Hi Reader, In my last email I explained why publishers still fund book tours even though they do not sell many books. You should jump back and read that if you missed it. I hate booking flights, don't you? Going on tour sounds glamorous until you're checking out of your fifth motel, racing to catch the next flight. It's like everything terrible about holiday travel, combined with public speaking, combined with the tedium of the work day. Yikes! And they are so expensive! A single book signing...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, If you read my last email, you know I've been sharing advice from my recent speaking engagement about book marketing at the AWP Conference in Baltimore. One topic the moderator mentioned is book tours, but naturally I got so carried away that I didn't address it. So let's talk about book tours! The truth about book tours Book tours do not sell books, or at least not enough books to justify the amount of money it costs to do a book tour. But you should still consider doing one, if...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Here's the second in a series I'm doing on book promotion, based on the questions the moderator asked the panel I sat on at the AWP conference. Today we tackle: How do you know whether your book might benefit from a particular technique (i.e. a book tour, a blog tour, a social media campaign)? In the first of this series, I emphasized knowing your comps and whether your book fits clearly into a particular niche or genre. Here we can see how that plays out. First, in researching...
6 months ago • 3 min read
