What Do You Think of Virtual Book Tours?

Many authors are doing virtual book tours today. A recent New York Times article described a virtual book tour (VBT) arranged by a major publisher. (Access to article may require free registration.)

Dorothy Thompson at Pump Up Your Book Promotion arranges blog book tours for authors. She also blogs about her experiences and hosts authors at Pump Up Your Online Book Promotion.

Updated: Dorothy also has a great article on making your virtual book tour a success at Book Marketing Buzz.

Many authors, however, plan their own virtual book tours. It takes a lot of work to arrange with bloggers and answer interview questions or write a guest post for each stop on the tour.

Glenda Watson Hyatt just finished a virtual tour for her book I’ll Do It Myself. She involved her blog readers creatively in her book tour adventure, describing her “travels.”

Mary Emma Allen, who hosts touring authors at Potpourri of Writing, recently wrote an excellent guest post on using virtual book tours for book promotion at Grow Your Writing Business. Be sure to read the comments as well as the post itself, because some authors with VBT experience share some helpful advice.

I’m thinking about planning a virtual book tour to promote my novel Dream or Destiny when it’s published later this year. I’ve been ambivalent about it, but after reading the articles linked here, I think it might be worthwhile and fun … as well as a lot of work!

Have you participated in a virtual book tour, either as an author or host? Do you read blogs that host VBTs? Has reading an interview or guest post by an author ever motivated you to buy a book?

[tags]virtual book tour[/tags]

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