How to Choose a Virtual Tour Service Provider: My Reading Addiction by Christine Amsden

Hello, folks!

In our continuing series from award-winning author Christine Amsden, today we feature another review of an online book tour company. Thanks again to Christine for providing us with this valuable information! Please be sure to share your support for Christine's candid and open reporting here by checking out her website and commenting below.

Aaron Paul Lazar

www.lazarbooks.com

copyright Christine Amsden, 2013

If there was one thing I learned during this book release it’s that persistence pays off. If you’re looking to put your book on the Internet, then there are thousands of bloggers you can reach. A few hundred here, a few hundred there, sooner or later it makes a real impact. That’s what I was thinking when I rehired Reading Addiction Book Tours to do a one-month tour of Cassie Scot in July 2013.

I hired this company for The Immortality Virus last summer and I have to confess, it didn’t do much at all. I scraped together a handful of sales over the course of the entire month, and that was after drastically (and temporarily) reducing the price to $0.99. But there were a lot of factors working against that tour, especially the fact that it took place more than a year after the release of the book. (Some reviewers were even confused by this fact and listed the release date as June 2012 instead of June 2011.) I thought that I could revive interest in the title because it had recently won awards, but that didn’t seem to be the case. (I should write an article about awards and what they do/don’t do for you sometime.)

Books are made or broken in the first few months after release. 

I’m not saying there’s nothing you can do to sell a book a year later. There is something — release another book. A better book. And do a better job of marketing it. I’ve sold more copies of The Immortality Virus this summer than I did the summer it was released!

There was one other problem with my Reading Addiction Tour of The Immortality Virus — wrong genre wrong audience. The Immortality Virus is pure scifi. I switched course dramatically to write the Cassie Scot series, which is urban fantasy/paranormal, mystery, and romance. I didn’t write it to play the market, but I think I managed to do just that. This is a story the market wants right now, and it is what Reading Addiction Book Tours does best.

If you go to My Reading Addiction’s packages page, you may notice something that struck me as important when I used them last month. Their biggest tours have a caveat:

*Available to Young Adult/New Adult and Paranormal Genres

Since I’ve used their services twice and one of those times I toured a science fiction novel, I feel comfortable saying that this is an important caveat. I got some nice reviews of The Immortality Virus from their bloggers, but I felt like most of them (and their readers) were more into the paranormal, especially with a romantic spin. To this day I’m not sure what the best source for scifi reviews is because I never found it. I happened to write a scifi book that got a lot of  ”I don’t normally read this genre but this was very good” comments. At the time I thought that would mean something to the people reading the reviews, but I’ve lost some of that naivete. I now believe that the people reading the reviews were more likely to go, “Hm. Well, if I’m ever in the mood for something different…” then put it on a to-read list that never gets read. To support that statement, I note that I have more “to reads” for The Immortality Virus on Goodreads than I do for Cassie Scot, but far, far more people have bought Cassie Scot.

Price

Reading Addiction Book Tours are low cost. Their biggest tour with 40 stops and plenty of bells and whistles is only $200. I ended up using their standard tour — 20 stops, half reviews, which is $90. Since I was a repeat customer, I got a 10% discount. They have great repeat customer specials, special pricing for publishers touring multiple books, and they often have sales or coupons going on so keep an eye on that. Even without the discounts, though, they are inexpensive.

Value

I believe Reading Addiction is a value if your book is in their blogger’s target reading interest. That is to say paranormal, romance, young adult, or new adult. I do not believe it is a value if you are writing science fiction. I’m not sure about other genres. But for their target genres you will get your book reviewed by engaging, enthusiastic bloggers.

Look and Feel

The only truly negative thing I have to say about Reading Addiction Book Tours is that their banner was blah.


They did make me a nice static page that remains active (click on the banner to see it). They also updated the blogger links so that after a blogger posted my review or spotlight, the link went directly to that post rather than the home page. This was a nice touch. 

Professionalism and Communication

Wonderful! Friendly, responsive, and on their game.

**It is worth noting that Reading Addiction Book Tours does not allow negative reviews during their tour. If a host really does not care for a book (i.e. would give it less than 3 stars), the host has the option of switching to promo only. They may post the review on their own after the tour is over.

