How NOT to do a book blog tour #WriterWednesday #amwriting #marketing

Although blog tours are no longer the end-all, be-all for indie book marketing, they are still an important marketing tool. If done right. I know I’ve touched on this topic before, but recently I’ve had several tours make the same silly mistakes.

No Excerpt. Readers need to get a feel for an author’s writing. Sure, they can click through to the Amazon or Barnes and Noble link, but why would they? A funny or suspenseful synopsis can be just the hook you need to get more clicks. I’m still unsure whether an excerpt is necessary for a cover reveal. I actually never provide an excerpt for a cover reveal, but I read a blog yesterday from a blog tour company saying that they had complaints when no excerpt was provided. Duly noted!

Protected Excerpt. What the heck do I mean with that? I know writers want to protect their work. So do I! But when you ask bloggers to help you promote your work, you need to help them help you. Providing an excerpt in a pdf file which is copy protected is not helpful. Blogging is not a full-time job for the vast majority of us. We have a gazillion things to do and retyping your excerpt is not going to be one of them!

No Author Picture. Are you trying to hide something? Why don’t you want readers to know what you look like? That’s what I think when I read a blog post about a book without a picture. It completely distracts me from the contents of the book that is being promoted. If I’m thinking it, I’m sure other readers are too.

No giveaway. I’ll be perfectly honest. I never enter the giveaways. I live outside of the US and often the giveaways are not international. I probably wouldn’t enter if I was in the US either, but lots and lots of people do. Having a giveaway creates a lot of buzz. The hashtag #giveaway on twitter will increase your views and retweets. And then there’s the increase in followers on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads. A $15 Amazon gift card is a small price to pay for an extra 100 followers and 50 people adding the book to their TBR list on Goodreads.

If you want to know how I think you should do a blog tour, check out this blog post. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot of work.