Virtual Book Tours: A New Promotional Tool For Authors

Virtual Book Tours: A New Promotional Tool For Authors
By
Theresa Chaze

Virtual Book Tours are the newest marketing opportunity for authors. With traditionally book tours, authors travel from town to town doing book signings and doing interviews to publicize their books. Although the process is very effective, it also involves great expense, travel and time. Virtual book tours essentially do the same; however, instead of the authors physically traveling to bookstores, the interviews and book readings are conducted electronically through posting on blogs and IM conversations.

Although a Virtual Book Tour doesn't have the same personal touch at the traditional tour, it can be more informative and effective. From the comfort of their homes, readers can learn more about new writers and their work. By reading the interviews on the blogs, the readers not only learn more about the author’s work, but about her or his private lives. Interviews are conducted by many bloggers, each of which will give a fresh perspective on the author as a person and on the work. By following the tour, the reader will be able to get to know the author on a more personal level as well as be able to read excerpts of the book.

The internet also allows the readers to meet the authors electronically through IM messaging, conferencing and chat rooms. Many of the IM services have both audio and video features, which personalized the experience more. No longer just words on the screen, the authors can become three dimensional people who can answer questions about themselves and their work in real time. Chat rooms and conference room have the advantage over the one to one IM messaging by allowing the readers to share in on both the questions and answers. By coming together in a room, the author's answers are shared with all in the room instead of just the individual. For the readers, it gives them the opportunity to receive answers to questions they may not have thought of or were afraid to ask.

For the authors, it has the advantages of being able to reach a more diverse audience quicker and more conveniently. No longer do authors have to pack up and travel from town to town to gain the attention of their target audience. The internet has also made reaching new audiences and reconnecting with existing ones, easier and quicker. No longer bound by time and space, authors can not only make direct contact with their target market, but also expand their readership into the general audience. The proper use of key words in the blog will make the interviews more accessible by search engines. The diversification of the type of blogs involved in the tour will help the author reach a varied audience that might not have be otherwise open to the author’s work.

Virtual book tours also benefit the bloggers involved by bringing more traffic to their site. As part of the promotional process, the coordinator also promotes the hosting blog thereby temporarily giving the blog additional attention. By hosting a stop on a tour, the blogger also promotes their own message, while helping another. It is a win-win situation for all involved.

Dorothy Thompson is one to the premier Virtual Book Tour co-coordinators. Her promotional website Pump Up Your Book Promotion and her book promotion blog at Pump Up Your Online Book Promotion has helped many authors successful promote their books. In January, she will be hosting a Virtual Book Tour for Kathleen Willey's book Target: Caught In The Crosshairs Of Bill And Hillary Clinton. Currently it is ranked 79# at Amazon. She has also hosted many other authors both in the US and in Canada. Her success rate has surpassed most of the other tour coordinators. In addition, she is the author of the self-promoting e-book, The Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook. Her success rate has made her tours a valuable promotional asset to the authors she has represented.