R.J. Blain's Blog, page 83

Why I Don’t Write ‘Strong’ Women

I started the process of talking about this on Google+, but I felt this is a discussion that really belongs on my blog. You can read the original post here. 

In the original post, I begin by stating that I am amused when people get upset over the lack of strong women in two of my novels.

The two books in question are The Eye of God and Storm Without End. 

These novels are traditional and epic fantasies. The Eye of God is more of a traditional fantasy, focusing on one region, while Storm Without End is far more of an epic, telling the story of how a few good people–men and women–can change their entire world.

I write stories that are realistic to the situations of the men and women in the societies they are from. While this will earn me negative reviews–it already has–I do not write in strong women for the sake of writing in strong women. The odds are against women in this world. If they want to be strong, they have to get off their skirted asses and make themselves strong.

That is not easy for them. In The Eye of God, women are treated like slaves. They are prizes, adornments, and property. The so-called ‘free’ women must work from the shadows, using diplomacy, coercion, and silky words to manipulate their men. Power, for them, is a poison-laced cup given on the sly. It is not in strong–or strong as we see it–personalities.

The strong women of this world become slaves in all things, and if they do not bow to the will of men, they die in the arena.

It takes a very special sort of woman to rise above that, and that sort of woman is rare. I write them to be that way; rare, prized, and a force capable of changing their world.

But they must earn it. It can’t be cheapened by handing it to them on the grounds that they were born with breasts. There, I’ve said.

I don’t write women who are strong for the sake of writing strong women. Women make their appearances as their personalities allow. A woman who becomes strong in a culture and world like this has to be special. Special women, women who are willing to risk everything, do not come along every day. They often do not live long, either. That’s an unfortunate truth about history.

I look deeper than the feminist approach of needing a strong woman in a fantasy world dominated by men. These cultures are realistic, and even in modern society, there is a dire lack of truly strong women.

I do not write women who are strong for the sake of their inclusion. When a woman comes along who rises above the men, it is because she is special. She has something that lets her stand up against the history of her past and her upbringing. She has something that forced change on her. Women are not born strong in a world where men are expected to live and die by the sword to protect their families–their women, and their children.

Women must be motivated to break free of the chains of tradition and heritage.

In Storm Surge (Book 2 of Requiem for the Rift King), they begin to rise–quite notably among mercenaries. And these women are not shining, they’ve endured a lot to get where they are, including coping with rape–a very realistic issue for a woman in a male-dominated group in this sort of world and era.

And these women are all the more strong because of what they’ve endured, but I don’t just write a strong woman character in for the sake of writing one in–they need to have reasons to endure the risks and consequences of participating in a war in a society where men are viewed as superior. They are a society where in court, their words are their swords, and their influences are often not known, manipulating things to their liking from the background.

The story doesn’t take place in the societies where women are equals and strong; it takes place in the societies where change is needed, not where change has already happened.

And some people just will not like that; nor will they want to sit around and wait for these women to finally decide the only way they’re going to get change is if they reach out and seize it on their own.

I may be a woman writing epic fantasy, but I don’t give my women in these novels anything.

They have to earn it.

This is a choice I made on purpose with my novels. I may be a woman writing epic fantasy, but because of that, I want truly strong women. I don’t want women who have power, strength, and courage handed to them in order to pass the Bechdel test for novels.

I want people to see weak women who rise above it all. At the end, I want people to see these women for the strengths they have earned. When a woman rises, only to fall as consequence of being something rare and special, I want them to reach for a tissue because they understand what the world has lost. I don’t want a strong woman in my novel who is there just because society thinks all women deserve to be strong.

I want to create real women, women who claw their way from the bottom and rise to the top. I want to see them struggle, endure, and become more than just a weak woman in a world dominated by men.

If anything, I have a higher expectation for my women in my novels. They must, time and time again, prove their worth–to themselves, and to the men who have been raised to believe it is their duty to protect or use women.

I’m going to take a minute to draw your attention to the cover art for Royal Slaves. This is for Book 2 of the Fall of Erelith. The Eye of God is the first book of this series.

