Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the qualifications you look for in a blogger and how old do I have to be to join the tour?
2. Why should I join the blog tour?
3. What are some of the benefits of blogging for the Children’s Book Blog Tour sponsored by kidzbookbuzz.com?
4. How many tours do I have to participate in each month in order to keep my spot on the blogroll?
5. Will you ever sell or give my name and email address to anyone.
6. What if I sign up for a particular tour, and I get the book, but something comes up and I can’t post?
7. Do I get paid for my posts?
8. What if I don’t like the book? Am I obligated to lie and try to convince people the book is great?
9. Do I have to write a review for every book I receive?
Q. What are the qualifications you look for in a blogger and how old do I have to be to join the tour?
A. Bloggers of all shapes and sizes are welcome to join—librarians, writers, moms, dads, grandparents, and children. There are two requirements you must meet—you must have an established blog and you must blog regularly. Your blog has to look good, have good content, and you have to have some willingness to network and attract readers.
Kid bloggers are more than welcome! This whole thing is about getting books into the hands of kids, after all.
Q. Why should I join the blog tour?
A. You shouldn’t unless you:
- love children’s books,
- love getting free children’s books in the mail,
- love telling others about great children’s books,
- and you love meeting and interviewing children’s book authors.
Q. What are some of the benefits of blogging for the Children’s Book Blog Tour sponsored by kidzbookbuzz.com?
A. Aside from the ones listed above, you mean? Aside from the free books and the chit chatting with favorite authors? The benefits are manifold.
- Your blog is listed on the blogroll at the Children’s Book Blog Tour site, a hub of children’s book blog tour activity. The mother of all children’s book blog tours, in fact. And that’s cool, because if you’re here, other bloggers and authors can find you and your blog.
- Your blog gets inbound links from all the blogs in the tour, thus increasing your authority at Technorati and making search engines take you seriously as they crawl your site, and helping readers find you.
- You are able to interview popular authors and this gives you great content so readers will want to keep coming back to your blog.
- Takes care of that nagging question that always hits on Wednesday—”Gee I wonder what I should blog about today?”
Q. How many tours do I have to participate in each month in order to keep my spot on the blogroll?
A. You do as many or as few as you like.
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Q. Will you ever sell or give my name and email address to anyone.
A. Never ever.
If Jo Rowling herself were to email us, telling us she read one of your reviews, loved your stuff, and wanted to hire you as a publicist, we wouldn’t give her your email address without asking you first.
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Q. What if I sign up for a particular tour, and I get the book, but something comes up and I can’t post?
A. Hey, stuff happens. We’re aware of that. We’re also conscious of how easily reputations are ruined. Besides that, we just really feel strongly about keeping our words to people, the authors and publishers as well as the bloggers we work with. So if you are going to miss a tour, please let us know as soon as possible so we can get another blogger to replace you. We do check each tour to make sure that all who promised to post are doing so in a timely manner. If you miss a tour and haven’t bothered to contact us to tell us why, we think it’s only fair that we delete you from our tour without telling you why. But we won’t do that. We will try to contact you. If you have a great excuse, we are willing to give you another chance.
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Q. Do I get paid for my posts?
A. We don’t pay cash for reviews; however each tour one blogger wins a 25 dollar Amazon gift certificate, and there are many more perks (see questions one and two).
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Q. What if I don’t like the book? Am I obligated to lie and try to convince people the book is great?
A. Hey, what are we going to do if you write a bad review? Dock your pay?
We encourage you to write honest reviews. The only way we are going to get the word out about great children’s books is if we are honest. If you gush over every book, your readers aren’t going to believe you and they aren’t going to buy any books based on your reviews.
We are all on the blog tour for one reason. We have a stake in seeing good children’s books increase. One of the best ways to do that is to write honest reviews so readers will know which books to buy and publishers will know which books to keep publishing.
However, because we want to see our authors succeed and we want to offer good books to our bloggers and their readers, we do screen books before we accept them. We try not to run tours on horrid books. We just don’t think horrid books are very enjoyable at all.
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Q. Do I have to write a review for every book I receive?
A. No. You may run an author interview (those are available on a first come, first served basis.) Or you can link to other articles and reviews of the book. You may evaluate one aspect of the book–its social impact or its entertainment value, for instance. See our Bloggers’ Guidelines for ideas and tips. There you’ll also find info on how to optimize your post for search engine placement and how to best write for the web.
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