What is a virtual book tour?
A virtual book tour (aka blog tour) consists of lining up a series of bloggers to review your upcoming book (and/or conduct author interviews) during a time frame that corresponds to the release of your title.
It is, as the name suggests, the internet version of an old-fashioned, in-the-flesh book tour.
Purpose of a virtual book tour
The purpose of a blog tour is to generate interest in your book. (This is called buzz.) That interest should pay off in sales, but it won't if you don't capitalize on it with other promotional tools such as giveaways, well-placed author interviews, and, of course, promotion of your blog tour on twitter, Facebook, and on your own blog and website. Building an audience takes time, energy and planning. A blog tour is just a part of your promotional plan.
How effective is a virtual book tour?
That depends entirely on where reviews and/or interviews are posted. Highly trafficked sites will be more effective than sites with just a few followers. If you plan it right, a book tour that includes influential sites can create considerable buzz. The difficulty many Indie authors face is that they don't have the time it takes to research well-trafficked sites. And, of course, tours require some planning. Review requests need to be sent out several months in advance of the release date.
Be aware that you will have to send out hundreds of email requests, as well as hundreds of ebook ARCs to get a decent number of reviews. (Unless you have written a steamy romance, the return rate is generally less than 10%.) But even 20 well-placed reviews and interviews can be highly effective. The reviews may not necessarily generate a lot of sales, but your name and the title of your book will have appeared on the net in 20 locations - hopefully with back links to your website - which will increase your exposure on search engines. (Don't forget to check if reviewers cross-post on Amazon and other venues, which will increase the reach of their review exponentially.)
To find bloggers in your genre see:
Top 12 Sites for Finding Reviewers
Top 5 Sites for Science Fiction Writers
Top 5 Sites For Mystery/Thriller Writers
Top 6 Sites for Romance Writers
Top 5 Online Resources for Children's and YA Book Writers
You can also do a google search on "[Your genre] book reviews." This will yield you thousands of hits.
Measuring success
Many authors measure the success of a blog tour by how many books they sell. (Be sure to look at your KDP, Nook or Smashwords dashboard before you embark on a tour so you will have a point of comparison.) But there are other ways to measure success.
Getting your name out there is important, not just for your current book, but for future books. One way to determine if your blog tour is increasing your visibility is to sign up for Google Alerts, and create alerts for your name and for your book title. You can compare how often you are mentioned before and after the tour. Keep tracking to see if the buzz continues, and when it starts falling off. That will give you a time frame for how successful your tour has been, and will allow you gauge the success of your other promotions. What you want to see is steady conversation about you and your book for several weeks prior to the release, and a couple of weeks after. (Don't forget to arrange for pre-orders. Amazon has that feature as does Smashwords.)
Increased traffic to your blog and/or website is also a measurement of success. How many people visit your website during the tour, and are they following? (If you don't already have an email sign-up feature for your blog or website, now would be the time,) Followers are your fans! Don't be shy about sending them news.
Book tour services
In light of the planing involved, some authors turn to book tour services rather than spend time organizing their own tours. There are a couple of advantages to using a book tour service: 1) You don't have to do all the work, and 2) Tour services have lists of hundreds of reviewers and social media outlets.
There are also disadvantages: 1) There is no guarantee that the reviewers the tour services have on their lists will actually review your book, 2) The review sites may not be well-trafficked, and 3) You have to pay, sometimes quite a bit, for the service.
What to look for in a book tour service
First, check out their stats. If their site ranks in the millions on Alexa, it means they get very little traffic. (The lower the number the better. Numbers in the hundreds of thousands are good.) Also check their daily visitors and page views on 7SecretSearch. Look to see how many followers the main tour site has. If there are fewer than one hundred, don't even think of using the service.
Next, check to see who is on their list of bloggers. How many bloggers are listed? (Make sure it's a lot.) Go to those sites and check how many followers each one has. This may be time consuming, but if the blog sites have few followers, it will do you little good to have them post an interview or review. While you are checking for followers, do a quick check for comments on posts, an "about" page, and other indications that the blogs are not "dummy blogs." (Some virtual book tour services have been known to set up fake blogs.)
Lastly, look for services that provide things you either can't or don't want to do yourself. These may include:
Best services
Experiences with tour services vary tremendously, but there are a few (very few) that have been consistently recommended by authors. I've listed those which have decent site traffic, good social networking, and a large enough number of participating bloggers to make it worth your while.
Keep in mind that the success of a tour depends largely on how much an author is willing to contribute (e.g. contacting the blog hosts personally, making sure your website is current and mentions the tour, composing interviews and promotional material to send to hosts). Prices vary widely, and they do not always correspond with value.
