Virtual Book Tours, Pt. 3

By M.J. Moores on September 25, 2014 • ( 2 )

Publicity Tip #52

Finding the right virtual book tour service can feel impossible sometimes depending on your genre. The bulk of services I have come across seem to be dedicated to Romance, YA or some combination of the two and their sub-genres. Apparently, a lot of book publicists enjoy reading these genres and have built their empire of potential blogs to tour around this interest.

What about the rest of us?

The first thing I’ll recommend is querying a virtual blog tour company about the number of potential host sites that cater directly to your genre AND looking at the feedback from other authors in your genre who’ve already used their service. This will give you a more accurate reading of the potential exposure your book faces.

Something else to keep in mind is their social media reach. If they list three twitter handles, two facebook pages, and two websites that will do a major blast about your book tour – make sure that all those sites don’t belong to the same company or person running the company – often the crossover or repeats on these sites is quite large, skewing the actual number of ‘new’ readers hearing about your work. Make sure the company is affiliated with at least two major twitter sites that they don’t own/run and one major publicity website besides their own – any more than this and you’re likely paying a lot more than you need to or you’ve just hit the jackpot and need to share your discovery with us 🙂

Here are two that you might find tantalizing:

Sage’s Blog Tours – While Sage is not a marketing expert who graduated college with a degree in making you look fabulous, she is an author who saw a need and tried to fill it. She offers tours to all genres and maintains a guest blogger list large enough to comfortably accommodate this variety. The general testimonials listed on the site are excellent and highly encouraging and her prices are quite reasonable ranging from $25 – $250. I personally think the Bronze Package for $60 makes the most sense for a new author working on a tight budget.

Goddess Fish Promotions – While this is a rather 0ld-fashioned website, what the ladies offer is 15+ years “combined” experience and training in the book marketing and publicity field and have been running the tour company for the past 9 years. They also offer tours to all genres and have a thorough testimonial section right on their home page. They offer a wide selection of publicity options and their prices run from $50 – $145 (with a ‘Full Monte’ at $399).

Happy Hunting 🙂