I live in South Africa and I am published in the USA. Distance has made it impossible for me to go the traditional marketing route. Online is all I have open to me. I have worked very hard to go from “Fiona Who?” to not quite “Aha, Fiona Ingram, the famous children’s author,” but to a point where I have a healthy Google profile, a nice author site, with lots of links to interviews, book reviews, articles, etc. When I began researching (as is my wont) the concept of book marketing, I still had the silly notion that as a writer, all one did was write and people would automatically rush out and get one’s books. Not at all. Nowadays, even the traditional publishers expect their authors to do their own marketing as well.

An author cannot just be an author. He or she has to be a product or a brand. Publishers are also more interested in someone who has more than just books to offer. Readers are greedy for information about the author, what inspires them, what new books are coming up, etc. Your marketing will incorporate your author online platform which leans heavily on Social Media.

The online author platform consists of: your book/s; your website; your author profile/bio; an e-zine or newsletter; a blog; a video interview (vlog); a podcast radio interview; a video preview on sites like YouTube; articles you’ve written; articles about you.

Your website is your biggest asset in your author platform. You can put up information on your book and purchasing details, as well as your press release, your bio and a good pic, your reviews, and anything written about you and your book. When you reply to people, include your website in your signature so interested parties can track you back to your site, thus creating a good stream of traffic. Been interviewed on the radio or a local television station? Ask for a copy and put these up on your site as well. The more electronic information people have available for easy access, the better. From here, you can also launch your blog or fan club, set up your Twitter and other options, and link your social network sites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Squidoo, etc, back to this. You can also launch your website on many social sites simultaneously. These create coverage and alert the industry to your presence.

Google is a fantastic tool. You can load your articles, get a Google Alert to notify you every time something comes up about you and your book, link other sites back to your own to increase your ratings and give you credibility, set up a Blogger alert, join Google’s Library page, keep track of your site’s performance with Google Analytics, and much more.

Blogging and blog tours. You can “chat” to eager readers by going on a Virtual Book Tour. Virtual book tours are a promotional tool for authors to connect with readers via book blogs. Tours usually include a minimum number of tour stops over the course of one month on a variety of blogs. Some companies offer to feature on each tour stop a photo of the book, a review, links to the author’s website and blog, and will include your purchase information. Authors who interact with tour hosts and make themselves available for guest posting, interviews, Q&A sessions with blog commenters, and who respond to comments will have the greatest success from their tour.

Book competitions. Why should you enter? It’s not so much about winning as being seen. Competitions broaden your author profile because people in the industry will read your book. Organizers also post results online to market their contests. Even if you don’t win, you may get a Best Runner-Up mention, and that’s the kind of detail you will put in your press release. You don’t have to be in print yet to enter some competitions.

Do not stop marketing. Even when your book is out there and you’ve sent off your press releases, don’t stop spreading the word! Do something every day (either online or physical) to continue your marketing thrust. Penny Sansivieri of AME says: “Remember—marketing doesn’t sell books … marketing gives you exposure and exposure sells books.”

To get something done … you have to do it yourself. You only get reviews if you ask for them; you have to make a huge effort to engage with potential readers through blogs, tours, tweets, Facebook, all the social media tools freely available at every writer’s fingertips. There is so much free information that there’s no excuse for writers to moan about not getting publicity. Author sites abound, and if you’re not sure what to do, many marketing newsletters and e-zines offer load of free information. 

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Fiona Ingram (B.A., Hons. (Natal), M.A., (Wits)) was born and educated in South Africa. Her interest in ancient history, mystery, and legends, and her enjoyment of travel has resulted in The Secret of the Sacred Scarab, the first in her exciting children’s adventure series—Chronicles of the Stone. The first book was inspired by an actual trip the author took to Egypt with her two young nephews (then aged 10 and 12).

Please visit Fiona’s author site http://www.fionaingram.com/ for more articles on marketing. For her book site, visit http://www.secretofthesacredscarab.com/.

So what is a virtual author book tour? Basically it involves visiting—virtually, of course—a group of websites for a period of time. The visits can take several different forms: interviews, guest posts, book reviews, book excerpts, and so on. (You can read more here in an interview I did with Penny Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., and author of Red Hot Internet Publicity.) The sites usually range from blogs, websites, online radio stations, and social networking sites. The purpose is to increase an author’s online exposure, drive additional traffic to his or her website, increase search engine rankings, and hopefully sell more books.

It’s not difficult to set up a virtual tour, but it will take some research, planning, and followup. You can do it yourself–or you can hire a company to do it for you. We’ve been setting up tours for authors for the past year or so, and we’ve learned a lot as far as what is needed to make a book tour successful.

I consider the first two items on the list to be essential; we have found it is much more difficult to set up a successful tour with authors who are not active online and who do not wish to blog regularly. I believe it is far less beneficial to the hosts as well, to host these types of authors, and they are less apt to agree to an appearance. And frankly, I don’t blame them!) 