Bottom Line

I recommend a Reading Addiction tour for paranormal, romance, young adult, or new adult book tours. I recommend them as part of a bigger effort, if your budget can handle it.

Check out Christine's newest book, here.

***

Christine Amsden has been writing science fiction and fantasy for as long as she can remember. She loves to write and it is her dream that others will be inspired by this love and by her stories.

Speculative fiction is fun, magical, and imaginative but great speculative fiction is about real people defining themselves through extraordinary situations. Christine writes primarily about people and it is in this way that she strives to make science fiction and fantasy meaningful for everyone.

At the age of 16, Christine was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease, a condition that effects the retina and causes a loss of central vision. She is now legally blind, but has not let this slow her down or get in the way of her dreams. (You can learn more here.)

In addition to writing, Christine teaches workshops on writing at Savvy Authors. She also does some freelance editing work.

Christine currently lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, Austin, who has been her biggest fan and the key to her success. They have two beautiful children, Drake and Celeste.

How to Hire a Virtual Tour Service by Christine Amsden

copyright 2013, Christine Amsden

Why should I plan a virtual book tour for my book?

I’ll start with the easiest question to answer… You should plan a virtual book tour for your book because the Internet is how books are sold. Even if people end up going to a brick and mortar store (and most don’t bother), they find out about books online. Readers are on social media. They’re on Goodreads. They visit their favorite review blogs.

In-person appearances have their place, but they tend to be more effective once you’ve developed a name and reputation. Or if you have some kind of expertise that makes you attractive to those seeking public speakers. The most effective in-person events are only peripherally about your book. Book signings, unless you have a following, are more of a direct public appeal to whoever happens to be in the bookstore that day. Maybe you’re a good salesman and you even manage to sell a few copies. I sold an average of six books every time I did a two-hour book signing event during a high-traffic time. The trouble was, each of those sales was stand-alone. It didn’t grow my brand or the book’s brand.

Books are most commonly sold by word of mouth. The key is to get the right words into the right mouths. Random customer in a bookstore may buy your book, but is unlikely to be the person to influence twenty other sales. So who is?

Thanks to the Internet, anyone can review books these days and many of them do. I’m a book reviewer myself, currently in the top 1% of reviewers on Goodreads. I have hundreds of followers so when I recommend a book, I usually see at least a few people clicking “to read.” And it is just as easy as that on sites like Goodreads – that looks good, I’ll list it “to read.” Getting them to actually buy the book is the next step. Often people need to see the same book from several different sources before they take the real plunge.

Big reviewers such as the New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly still have a solid place in the book world, but mainly that place is to establish credibility. With millions of self-published books coming out every year, there are more books released in a day than many will read in a lifetime. The fact that a “big name” reviewer gave a book the time of day lends some legitimacy to it that can definitely help. It helped me a ton to get a Publisher’s Weekly review for Cassie Scot, which is why I proudly quote it on the front page of my website. But Publisher’s Weekly was only the first step. And thanks to a widespread network of reviewers on the Internet, if that step had never come about, it wouldn’t have been game over.

The Internet sells books. Social media sells books. Book bloggers sell books.

So why should you plan a virtual book tour? Because you want to sell books.

Can’t I just plan a tour myself?

I don’t know, can you? You can certainly try. It never hurts to approach bloggers personally, especially if you have any kind of relationship with that blogger.

But let’s face it: You’re a busy author. You’ve got sequels to write, probably a day job to pay the actual bills, and you can’t spend 24 hours a day on the Internet forming personal relationships with everyone who might help you sell your book. And heck, even if you did it might not work. Where’s your “in?” After you’ve done a few tours and have a running list of reviewers who have left glowing reviews or your book, you may be able to do things differently. But for now…

You have to invest something in your book. It is not free to publish a book, whatever you’ve been led to believe. And I’m not just talking to self-published authors here. Traditional publishing advice often quotes the “money flows to the author” line. The advice makes sense to a point. You certainly don’t pay your publisher to publish a book or else you’ve stumbled upon a vanity press. But if you think your publisher is going to handle all the marketing for you while you sit back and write your next book, you’re in for a rude awakening.

However you publish a book, you have to promote it. Bottom line. The biggest monetary advantage you get by going big press is a small (for first-time authors a few thousand dollars) advance that you can reinvest in your marketing campaign.

