Sunday, February 6, 2011

Blog Carnivals - the next promtional opportunity?

We've all heard about Virtual Book Tours, which is basically a scheduled set of stops on various author's blogs to help promote one's recently released book. Frequently the blogs posted are either author or character interviews, essays, excerpts, synopses, or writer's life type articles. Any or all of these are a great way to spark interest in your new book. 

Recently I heard about Blog Carnivals, and wondered how it differed from a virtual book tour. Here's what Wikipedia says:
"A blog carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly.[1] Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains permalinks to other blog articles on the particular topic."
There's a website devoted to these blog carnivals, and quite a bit of info available in their FAQ section.


Here's an excerpt:
"A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many varieties of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.

There is so much stuff in the blog-o-sphere, just finding interesting stuff is hard. If there is a carnival for a topic you are interested in, following that carnival is a great way to learn what bloggers are saying about that topic. If you are blogging on that topic, the carnival is the place to share your work with like-minded bloggers.

Blog Carnival is the place to come to find carnivals you are interested in, to submit your blog articles to carnivals where they belong, and to organize and maintain carnivals."
I'm not sure if one could join a carnival for book launches, or if you could arrange one for your own launch. I've got more homework to do! 

Have you ever heard of the carnivals? Have you considered how you might use them to help launch your next book? Let us know in the comments, below.

No matter how your life is going right now, whether you're going through an easy phase where things seem to be clicking, or whether you're enduring terrible traumas, remember to take pleasure in the little things, and if you love to write, write like the wind!

Have a great week!

Aaron Paul Lazar
www.legardemysteries.com
www.mooremysteries.com



5 comments:

Marta Stephens said...

This is the first I've heard of these (or at least the name), but it seems similar to something I did when I toured. I created a page on my Prose and Musing blog that had a listing of updated links/dates of each stop of my tour. I let it sit the entire month I was on tour like a one-stop for a list of all the sites who hosted my tour. I imagine these blog carnivals do much the same thing only bigger.

Ron Adams said...

Very interesting, and worth a second and third look. Thanks for sharing, Aaron.

Julia Phillips Smith said...

I've taken part in several blog carnivals that I've stumbled upon as I've roamed through the blogosphere, and I love them. It does take up a chunk of time, as the point of them is to visit as many new bloggers as you can, and vice versa. But my experience with them has been fantastic.

Aaron Paul Lazar said...

Hi, Marta. It was a first for me, too. Sounds in concept much like what you describe above.

Hey, Ron. Hope you're staying warm!

Julia, great to have you here. And thanks so much for your feedback!

Sheila Deeth said...

Curiouser and curiouser?