For more information about paid blog tours see:
A Comparison of Book Blog Tour Services (Read the comment section)
Planning a Blog Tour? Think Twice (A critical review of blog tours)
7 Blog Tour sites
Reaching Readers: Lessons Learned From Blog Tours
__________________________
Xpresso Book Tours
US Alexa rank: 300,347. Global rank: 587,555
Daily Traffic: Unique Visitors: 3,674. Pageviews: 14, 696
Genre: Young Adult and New Adult in all genres
What they offer:
Cover Reveal $40
Book Blitz $90
Review Query $70
Packages
All of the following packages include:
Reviews to the max $170
Rock the Block $120
Rock the Town $170
Rock the World $225
Rock the Stars $280
YA Bound
US Alexa rank: 272,973. Global rank: 1,213,266
Genre: Young Adult
What they offer:
15 stops - $50
20 stops - $70
25 stops - $90
30 stops - $120
35 stops - $140
40 stops - $180
50 stops - $200
Book blitz (1 day or 1 week) - $30
Cover reveals are free.
___________________________________
Pump Up Your Book Virtual Tours
Global Alexa rank: 672,407. Australia rank: 16,949
Genres: Fiction and nonfiction
What they provide (prices range from $199 to $799):
All packages include:
A virtual book tour (aka blog tour) consists of lining up a series of bloggers to review your upcoming book (and/or conduct author interviews) during a time frame that corresponds to the release of your title.
It is, as the name suggests, the internet version of an old-fashioned, in-the-flesh book tour.
Purpose of a virtual book tour
The purpose of a blog tour is to generate interest in your book. (This is called buzz.) That interest should pay off in sales, but it won't if you don't capitalize on it with other promotional tools such as giveaways, well-placed author interviews, and, of course, promotion of your blog tour on twitter, Facebook, and on your own blog and website. Building an audience takes time, energy and planning. A blog tour is just a part of your promotional plan.
How effective is a virtual book tour?
That depends entirely on where reviews and/or interviews are posted. Highly trafficked sites will be more effective than sites with just a few followers. If you plan it right, a book tour that includes influential sites can create considerable buzz. The difficulty many Indie authors face is that they don't have the time it takes to research well-trafficked sites. And, of course, tours require some planning. Review requests need to be sent out several months in advance of the release date.
Be aware that you will have to send out hundreds of email requests, as well as hundreds of ebook ARCs to get a decent number of reviews. (Unless you have written a steamy romance, the return rate is generally less than 10%.) But even 20 well-placed reviews and interviews can be highly effective. The reviews may not necessarily generate a lot of sales, but your name and the title of your book will have appeared on the net in 20 locations - hopefully with back links to your website - which will increase your exposure on search engines. (Don't forget to check if reviewers cross-post on Amazon and other venues, which will increase the reach of their review exponentially.)
To find bloggers in your genre see:
Top 12 Sites for Finding Reviewers
Top 5 Sites for Science Fiction Writers
Top 5 Sites For Mystery/Thriller Writers
Top 6 Sites for Romance Writers
Top 5 Online Resources for Children's and YA Book Writers
You can also do a google search on "[Your genre] book reviews." This will yield you thousands of hits.
Measuring success
Many authors measure the success of a blog tour by how many books they sell. (Be sure to look at your KDP, Nook or Smashwords dashboard before you embark on a tour so you will have a point of comparison.) But there are other ways to measure success.
Getting your name out there is important, not just for your current book, but for future books. One way to determine if your blog tour is increasing your visibility is to sign up for Google Alerts, and create alerts for your name and for your book title. You can compare how often you are mentioned before and after the tour. Keep tracking to see if the buzz continues, and when it starts falling off. That will give you a time frame for how successful your tour has been, and will allow you gauge the success of your other promotions. What you want to see is steady conversation about you and your book for several weeks prior to the release, and a couple of weeks after. (Don't forget to arrange for pre-orders. Amazon has that feature as does Smashwords.)
Increased traffic to your blog and/or website is also a measurement of success. How many people visit your website during the tour, and are they following? (If you don't already have an email sign-up feature for your blog or website, now would be the time,) Followers are your fans! Don't be shy about sending them news.
Book tour services
In light of the planing involved, some authors turn to book tour services rather than spend time organizing their own tours. There are a couple of advantages to using a book tour service: 1) You don't have to do all the work, and 2) Tour services have lists of hundreds of reviewers and social media outlets.