There are some ways to use time in lieu of money as an investment tool, but personally I think you need both. There isn’t a 1:1 exchange rate between time and money. There are some aspects of marketing that money can’t buy – personal interaction with fans, for instance. And there are some aspects of marketing that time cannot buy – connections to top-tier bloggers, for example. (At least, not unless you’re living in an alternate dimension with more hours in a day than the typical human living in this dimension has available. If you’ve got a TARDIS, this article isn’t for you.)

I’ve spent countless hours on the Internet trying to personally contact bloggers. This was largely how I handled the marketing for my second novel, The Immortality Virus. (Touch of Fate, my first book, was my brick and mortar store lesson.) I sent e-mails to hundreds of bloggers requesting reviews and interviews. I created my own blog and updated it regularly. I got active on social media.

I’ll give the approach this much – it worked better than the brick and mortar store angle. But for every 100 bloggers I contacted directly, maybe 5 got back to me. I worked with a publicist early on to get me 20 reviews and interviews, which helped. If I had been starting from scratch, I’m not sure I would have goten as much response as I did. I have no idea how many hundreds of reviewers I contacted directly. I had a bit of luck on a social networking site called “Book Bloggers” but this site has since been overrun by self-published authors trying to get attention for their work and the real reviewers have gone elsewhere. It’s a predictable pattern, but it makes it difficult for authors trying to get that free publicity. You have to stay ahead of the social media trends. This requires dedication, persistence, and intuition. I can’t tell you which sites to visit. Next month or next year, all the information will be out of date.

So why should you hire a service to help you with a virtual book tour? Because those services have access to bloggers that you don’t have and that no amount of time or effort will get you.

Millions of new books each year. No exaggeration. If you want in that game you’ve got to be a serious player. The good news is that most of those millions of new books, largely put out by self-published authors, aren’t serious at all. That give syou an edge.

How much money are we talking about here?

How much you got? You can spend as much money as you can imagine. You can pay for publicists and advertising as well as virtual tours. You can buy more expensive tours or cheaper tours.

Parting with money is tough and I’m not trying to scam you out of anything. I’ve got nothing invested in you or your money. I’m not running a PR service! I’m telling you that I think if you’re serious, you may want to hire a PR service. Today I’m telling you why. Next week I’m going to start seriously reviewing some of the many virtual tour services I’ve personally done business with. I have no relationship with any of them other than as a customer and I’m planning to write reviews because I see a genuine need for such information. I will be as fair and thorough as possible in my reviews.

Whatever you do, don’t invest more money than you can afford!!!!!

Your family comes first. The odds of you turning a profit on your book, even with the right marketing approach, are extremely slim. You’ll be lucky to break even. So make sure your priorities are straight. Feed your family. Don’t go into debt for this. Don’t mortgage your house. Don’t run up your credit card bill. (Please don’t run up your credit card bill! Talk about an insane fiscal decision.)

If that means you don’t have any money to invest in your book then so be it. This is a business. You have to treat it like a business. If you don’t have the money then you’ve got to figure out how to get it. Historically, the arts have often been supported by wealthy sponsors. These days we call those wealthy sponsors publishers and you can still approach them with your manuscripts. The top publishers even offer advances you can use to invest in your brand.

I’m not suggesting you do that. This article isn’t about traditional vs. self-publishing. I’m just covering bases here and urging you to understand one simple truth: Publishing isn’t free. Someone has to pay for it, whether that person is you or someone else. If you’ve accepted this truth, then you won’t publish a book unless you have the money.

I used a small traditional press without the resources to pay advances, although I do earn generous royalties on every book I sell. (And I don’t pay any up-front publishing costs.) To earn money for my marketing campaigns, I’ve started doing freelance editing work so I don’t have to dip into the family budget to cover my business expenses. That’s just one approach, but it has worked for me. I’ve earned several thousand dollars from my editing work that I have been able to re-invest into marketing, largely in the form of book tours. This is how I can bring you reviews of so many different services.

Next time: A review of Pump Up Your Book

***

Author bio:

Award-winning author Christine Amsden has written stories since she was eight, always with a touch of the strange or unusual. She became a “serious” writer in 2003, after attending a boot camp with Orson Scott Card. She finished Touch of Fate shortly afterward, then penned The Immortality Virus, which won two awards. Expect many more titles by this up-and-coming author.