Royal Slaves is where the women begin to rise, and where change begins. It started in The Eye of God, although it is extremely subtle. It started with the salvation of a single woman, who at the time, had a spark of stubborn pride–it was that spark that sent her to the arena to die.

She was spared, barely. And her salvation becomes the seed of her rising above her status as a slave to become something more. But she is still a slave, to her past and to her culture. But she will be given the chance to become something far more than a beautiful slave–if she makes the right choices, and works hard to become something more than what she is.

I am not afraid to write real women. I am not afraid to write strong women, either.

I am afraid of writing a story adhering to the expectations of society. No, I will not write in strong women for the sake of writing strong women.

I will write women who are the product of their environment and society.

Then I will give them the chance to become strong.

It is up to the women to decide whether or not they become strong. I will not give it to them. It is something they must earn on their own, through their actions, through the things that happen to them that force them to change, and through the choices they make.

I am not ashamed of this, nor will I be. I will not cheapen the women in my stories because they’re women.  But when they rise, they will burn in a blaze of glory–for better or for worse.

And it is my hope they will be remembered because a truly strong women in this sort of world is a rare and special thing.

There is nothing wrong with a ‘weak’ woman. They are real, they are products of their environment. But they haven’t made the choice to rise above it all and seize their strength with their own hands. I will not write women who are added in as strong for the sake of having a strong woman in the story.

When you find a strong woman in these novels, she made herself that way.

Go ahead, ladies and gentlemen. Have the strength and courage to write ‘weak’ women. Then give them the chance to become strong.

It’s far more satisfying to see a woman rise above the odds and become something special, than to read and write about a woman who was made strong for no reason other than society thinks women should be strong.

That’s the price of writing a truly strong woman in a world where women are not expected or raised to be strong. Most women will be weak. They will have bowed to the yoke society has given them. And they will take pride in what we perceive as weakness; they believe they are good women, doing the right thing. And we are shocked, as always, that women are content in these roles they have been given.

When a woman makes herself strong in one of my novels, I want my readers and fans to remember her, because she is special and she is rare. I want my readers to see all of her, from what we perceive as weakness, to the strength many desire. And I want my readers and fans to appreciate her more because of all she endured to become strong, and understand the price she paid to become that way.

And when her flame goes out, I want her to have risen so far above expectation that it is understood that the world has lost something truly precious.

And to me, that is what a strong woman is: Someone precious, who can’t be replaced, who can’t be found under any old rug, and who has earned everything she has gained with her sweat, tears, and blood.

And if that means having one hundred weak women for each strong one, so be it.

I will not be afraid to write women as they are: Diverse–weak, strong, and somewhere in between.

Multi-Services Review, Part 1: Preparing for a Release Day Extravaganza

On May 16, 2014, I will be releasing my third novel, Inquisitor. Unlike my other two novels, Inquisitor is a paranormal urban fantasy. Because of the popularity of the genre, I made a very important decision for myself and my career:

I decided to pursue a launch party extravaganza. What does that mean? Instead of focusing my efforts on one service, I am approaching the launch of this novel using several outlets at the same time. I’m combining book tours and single-day blast promotions to spread as much word and hype about the novel as possible. I am also looking into potentially doing a press release in order to spread word of the novel in other venues.

That venture is still up in the air, as I do not know anything about this branch of marketing. It’s taking a lot of research. I’ll go into that a little later, however.

First off, I want to talk about the basics and the inherent flaws with my release day extravaganza.

Unlike my other experiences, I am running a lot of promotions at the same time. Unfortunately, I do not have the capability of tracking the performance of each specific campaign (or promotion) that I am running. This means some may do well, others may not. I’m looking at the entire extravaganza for the end-game result.

My hope is to learn if the time and monetary investment will pay off in the short term and the long term.

Here is what I am doing so far:

I’m working with two blog tour groups for 7 day blog tours.

I am working with three other groups for single-day blast tours.

I am working with bloggers and book lovers directly to help spread news of the release. If you’re interested in hosting my novel on May 16 as a part of the release party, please email me at blain . rj @ gmail . com (remove spaces.)

