So, yesterday I explained what a blog tour was, and gave an example of one of my own. Today I thought I’d talk a bit about WHY I go on these virtual book tours whenever I have a new book out.

Firstly, I am an isolated writer. I live in a country town in wheat belt Western Australia. My nearest city is about 3 hours drive away and Perth itself is fairly isolated – it takes more than 3 hours to fly to the nearest other state capital. So, any ‘real’ book tour would involve a lot of training. By touring virtually, I save a lot of travelling.

Secondly, and related to this, book tours cost a lot of money. Contrary to popular belief, authors do not make huge incomes, and the promotion budgets for new books is tiny (very tiny). Any tours of my books would be at my expense, and cost more than the subsequent royalties I would earn from book sales. A virtual tour is free – except for the cost of the time taken to organise the tour and write answers to any questions. My publishers have been happy to contribute by providing review copies to those bloggers who have reviewed the books.

Thirdly, a virtual tour is promotion. By touring a variety of blogs you are telling the world about your book. Hopefully the blogs that you visit have varied readerships, so on each day of the tour your book is showcased to different potential readers.

Fourthly, going on a tour is fun. You get to talk to other bloggers (via email), and often get feedback from readers of your blog posts who stop and leave comments.

Does it work? It is difficult to quantify the value of a virtual tour. Whereas on a traditional tour there will be occasions where book sales figures will tell you the success (or otherwise) of your tour, this is more difficult for a virtual tour. What I can say is that throughout each of my blog tours, the number of hits to my own blog has increased markedly 9even though I was visiting other blogs, I always included a link to my own). I also had links to places to purchase my books online, and could see through my stat tracker that these links were being clicked on.

Another benefit is that I made friends with bloggers who I perhaps didn’t know previously. Through exchanging emails in preparation for the blog tour, we also found that we had other things in common.

Lastly, organising a virtual tour off my own bat showed my publisher that i was prepared to actively promote my books. Knowing that an author is doing this shows the publisher that you are prepared to work to ensure your book’s success. And sales figures for the three books I have toured in this way have all been good. Sure, blog tours are only one reason or this, but it adds another element to the total promotion package.

So yes, blog tours work to promote your book, Isn’t it time you thought about organising one?

Tomorrow, in the third instalment in this series, I’ll talk about how to set up a tour of your own.