Check out Christine's newest release here:

http://twilighttimesbooks.com/CassieScot_ch1.html

Want to host a Virtual Book Tour?

Hello, friends.

I'm setting up a virtual book tour (VBT) for my newest release, FOR KEEPS, book 3 in Moore Mysteries, also known as the "green marble" series. You won't believe what Dr. Sam Moore has to endure in this story, and how Billy helps him out of the jam. (see synopsis below)

To become a host for the tour, you can do one or more of the following things, and post it on Facebook, your blog, or your website during the Sept.14-16th OR October 12-13, which coincides with the two free Kindle giveaways of the FOR KEEPS eBook.

There are lots of options - you don't have to be an official review house or book blogger to do this, although those folks are very welcome! I'm happy to have just regular folks be my sponsors in this event - all readers are invited!

1) You may read/review the book and post your thoughts here on (and/or Facebook or a blog/website, of course!). Please remember to "like" the book on Amazon if you do post a review. That is IF you like it!!

2) You may simply post an excerpt provided by me from FOR KEEPS on Gather, etc. during the dates given above.

3) You may ask me or my characters interview questions that we'll answer with wit and wisdom (I hope!).

4) Or you may post my article about how I wrote FOR KEEPS and how hard it was to kill the one you love (fictionally, of course!).

OR choose any combination of the above! We want to have all of this happening either on Sept. 14-16th, or October 12-13th. So there's plenty of time to do whatever suits you.

Contact me at aaron dot lazar at yahoo dot com if you want to review the book. EBook format (Kindle or pdf) is available at the moment for free for reviewers. The print book is coming along in a few weeks.

Thanks in advance!

Aaron Paul Lazar
www.lazarbooks.com


PS Here are some early review blurbs and the synopsis, in case you're interested in checking out the story.


"Aaron Paul Lazar's deft paranormal mystery starts off quietly and builds to a powerful finish. More than a thriller, FOR KEEPS is a heartfelt story of love and devotion, family ties and emotional crisis, loss and redemption. A winner!"

- Michael Prescott, USA Today bestselling author of Final Sins (also bestselling Kindle Author!)


"Lazar does it again with Sam Moore's explosive return in FOR KEEPS, a story of sordid pasts, buried secrets, and ultimately, true love. This tale will break your heart—and then tenderly stitch it back together—all while you're biting your nails to the quick. Every book in the Moore Mysteries series just keeps getting better!

- Sonya Bateman, author of Master of None & Master and Apprentice


“The author’s gentle prose brings the scents of a summer garden to life, together with rippling shade of forest and cool clear waters of lake. Characters are vividly real and welcoming too, with pitch-perfect dialog around the dinner table, a wonderful grandfather dealing with a two-year-old’s tantrum, and the awkward embarrassment of past secrets becoming public knowledge.”

- Sheila Deeth, author of FLOWER CHILD


"I was truly mesmerized by this book, and I can honestly say that I have never been so blown away by the ending of a novel. I actually felt a painful wrench when I turned the last page of the book as if I was being physically torn away from the Moore family."

-Cindy Taylor, Allbooks Reviews

OVERVIEW:

FOR KEEPS, book three in the award-winning* Moore Mystery series, is another of Lazar's beautifully written mysteries with a paranormal twist. The series is also known as the "green marble" series, courtesy of the unique talisman that links retired family doctor Sam Moore with his long dead little brother, Billy. All three books in the series can be read in any order.

SYNOPSIS:


When retired family doctor Sam Moore’s old girlfriend is murdered in a local hotel, the police suspect his involvement. The coroner, a former med school colleague whose husband is about to desert her, reveals that she had a crush on Sam in med school. When she is strangled the next day in her own morgue, Sam is once again in the hot seat.

Sam’s world falls apart when he returns home to find a family member killed in the laundry room, stabbed with his own garden shears. Rocketed into a world of denial and temporary insanity, Sam faces his worst fear, and is locked up in the very same psych ward he was in when his brother Bill died fifty years ago. Sam is determined to ask his long dead brother to help him. Billy, who communicates through a little green marble, has the ability to propel Sam through time and has helped Sam unwrap baffling mysteries in the past.

Sam’s plan: to change time, and bring his loved one back to life.