I’m about reading to embark on a 30-blog spot virtual tour for my book, 21 Simple Things You Can Do To Help Someone With Diabetes. I have to say I’m just as excited as if I were about to travel to 30 different cities. I hope that the stops will be fun and interesting for the blog owners and readers alike. I’m glad I get to “meet” the fabulous people who took the time to review or write about my book.

And sure, I could do this whole virtual tour thing in my jammies if I wanted to. (Or, more per usual, jeans and a tee shirt.) As someone slightly dorky and shy, that appeals to me as well. Although I have to say that there is nothing like meeting readers in person, but meeting them online might be the next best thing. It’s an exciting time for writers in general. We have so many options, so many different methods in which we can try and connect with our audience.

I’ve done one other virtual tour (for my book Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza) and I have to say the prep work and how I feel about the whole process is completely different this time around. When I first did a virtual tour I went from blog to blog asking if people wanted to read or review my book. I had some takers, but I wasn’t as organized and many people posted at different times, and the whole thing was a little higglty pigglty. In fact I actually had two sets of “tours”, which were a few months apart.  I did this because organizing one larger tour was just too difficult.  This time around I was much more relaxed, went about getting spots in a different way, and it all came together much more smoothly.  I had learned a lot from my first tour, and made some changes which made the organization factor more positive this time around.  Naturally, we’ll see how things go while on the tour, but hey – getting the whole thing together is really the most difficult part.

One thing that made a difference was taking the Buzz Your Book class by M.J. Rose.   I began to look at the opportunities differently.  I’m convinced now that any author really can set up a successful tour that won’t take forever to arrange and won’t drive them crazy doing it.  I’m writing an ebook right now on the subject, and I’ll let you know where you can get it when I’m done.

In the meantime, wish me luck and don’t forget to stop by and say hello at one of my blog stops.

Image: sxc.hu.