How to Network Online to Promote Your Book: Doing a Virtual Book Tour
As the owner of Write Now Literary Book Tours, I tell authors to add a book tour to their marketing plan for greater exposure.
What is a Virtual Book Tour?
A virtual book tour is a great way to promote your book to an online audience. Instead of (or in addition to) traveling from town to town to promote your book at in-person events (libraries, bookstores, schools, etc.), you make virtual appearances on a number of blogs, websites, podcasts, and internet radio stations over the course of 1-4 weeks — going for a critical mass of online media coverage in hopes of boosting your sales, your name recognition, and your Amazon rankings!
How can it help an author?
Here is a testimonial from Parker J. Cole, Author of Many Strange Women, about her recent experience.
Let me start off by saying that asking questions is the key to understanding the answers we need. I started my affiliation off with Paulette Harper by simply asking if she knew of some ways I could market my book. At the time, I had no idea she ran a company that sponsored virtual book tours. So when she mentioned she did, I went to her website.
The price: often, an author claims to why they do not do marketing is the lack of funds. While this is a valid concern, an author should weigh the costs of marketing versus not marketing. Is it really too expensive or does the author feel that as if it’s not worth the price. When I viewed the pricing, I looked at what I could afford if I stopped eating McDonald’s and Jimmy John’s for a few days. The price was well within my budget.
The outreach: Paulette has access to a number of blogs and radio shows. I’m sure they are growing. Due to her connections, I did not have to make the connections myself. This proved to be invaluable to me as I work a full time job, have my radio shows, family life, and I write. Within a couple of days there were twelve blogs interested in spotlighting, reviewing, or hosting my book. Later, once the tour was finalized, I was hosted on fifteen blogs and four radio spots. This was taken care of without any help from me. That took a lot of stress off my plate.
The exposure: Before the tour, I would look up my book and maybe see one or two references on the first page. Ever since the tour, I’ve taken up several spots via the first three pages of Google. This is a direct result of the tour. Images as well as blog interviews showed up. This was extremely important for me for SEO purposes.
The big question: Did I get sales? Could I see an upsurge of book sales? To answer that, I would have to be honest and say I did see some sales. Not a huge number but a few sales. Please know that Write Now Literary Tours does not guarantee sales. That is not to say that after the tour, I won’t see any more sales, but the tour certainly l helped to get exposure, connections, and my name in front of new potential readers. Which is what any writer can hope for.
Is it affordable?
Yes. WNL has packages to meet every budget. We also offer Book Blast, Facebook Chats and Radio Tours
What makes a successful tour?
Well the success of a tour depends on who you ask and what the goals are for having a book tour. If an author is looking just for sales, then they might be disappointed with the results. I can’t guarantee book sales, but I can guarantee an author will get the exposure.
An effective virtual book tour can be composed of a number of different kinds of “content,” including: Guest blog posts, Book excerpts, Book reviews, Interviews, Podcast or radio appearance, Book giveaways, Social media contests.
What is WNL Virtual Book Tours?
Write Now Lit Virtual Book Tours is an on-line author and book promoting company. Owned and operated by the founder Paulette Harper. At WNL we work with both traditional published authors and self-published. Experienced author and book coach, Paulette Harper founded WNL because of a passion for books a passion to help promote Christian authors, children authors and authors of clean books.
Our job is to create buzz for your book and get you the publicity you need though bloggers and radio interviews.
Check us out @ www.wnlbooktours.com