I am considering investing in a press release to spread news to traditional medias, including newspapers and other print resources. This is something I have to think long and hard about, as I do have a limited budget on what I can use for this. (It took quite a bit of extra work on the side to be able to afford this experiment at all.)

I will not reveal the amount of money I have invested or will invest in this project just yet. Why? Because the numbers aren’t confirmed yet, so I’m not comfortable with saying them. However, I will state that I have already invested over $200.

Preparing for a Blog Blast / Release Day Promotion

Creating a release day promotion is a little different than a standard book blog tour. Unlike a standard tour, which is typically scheduled after the novel has been released, these tours are scheduled prior to release. For an independent author without the ability to set up preorders, this is a little tricky.

Before you contact any blog tour group about a release day promotion, there are a few things that I recommend you do:

Set a definite release day. This cannot be changed. This is not flexible.
Prepare promotional material in advance. If you have your materials ready, you look like a professional. Tour groups want to work with professionals.
Research the tour groups. Not all groups are created equal, and you want to use the groups with the most sway for your release-day promotion.

1: Setting a definite release date is important. You won’t be working with five or six bloggers. You will be working with hundreds of bloggers. Imagine having to apologize to each and one of these individuals! Or, worse — making a tour group you paid good money to have to apologize to these individuals.

It is a good way to be banned from using these services again. Just because you want to hire a service doesn’t mean that the group has to let you hire them. Abusing their services and their hard work is a good way to get blacklisted.

Make sure you’re 100% capable of being 100% ready for your release on the day you set.

2: Preparing the promotional material in advance means you can just attach everything you need for each and every tour group or blogger. No thinking, no hassle, just attach everything and send. This makes sure your posts are all uniform, and you don’t have to invest nearly as much time.

You will want the following promotional material:

1 to 3 or so excerpts from the beginning of the book. Try to stick within the sample limit on Amazon.
An author biography
Blurb for the novel
All Social Media links (Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest if applicable, etc)
Cover Art
Review Copy — if you don’t have it ready, have a set date it will be ready.

Each tour group has different requirements, so make certain you follow all of the instructions you are given.

3: For a large-scale release promotion, I tried to stick with reputable groups with a lot of social media and blogger sway. I also stuck with groups with a good reputation. To find out a group’s reputation, I researched their blog group on the internet. Over half of the groups I selected came from recommendations from other authors.

Working with Blog Tour Groups

In order to do a truly large-scale release promotion, I feel it is necessary to work with outside groups. It takes a lot of work to get a group together. One of my tour groups is putting me in touch with over forty bloggers. This is a staggering amount of work on the coordinator’s part.

Working with nine people individually has cost me a couple of hours. I don’t have the time to work with hundreds of bloggers. That’s why I hired several different tour groups to help me.

When you’re working with a blog tour group, there are a few things you will want to do (and remember.)

First, you want to reply to organizer questions as quickly as possible. Second, you want to make sure you pay your invoice when it is sent to you. Request that the company invoices you so you can use the invoice as a part of your taxes. Finally, make sure you give them all of the promotional material they need as soon as you can so they have time to organize your tour.

Because you have to do this with each and every group and blogger, I really recommend that you make a spreadsheet tracking which groups you are working with and where you are at in the process.

Make sure you do not delete any of your emails from the tour groups or bloggers you are going to work with. You may also want to make use of google calendar to track when you need to send interviews and guest posts to bloggers who need that material.

So far, working with five different tour groups and nine individuals, I have invested some 6-10 hours of work. I expect to invest another 4 or so hours before I’m finished setting up all of the tours.

Future posts in this series will cover specific tour groups and the types of blog tours available for someone releasing a novel.

The State of the Union — Blog Tour Monday

I was invited to come play on a blog tour Monday thingie — I’m not even sure what it is, except people getting together and blogging about writing on a Monday. But hey, I like writing, and I like blogging, so I figured why not? Nothing to lose, and a chance to procrastinate a chance to let you all know what I’ve been up to lately.

David Ellis invited me to come play. He’s one of my clients this year. Go say hi to him!