There are also disadvantages: 1) There is no guarantee that the reviewers the tour services have on their lists will actually review your book, 2) The review sites may not be well-trafficked, and 3) You have to pay, sometimes quite a bit, for the service.
What to look for in a book tour service
First, check out their stats. If their site ranks in the millions on Alexa, it means they get very little traffic. (The lower the number the better. Numbers in the hundreds of thousands are good.) Also check their daily visitors and page views on 7SecretSearch. Look to see how many followers the main tour site has. If there are fewer than one hundred, don't even think of using the service.
Next, check to see who is on their list of bloggers. How many bloggers are listed? (Make sure it's a lot.) Go to those sites and check how many followers each one has. This may be time consuming, but if the blog sites have few followers, it will do you little good to have them post an interview or review. While you are checking for followers, do a quick check for comments on posts, an "about" page, and other indications that the blogs are not "dummy blogs." (Some virtual book tour services have been known to set up fake blogs.)
Lastly, look for services that provide things you either can't or don't want to do yourself. These may include:
- A banner
- Posting on Net Galley
- Distribution of a promotional package
Best services
Experiences with tour services vary tremendously, but there are a few (very few) that have been consistently recommended by authors. I've listed those which have decent site traffic, good social networking, and a large enough number of participating bloggers to make it worth your while.
Keep in mind that the success of a tour depends largely on how much an author is willing to contribute (e.g. contacting the blog hosts personally, making sure your website is current and mentions the tour, composing interviews and promotional material to send to hosts). Prices vary widely, and they do not always correspond with value.
For more information about paid blog tours see:
A Comparison of Book Blog Tour Services (Read the comment section)
Planning a Blog Tour? Think Twice (A critical review of blog tours)
7 Blog Tour sites
Reaching Readers: Lessons Learned From Blog Tours
__________________________
Xpresso Book Tours
US Alexa rank: 300,347. Global rank: 587,555
Daily Traffic: Unique Visitors: 3,674. Pageviews: 14, 696
Genre: Young Adult and New Adult in all genres
What they offer:
Cover Reveal $40
- No limit on participants (average is 40 - 60)
- One day
- Maximum Social Media Exposure through participating blogs
- Should be planned 3 to 4 weeks in advance
- Only for covers that have not been released anywhere online
Book Blitz $90
- One day or window to post
- No limit on participants (average is 70-90)
- Maximum Social Media Exposure through participating blogs
- Should be planned 3 to 5 weeks in advance
- Must include a giveaway (one per blog or one shared Rafflecopter prize–note that one per blog will get you the most participants = more exposure.)
Review Query $70
- Connect your book with thousands of bloggers, readers, and reviewers from both our host list and 30k/month page views;
- Save hours from querying bloggers individually;
- No wait list for this service! Can be posted within 2 business days.
Packages
All of the following packages include:
- Reviews/Excerpts/Guest Posts
- Custom Tour Banner by Xpresso Design
- Media kit
- Advertisement on Xpresso Reads (30,000+ views/month)
- Social media promo: Tour kick off post on Xpresso Reads’ Facebook Page(4,000+ Likes)
- Daily tour promotion on Twitter @XpressoReads (10,000+ followers)
- A personalized Tour Page at Xpresso Book Tours (example)
- Reviews/Excerpts/Guest Posts
Reviews to the max $170
- 6 days
- Maximum sign ups (up to 40 blogs)
- May include giveaways *Encouraged*
Rock the Block $120
- 1 week
- ~15 tour stops
Rock the Town $170
- 1 to 2 weeks (your choice)
- ~20 tour stops
Rock the World $225
- 1 to 3 weeks (your choice)
- ~30 tour stops
Rock the Stars $280
- 1 to 4 weeks (your choice)
- ~40 tour stops
YA Bound
US Alexa rank: 272,973. Global rank: 1,213,266
Genre: Young Adult
What they offer:
15 stops - $50
20 stops - $70
25 stops - $90
30 stops - $120
35 stops - $140
40 stops - $180
50 stops - $200
Book blitz (1 day or 1 week) - $30
Cover reveals are free.
___________________________________
Pump Up Your Book Virtual Tours
Global Alexa rank: 672,407. Australia rank: 16,949
Genres: Fiction and nonfiction
What they provide (prices range from $199 to $799):
- Bronze Tour Package – 10 stops (over the course of one month)
- Silver Tour Package – 18-20 stops (over the course of one month)
- Gold Tour Package – 30+ stops (over the course of two months)
- Platinum Package – 45+ stops (over the course of three months)
All packages include:
- Media Packet
- Banner
- Official tour page
- Social network promotion
- Inclusion in their PUYB Virtual Book Club on Goodreads
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