Small Tour, Big Return

As a writer, I’m the worst when it comes to marketing and promoting my books.  In the past, I’ve relied on friends and family and word of mouth to generate interest in my novels.  With the recent release of my contemporary romance novel, This Time, I made the decision to expand my promotion efforts.

One of my newest ventures involved sending my novel on a book blog tour. For those of you not familiar with the concept, a book blog tour is the web equivalent of going to book signings.  Instead of going from store to store to promote their book, authors have their books featured on genre appropriate websites. These features typically include a summary of the book, the author’s biography, and website links directing readers to the author and where to purchase her books and sometimes include a giveaway.  There are different levels of book blog tours which can also include author interviews and reviews of the book.

I have to confess that I’d never heard of book blog tours until I stumbled across them while doing some research on effective ways to promote books on a limited budget. There seemed to be a lot of potential with blog tours; gain more exposure for your book, reach more readers, increase sales, gain more Twitter followers and likes to your Face Book author page. 

The only thing that concerned me was the cost. Like many indie authors, my budget is limited. Then I found Goddess Fish Promotions. They bill themselves as an affordable means of marketing for independent authors and let me tell you what, they live up to that promise.

For a nominal fee, my book was featured on several romance readers’ blogs over a period of ten days.  Each tour stop included the cover of my book, a picture of me along with my biography, an excerpt of my book, links to all of my social media accounts so that readers could connect with me and links for purchasing my books.  In some instances, the blogger even featured a review of my book. With the type of tour I chose, posting a review was at the discretion of the blogger and I was pleasantly surprised at how many were willing to do so.

Even more impressive was the fact that I had to do very little work. I sent in my book cover, author photo, a summary of my book, an excerpt of my book and my social media and book purchase links. That was it. Goddess Fish staff did the rest. They found the blog sites and sent all of the requested material. Any indie author will tell you what a relief it is when someone else does the legwork for you.

Thanks to Goddess Fish promotions, the amount of exposure generated for my novel was not only phenomenal, but it was measurable. In the two weeks that my book was on tour, I watched the number of my Twitter followers and likes to my Face Book author page increase daily.  The impact to the sales isn’t something I can measure immediately, but I have no doubt that due to the increase in readers resulting from this tour, an increase in sales is inevitable.

This tour was so much fun and such a success that not only am I planning on doing it again for future novels, but I’m going to employ the services of Goddess Fish to do it. I spent a little bit of money and got a big return. I couldn’t be happier.