The biggest thing on my plate is the publication of Inquisitor on May 16, 2014. I’m really hoping this urban fantasy does well… and not just because I need to rewire my house.

The second biggest thing is that I need to rewire my house. Badly. The breaker needs rewired to industry standards, and I have several blown outlets, and an entire circuit that no longer works upstairs. Bathing will be a candlelit affair for the next few months. Why? I’m a writer. While my husband makes good money, we don’t make ‘drop $10k on electrician repairs on a dime’ good money. I’m increasingly making better money as I release more books and get a feel for how to reach out to readers, but I don’t make good money. Yet. I may never. But, at least until the foreseeable future, I will be spending all of the royalty money I do make on fixing my house.

On days like today, I wish I had a winning ticket for the lottery jackpot. Then I could completely renovate my house room by room.

At least it wasn’t the circuit with the fridge or the freezer. It is, however, the circuit with my office. Cue sadface and saying goodbye to all of my plans for spring writing in my office on my laptop.

Well, okay, I’ll buy a really long extension cord so I can run power to my office that way to charge my laptop as I use it. Maybe not entirely goodbye to my spring writing plans.

For other writing-related news, I’ll be having another installment of my Orangeberry blogging tour review in the next month or so. We started a new phase of promotion, so I’ll have more data for you soon. I’m also gearing up for another blog tour with a different group for Storm Without End.

Speaking of Storm Without End, I have over 75,000 words of Storm Surge drafted. Storm Surge will be the next novel I release this year. I’m tentatively planning on August. Right before I go on vacation to Las Vegas. Worst plan ever. 

City of Clocks is over 20k drafted now, and it will likely become the third novel I release this year, leaving me in a mad scramble to finish Royal Slaves for the end of the year.

On a client editorial front, I have a lot of second reads to do, and with the problem with the wiring in the house, I didn’t get anything done today. Cue more panic and things.

In short, I’m going to fondly remember 2014 as the year I completely lose my sanity. You’ll find a lump of something gibbering in a corner. Go ahead and ignore it.

It is just me.

I’m tagging Lisa Cohen & Ryan Toxopeus for next week. Why? Because they’re really cool writers. It doesn’t hurt they’re past and current clients.

Publisher Announcement: Missing Chapter in Blades of the Old Empire

Angry Robot has released an announcement regarding a missing chapter in its newly-released title, Blades of the Old Empire.

Read more directly from Angry Robot here.

kboards promotions: A Review

kboards is a popular forum for kindle fans, both readers and writers. They offer advertisement on their forums, their blog, their facebook page, and their twitter account.

I purchased their one-day package, which cost me $20.00.

Setup for the promotion was extremely simple. I was given a very short list of things needed in order for the book to be promoted. The folks at kboards handle the creation of all advertising material from your amazon buy link.

I did this promotion in conjunction with a countdown deals.

Turnaround time was extremely fast for the promotion. It was live within 48 hours of me submitting my order, which makes it an excellent immediate boost — if your book matches reading desires of their audience.

While I don’t want to say this service was a wash, I only recouped 50% of my investment. Unlike the other tours I have done, there is little interest in ‘backlog’ of posts, and a lower SEO value.

This is not a service I will be purchasing again, and I don’t really recommend it — at least not for someone who writes epic and traditional fantasy. Other genres might enjoy more success, but while kboards does have a 50,000+ following on facebook, it didn’t result in as large of a burst of sales as I needed to make this promotion worthwhile. The SEO benefits from one site linking to a product without a review isn’t significant enough, in my opinion, to make up for the lack of sales.

Considering I ran this in conjunction with a countdown deal to optimize the sales, I don’t think a longer run or different promotion package would make a significant impact on how successful using kboards for advertising is.

Another mark against this service, in my opinion, is the lack of discussion and conversation created by their promotions. This lack of conversation prevents the books featured from being really branded, lowering the value of the service for those who are interested in establishing their brand.

kboards might be a useful venue for romance authors or for popular, established authors.

