It’s taken me a few weeks to get everything wrapped up from the virtual book tour for 21 Simple Things You Can Do to Help Someone With Diabetes, but I have to say, I was very pleased at the results. This was technically my third virtual tour. I did a very lame one when I released my poetry book Father’s Eyes and then a two-part tour with Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza. This one was from start to finish very different. I attribute that both to my experience in doing them all before (nice to know you learn something!) and also in my approach. I like to take responsibility for things anyway, so I think I handled things a little bit differently this go round.

Some things I learned:

• Plan two to three months in advance: Too much longer than that and people forget, and shorter than that and they can’t prepare.
• Giveaways are still popular: I had four giveaways during my month-long tour and each one was well attended. This surprised me. Usually the first giveaway gets all the hits and then people lose interest after that.
• Guest posting is more popular than ever before: People guest post a lot on my other blogs, so I know how valuable it is when you tell a blogger that you’d like to give them free content. The key, of course, is to offer up something uniquely for them that you are not going to use anywhere else. This means a lot of writing prior to the actual tour, but worth it overall as you have more qualified links that stay behind.

• It’s just as exhausting as a book tour: It felt like I was really schlepping myself from bookstore to bookstore! LOL! I made sure I visited each tour stop and heavily promoted it. Many of the bloggers told me they had a bump in stats for that day. I put all my online marketing know-how to work because I wanted the stops to be worthwhile for those hosting me, so I submitted the links to social bookmarking sites, I asked my other online writers to give them a digg and a stumble, and then wrote about them on my diabetes blog.

• I had a nice bump in book sales, but…. As I tell people every time I do something like this, the true benefit of marketing yourself online isn’t about sales.  Not immediate ones, anyway.  For this tour I did have an increase in book sales, however, the true benefit of a virtual tour is building links and an online presence that establishes yourself over time as an author and expert.  While immediate sales are nice, authors that do a virtual tour like this should see lasting benefits like increased traffic over the next year, increased search engine traffic to establish yourself as an expert (for example, when someone searches for internet dating expert milwaukee I come up somewhere around the top. The reason, in part, are all those links that were built last year for my virtual tour. (Incidentally, when I was called to appear on TV locally to talk about online dating, I asked the producer how she found me and she said she googled internet dating expert milwaukee.  Reporters use search engines, too, so it’s important to get your name where it needs to be.)

• You really do need to be in an online writing community. If you’re an island and haven’t networked much, you will have a harder time promoting and getting book tour stops.  This tour I had spent time getting to know many more writers than ever before, and I did it long before the tour started.  I also did it because I enjoyed it, not because I wanted to promote myself, and that’s important.  There’s nothing worse than someone who joins a group just to hawk their goods, is there?  Working for an online writing outlet like b5 or Suite got me involved with meeting other writers.  We were able to help promote each other, and in this new world of writing and publishing, that’s really important.

• Putting a direct link to Amazon gets more immediate sales. I’ve been experimenting with links in general the last few months.  It started with an article someone wrote where they asked me for a blurb.  They were going to quote my book, and asked me what link to use.  At the time, my website was undergoing a lot of changes and I just gave them the Amazon link because it was easier.  To my surprise, I got about triple the number of sales for my book the next day.  Coincidence? Maybe.  But I tried it out for other things, including this book tour. Linking directly to Amazon rather than my own webpage sold more books.  Granted, I have links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble on my webpage, but when I skip my own webpage and send someone right to Amazon it tends to get a sale quicker. Is that because people lose interest when they go to your site?  Maybe.  But if you’re doing a book tour, it might be something to consider.

• Branching out to different blogs gets you in touch with more readers.  This one is a no-brainer, but when I did my internet dating book tour I stayed with stops that were either book review type blogs, dating blogs, romance blogs, or something have to do with love in general.  This time, I was on sites that were much different.  Granted, it was probably easier to get on a variety of sites with a diabetes book (a disease so many people have currently) as opposed to an Internet dating book.  For this tour I was on craft sites, city guides, food blogs, and many personal blogs.  I can’t help thinking that more diverse blog tour stops equals increased readership.  (Or maybe I should say, I can’t help but to hope that’s the case.)

