imagine I am not boring everybody silly! And I feel quite exposed by it. But what has been lovely is the generosity of all of you, hosting me on your blogs, reading my book, being curious about me and my writing. My advice: find a wide range of blogs in different countries and with different readerships, and try and roughly set out in advance the topics each one will cover, to
avoid repetition. Enjoy!

Another author who has benefitted from blog book tours is New York Times bestseller writer Amy Cohen, whose book The Late Bloomers' Revolution was promoted by the publisher through online virtual world. The New York Times reports, "Ms. Cohen made virtual stops at blogs related to the experiences she chronicles in her book — looking for love, learning to cook. At Books and Beliefs, she answered questions about how Jewish groups can create more opportunities for Jewish singles (throw parties); on Baking and Books, she was asked about her favorite comfort food (fried chicken)."

We are in an age when the promotion of a book is in the hands of the author. Most agencies, before they sign on a new author, are beginning to utilize the Google search function to find out what an author is involved in, looking for marketability. So if you have a blog and have written articles or stories that they can see online, chances are the agencies may like you. As we have seen in the example Amy Cohen, sometimes the publishers is the one who makes the initiative to arrange the blog book tours. In the case of Tania Hershman, who is a power blogger, the marketing initiative was the author's. In either case, the author reported increased publicity for the book.

In the book industry, as in many other industries, any amount of publicity may mean the difference between sales and loss.