Blog tours can sell some books, but not at rates any better than regular direct mail. And getting the kind of audience you need for direct mail appears to be much trickier than we all thought it would be. 85 blogs participating in a tour just doesn’t translate into that much exposure, traffic, conversion, or sales.
Dee has a different approach. She apparently estimates that book sales will be 10%-20% of the number of participating bloggers. That’s the industry standard, she says. It’s an interesting approach.
Regardless of the sales figures, blogs can be a way to connect interested readers with the author. The original goal of a book tour was to let the author speak in person with his or her potential audience.
Blogs can allow interaction between writers and readers. For example, I told Michael Lindsay that the best thing he could do to encourage buzz about his book Faith in the Halls of Power, was simple. Just comment on the blogs that link to his Amazon.com page. We talked about how to set up an RSS notification for this in Technorati. (You may have noticed that he commented on my review last week.)
Also, if blog tours aren’t great at selling books, they may work to help authors develop relationships with potential readers. In the language of direct marketing and fund raising, blog tours could be an acquisitions tool to promote a particular newsletter. (Mary has two good newsletters: Inside Renewal and Relevant Prose.)
Comments on this entry are closed.