I learned so much on this tour, that I wrote an ebook about doing virtual tours yourself! You really should. They are definitely the thing more and more authors are doing. I’m hearing from so many authors today that publishers aren’t sending them out on a tour. The most you might get is to go to a few places locally, and even then, they may not pay you to do it. One of my favorite authors visits our town because she can drive up on a weekend and loves the bookstore. She’s a traditionally published author with about ten books to her name, and even she doesn’t get a book tour. Still, you should get out to as many bookstores as you can and follow it up with a virtual tour. If you’re looking for advice on how to set up a virtual tour, promote it, keep the buzz going, find the right blogs, etc., check out my ebook.

A special thank you to all the bloggers and websites who hosted me for this tour. I thank you and appreciate you!

Thought I’d check in with everyone and let you know how things are going with the virtual book tour for 21 Simple Things You Can Do To Help Someone With Diabetes. You might think that I’m sitting back with a boat drink or two and letting it all happen (now that the guest posts and interviews are written), but there’s a lot more work to be done once a virtual tour is on. This has been the most successful tour I’ve ever had thus far, and I chalk it up to having a better sense of my brand, increased online interaction, and involvement in social networking. The last one is the most key. I’m not even talking about Facebook and Twitter, I’m talking about forums and chat rooms, and ways that you interact.

Now that the book tour is going on, I have to promote it. What I mean by promotion is the active marketing of online articles and posts. I listed some of my favorite promotion sites in an article I wrote for Suite, and I’ve been “digging” and “stumbling” each tour stop. If there is a contest involved, I do everything I can to promote it, including submitting it to places that hype online contests (I mention a few of these in another article I wrote a while back.) I do a lot of social networking and bookmarking. (If you’re unfamiliar with these terms, I wrote a piece to help distinguish them) and I also have been blogging about each stop at my diabetes site.

The best thing about a book tour like this is the lasting effects. I can tell you that my previous book tour (for Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza) is still giving me book sales and exposure. Even if someone doesn’t catch you on the first round, the links are still there and for the most part, the word about your book continues to grow.

I really like the diversity I have with blogs on this tour. There’s food blogs, personal blogs, mom blogs, craft sites, city guides, and more. This is another thing I’ve done differently than my last blog tour, and something I think will help me as I continue to promote the book.

I’m also through the first rough draft my upcoming ebook about doing virtual tours, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to release it immediately following the tour.

As for right now, come to think of it I believe I will have that boat drink after all!

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.

Last year I went on a virtual book tour for my book Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza. That was my first tour. Up until then, I had been lining up interviews and guest posts here and there. I decided to group them all in one month to see if that strategy would help with a spike in sales. Overall, I think it did. I also believe that the month of publicity spilled over into other months, and that I’m still getting the benefits now a year later.

Virtual tours help an author in many ways. First, the chance to get to know some wonderful bloggers and interact with their readers. Then, the publicity for your book is always nice (especially if it’s positive! heh) and finally, the lasting effects. When you tour in the real world, the lasting effects of a book tour are that your readers remember you and might look you up the next time you’ve got a book out. The lasting effects of a virtual tour, on the other hand, are that your readers may remember you, but if they don’t, they can always go back to the spot you “appeared” and read all about you and your book. I still get links to my website for the virtual tour I did a year ago with the dating book.

So I’m going to do the same thing with my diabetes book, 21 Simple Things You Can Do To Help Someone With Diabetes. I hope you all will join with me as I “tour” the blogosphere, because I’ve got some wonderful blogs lined up, and have an inbox filled with interviews and guest posts. (Which I need to get finished … like now.)