Q. I thought book blog tours were free. Why do I have to pay you?
A. This requires a two-part answer:
You don’t have to pay me–there are other options. . .
- There are groups of bloggers who have banded together to offer free tours to authors. For those tours, you send your book, they look it over to decide if they want to run a tour for you, and if so, you are set to go. . . .Actually, I only know of one tour that still works this way–The Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. This is the group I started doing tours with and they are a great bunch of bloggers. They are limited in what they will take, as their name suggests. But they will take children’s books as long as they are Christian sci-fi/fantasy books.
- Or you can set up your own blog tour by contacting bloggers and asking them to blog about your book. Scott Savage has done a smashing job with this, to kick off the first book in his Farworld trilogy. He sent out, I believe, 200 ARCs to bloggers and will send 200 more to winners in contests on those blogs. I have no idea if he’s paying the shipping or his publisher is (Shadow Mountain, a very smart LDS publisher that burst onto the children’s scene a few years ago with several nicely written children’s fantasies) but one way or another, he’s getting the word out. I am sure this is going to work for him because I’ve gotten the book and it’s delightful. He’s going to get some word of mouth going on with this tour. You can do the same thing with your book.
- I’ll give you all the help I can by linking to articles on the blog tour topics and keeping you up on any new, free blog tours I become aware of. I’m not here to steal money from authors who can’t afford to pay me. I’m simply offering my services to those authors who don’t want to set up their own tours and would rather pay someone to do it for them.
I charge for tours because. . .
- I’m not independently wealthy and as much as I love blogging and authors and children’s books, I can’t afford to offer free secretarial services to everyone I love. I’m not going to come clean your house or wash your car for you either. Sorry. =0)
4 responses so far ↓
1 Scott Savage // Jun 10, 2008 at 11:01 pm
First of all, thanks for the link and the kind words about Farworld. I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into with my blog tour, and in retrospect I might very well have done it through you had I known. I would absolutely have been willing to pay for the knowledge, expertise, and time. All told, tracking down all the bloggers, finding out who does reviews, contacting them, and sending out books, I will easily have put in 200 hours. And that’s a conservative estimate.
This is not including the time I will spend answering Q&As and the cost of mailing out the books. Fortunately, Shadow Mountain did pay for the mailing.
I hope it ends up being worth it!
2 sally apokedak // Jun 10, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Wow, Scott, thanks for dropping in.
I can imagine how many hours it took you. But the good thing about doing it yourself like that is that the next time it won’t take you as long. You already have all those contacts.
I’m enjoying your book so much. The world is fresh and fun, the characters are well developed. I’m so very very pleasantly surprised. Is this your first novel? Well…you don’t have to answer that. I’ll be interviewing you soon, I hope. If you have time.
I’m scheduled to blog on the book in early July.
3 Scott Savage // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Sally,
It’s not the first book I’ve published. But it’s my first national. My first YA. And my first fantasy. So in a lot of ways it feels like my first book. Looking forward to the Q&A.
4 sally apokedak // Jun 12, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Well, that makes sense. It doesn’t read like a first book.
I called it the first of a trilogy but I just saw it’s the first of five. Wow! That’s cool. More for us to look forward to.
=0)
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