What's a Virtual Book Tour and What's in It for Me?

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Question: Does the term virtual book tour mean the book is virtual or the tour is virtual?

Answer: The tour; the book is very real even if it is a print-on-demand book.

Question: What's in it for me and my book?

Answer: Plenty - if you're willing to work hard at making your tour a success.

Below is information to help you decide whether you want to start exploring the option of a virtual book tour (VBT).

VBTs take place during a certain period of time (in my case a month) beginning and ending on specific dates. During that time, by pre-arrangement, your book is reviewed on a specific date of the virtual book tour or on that specific date the blogger features an interview of you (you've previously answered questions sent to you by the blogger).

You could arrange all the stops by yourself (and then announce the stops yourself on your own blog or on social media), but this would take a long time to research and then query bloggers. To arrange my virtual book tour in June I used Pump Up Your Book Promotion, which was recommended to me by the marketing consultant of my print-on-demand publisher BookSurge.

(Here's the virtual book tour page.)

And while I worked hard to provide all the interviews and other information that was needed by Dorothy Thompson, who was my virtual book tour organizer, I could never have found on my own all the blogs and people with whom she connected me and arranged my tour dates.

What to know what these interviews are like? Here's a sample of the kind of questions a book author answers on a blog - these comments are from an interview of me by Trish Forant of eMail Our Military www.emailourmilitary.com on her blog. (Read the whole article.)

eMOM: I know you're an author; can you tell us a little about your book and what motivated you to write it?

PZM: I have always wanted to tell this story since the spring of 1970 because I was, indeed, the chair of the graduation luncheon for the wives of my husband's AOB class, and the other committee members besides me (a Jew) were a Southern Baptist, a black and two Puerto Ricans, one of whom didn't speak English.

I thought that this was such an amazing group of women who had to overcome their prejudices and learn to get along that I told this story 18 years later to two women movie producers. They optioned the story and then, when no one in Hollywood "got" the story, they told me I had to write a book. By the time I wrote the first draft they had moved on to other projects. Then followed almost 20 years of writing and rewriting and believing in this story while New York editors and agents told me that no one would be interested in this story.

If you're worried about writing answers to numerous interview questions, remind yourself that you're a writer - so these interviews about your book should be a piece of cake.

What's in virtual book tours for bloggers?

Bloggers want incoming links. So they are very pleased when you offer a copy of your book for a contest in connection with the review of your book or the interview of you about your book (questions and answers written beforehand). The blogger asks people to leave comments to the post in order to be eligible for the random drawing. The blogger gets more links and you get more attention paid to your book.

Then what often happens is that another book blogger wins the book. So you offer that blogger another free copy to run a contest if that blogger does something about you on his/her site. And because book bloggers have so many to-read books, offer to do an interview instead (you are a writer, after all).

The interview helps out the blogger by providing an interesting post that he/she doesn't have to write plus a contest to get those all-important incoming links.

In addition, many book bloggers share their review links with each other. Thus more links and more mentions of your book.

What's your role in a virtual book tour?

You have to be willing to be generous with your book copies, your accessibility, and your support of the bloggers (mentioning the blog stops in your own blog or on the social media sites in which you participate, such as Facebook and Twitter).

And if you are willing to do all this (and you should if you want to get people interested in your book), the bloggers often offer to post their reviews other places, such as on Amazon and LibraryThing.

And for those of you who are worried about having all these unknown bloggers write about your book or you - remember the old joke: I don't care what you say about me as long as you spell my name correctly.

The first four chapters of MRS. LIEUTENANT are available at Mrs. Lieutenant. Through my online book promotion efforts I became so enthralled with the online sharing of information that I've started a company: Miller Mosaic, LLC will be a family of websites providing information to make people's lives easier - check out the first website at Estate Planning for You. Connect with me on Facebook and LinkedIn under Phyllis Zimbler Miller and on Twitter under ZimblerMiller. Let me know where we "met."

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