• Be an active blogger who not only blogs regularly but who comments on others’ blogs. Make yourself known in the “blogosphere.”
• Be active in social media sites (we recommend Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter). You don’t necessarily have to have 10,000 Twitter followers, but you should be networking on these sites, providing valuable content where appropriate, and building your following. 
• Have a capture system on your website (and I’m assuming you have one that highlights your book or that has a page about your book) so you can collect email addresses and build your list. Provide those who sign up with something of value—such as a free report or subscription to your newsletter.
• Have a call to action on your website instructing visitors to purchase your book, such as “Buy your copy today!”
• Develop a list of potential hosts based on sites your target market hangs out on. If you’re an active blogger in your genre already, chances are you’ve got a list of sites you check regularly. Find others. Concentrate on those who get a fair amount of traffic.
• Be familiar with the sites you plan to approach so you can avoid those that would not be appropriate. Send a personal inquiry, letting them know you’ve been following their site and emphasizing why your appearance there would benefit their readers/listeners. Include a link to your website where they can read more details about your book, your author bio, and other pertinent links. Indicate the date ranges of your tour; plan ahead as some sites are booked well in advance. You probably won’t want to book more than one or two appearances per day.
• Respond immediately to replies, sending a review copy of the book promptly when it is requested. Confirm the details—date, type of appearance, and topic desired.
• Keep track of where you will be appearing and when. (We use an Excel spreadsheet.) Follow up with your host a couple weeks before your appearance. Make sure they have everything they need from you, including a photo of you and your book as well as your bio.
• Once you start getting appearances scheduled for your virtual tour, start letting your friends and fans on Twitter and Facebook know about it. Be sure to include details—including links—on your website, blog, and newsletter.
• The day of your appearance, make sure to visit the website or blog regularly, answering questions and responding to comments. If your appearance involves a live podcast, be ready for questions.
• Follow up with all your hosts afterward and be sure to thank them.

We love virtual author book tours. It’s a great way for authors to increase exposure, gain new fans, and sell more books. Hosts too benefit by gathering additional visitors to their sites. And there is no chance for jetlag!

Thanks, Penny!

What is the best way to find appropriate blogs/sites?

I always recommend that authors get to know blogs in their market. They can do this by going to Google Blog Search, Technorati, or any other blog directory. In order to acclimate yourself to the blog environment, start by following five to seven blogs in your market and see what they are talking about. Then, I recommend that you communicate with them. How do you do this? By commenting on their posts. And don’t just write “great post!” offer some thoughtful feedback. This is a great way to start cyber-schmoozing with the bloggers you need to know. When your book comes out you can then offer them a review copy, since bloggers get so many books submitted to them, having done this advanced networking will really help get you and your book to top of the review pile!

 Are there specific genres that have more success with a virtual author book tour?

Not really, but we’re often surprised at books that just take off like wildfire. We had a book, self-published that was a fictional account of the life of a concubine. We almost couldn’t keep up with the review requests. Oddly enough I told the author that I wasn’t sure how well this market would do, but he decided to risk it anyway; we were both pleasantly surprised. One market that I can tell you is very cluttered is business. It’s a rough category to get into online, which is why I’m a fan of blog commenting to network with these folks. Someone out of the clear blue won’t get much traction in this area. New Age and Law of Attraction is similar though not as challenging. Thanks to The Secret and the tsunami of books in the LOA market that followed, this category saw an onslaught of titles that it could barely keep up with.

What would you consider a “successful” tour? How many site visits?

When it comes to online promotion, a lot of authors are impressed by getting on hundreds of sites. I counter that idea only because I know that sometimes online less is more and more is, well sometimes just more. Let me explain. The idea behind online promotion in my view is to gather incoming links to your site—these links act as highways, funneling traffic and readers to you. The other element of incoming links is the Google-factor—meaning that when ranking sites in their market, Google looks at the quality and relevance of incoming links. We’ve seen cases where authors have gotten hundreds upon hundreds of mentions and new links online with little or no change in their website ranking or traffic. Why? Because the incoming links themselves were coming from sites with very little traffic and small Page Rank (Page Rank is a number Google assigns to a site indicating its importance on the Net, Page Rank goes from 0 to10, 10 being the highest).

When considering a tour, you’re better off targeting sites with high Page Rank and depending on your market, this could be anywhere from a 3 to 6… If you can only get on 25 such sites your time will be much better spent than pushing through the onslaught of hundreds of sites that don’t even show up in search engines.

So how much is good? Well, in my view online promotion doesn’t end—unless you decide to let the book and your career die. You should look at doing online promotion for as long as you’re in the business of being an author. So once you’ve captured the high-end sites in your market, it’s okay to go after the smaller-niche ones and keep building your momentum online.

How are tours coordinated? Over a set period of time? Or can they continue for weeks or even months as interest continues?

My recommendation is to not do a tour that is limited to a time period. Sure, week-long tours seem fun and exciting but what happens after the week is over? Not much. You’ve got to keep it going. I recommend doing one to five things a day to promote yourself; this should include commenting on blog posts and pitching your topic to bloggers.

What advice do you have for self-published authors who are organizing their own blog/networking site tours—specifically, dos and don’ts?

First off, think of the Internet as one big networking party. Even though you may never meet the blogger you’re pitching, the same rules apply. You’d never walk up to a group of people at an in-person networking event and say “I wrote a fabulous book and you should review it.” You should always lead with helpful information. Ask yourself why the blogger will care and then, offer them tips to get them to care; they must want your book not because you wrote it but because their readers will want to know about it, it’s timely, it’ll help in some specific way. Whether it’s to entertain, enlighten, or engage them. Lead with the benefits, not the features.

Second, the best kind of promotion online is slow growth over time. That’s why I recommend that authors build their network by engaging with bloggers long before their book comes out. There is no such thing as instant success, and you should shy away from anyone who promises you overnight success or a million Twitter followers in a week.

Third, remember that it’s all about your reader. Whether you’ve written fiction or non-fiction, your efforts to engage your reader are about your reader, not about you. Don’t give them what you think they need, give them what they want. Be interested, not interesting. Listen first, spend a good deal of time listening to what’s going on and what people are saying, then respond. By listening first you’ll show up engaged and informed and readers will beat a path to your door.