So… I scheduled a blog tour for The Vampire’s Gallery a while ago. I’ve learned a few things:
1: A month is too bloody long. (On #NALitChat it was suggested three weeks max, two better).
2: Filling out eight or so interviews doesn’t seem like ton of work but it is. After a while I ran out of what I hoped were endearing/clever things to say.
3: You need to promote it. If Twitter leaves you feeling all thumbs and FB BURN IT WITH FIRE you might be better off spending your money on something else. May I suggest gin? New Amsterdam has that nice “physically assaulted by a pine tree” flavor I go for in my gin.
I know it sounds all doom and gloom. The good things? I got an awesome review, thanks to Courtney at Optimistic Mommy. The people at Sizzling PR are super responsive. Like, if you have good social network, go talk to them. If I had to do it again, I’d wait until everything was published before scheduling, and then do, at max, a two week tour. I would go with someone else to. The reality is, I don’t think the blogs I was scheduled at received a lot of traffic, and so my book didn’t get a lot of traction. I was going to give away some prizes too, but that all seemed to fall through the cracks.
Thanks for sharing this, Antoinette. I’ve avoided blog tours because I’ve read they take a considerable amount of time for little return. I’m glad some good things came out of it for you.
Have any of your tamer works been published yet? I admit to being a PG-13 kind of a girl, but I’d love to read one of your books. Can you point me in the right direction?
I think for round two I’m going to schedule a one or two week tour with Goddess Fish, maybe give away a $25 giftcard as a grand prize, probably use Rafflecopter. I’ll probably do a trial run here.
I don’t have anything published, but I have part of a story I sent my mom–there’s only kissing in it. Hit me up at antoinette.emdash at gmail.com and I’ll send it over. The last two parts are not PG-13 though, I’ll warn you now, so if you want to finish it, there will be some sexiness.