Writing Product Review: Swarovski Crystal Pens

Swarovski Crystalline Lady Ballpoint Pen Rose Pearl, Vintage Rose (1097050)

It seems only appropriate that the very first pen I review is the one I write most of my books with. I have tried out many different pens over the years, and have yet to fulfill my life-long quest to find the perfect pen. Swarovski has come close with two different models of pens I have fallen hopelessly in love with. They aren’t perfect, but that’s okay. This is the closest to perfect I’ve found.

TL;DR Version: I really recommend these pens.

I will start with the pen I usually write with. I have it in several different colors, but I’ll focus on the one I bought first. The pink pen, imaged above, is Swarovski’s breast cancer awareness pen. All profits from the sale of these pens, when purchased in store, go to breast cancer research. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, since breast cancer is something that has impacted most people, myself included. So, when I went to purchase my first pen, the Swarovski ambassador (I believe that’s what they’re called in store) recommended the pink one.

So I purchased the pink one. It doesn’t hurt that I really like pink.

I have written two completed novels (by hand) with these pens and their refills. I have also written large chunks of other books with these pens.

The Design

Swarovski USB Crystalline Pen White Pearl 1116963

These pens come in two different styles. The first style is imaged above, featuring a slim shaft designed for female hands. I mean, let’s face it. It’s a pen filled with lab-created crystals. The target audience is women. The shaft is a good length for someone with small hands, allowing precise control of writing.

The second pen, featured here, has a very special surprise located within the shaft of the pen. It is a USB drive! And a pen! All in one! This is my go-to travel pen. I load up all of my novels on it as a backup, as well as a zip file of scrivener and my license key. This way, I can access my novels anywhere I go. Now, granted, if I’m going to a less-than-savory part of town, I leave my precious pen at home.

In the image here, you can see where the USB is by the black line. When the USB is not out, the silver completely pairs to the white part (or fuchsia, as my specific pen is) so the elegance of the pen is not ruined by the presence of the USB part of the pen.

The USB stick features 4 gb of memory, which is overkill for the standard novelist.

The Writing

This is the most important part of the review, right? Just how well do these pens write? Well, let’s just say I’ve introduced this pen to some gentlemen I know. I had them give it a whirl.

Despite all of its feminine charms, the pen was impressive enough they’d consider writing with it.

This amuses me to no end. In short, this is a good product. The pen uses Schmidt pen refills. These are easy to replace when they run out. You unscrew the cap of the pen, pull out the refill, and separate it from the little plastic cap on the end of the refill. You put the cap on the new refill, put it back in the pen, and screw it into place. Done! The first time you take off the cap from the refill (it screws into place) you may need to use a pair of pliers. I have had to use pliers twice on the four pens I own. But, once you take it off the first time, it unscrews easily for very quick replacement of the cartridge.

I find I can get anywhere from 50-100 moleskine pages worth of writing on a single refill, which costs about $1 to replace. One thing you may want to be aware of with the brand-new pens is that age matters on these refills. If the pen has been sitting in the store or a warehouse for a long time, you may not get as much longevity in the first ink cartridge. Buy a few extras when you first get your pen, so you don’t run out of ink at a bad time!

The ink flows reliably, though sometimes I need to take my nail and clean the ball. Since this is a ballpoint pen, this is a universal problem with all ballpoint pens I’ve encountered. The pen will, over time, pick up all of the little bits of crud on the paper (no matter what paper you use) and potentially clog the ball. This is fixed with a quick drag of the nail over the ballpoint.

Another good thing about this pen is that the ink really does last until the dredges of the cartridge. However, once it gets near the end of its lifespan, the pen has a tendency to get spotty and temperamental. This is when I replace the cartridge for a new one.

I buy my pens and my refills directly in store. The slim-shaft pens come in a velvet sheath. The USB pen comes in a proper box. If you go into a store, request a sheath used with the slim-shaft pens. My store was more than happy to give me one, as I like putting all of my pens their little cases before storing them in my purse.

The Materials

These pens are made of lightweight metal with enameled surfaces. So far as I can tell, the clear casing for the 200 crystals is a strong plexiglass or resin, not a cheap plastic or easily-broken glass. The pen is very durable. I’ve dropped my pens multiple times, because I’m clumsy, and have not scratched the ‘glass’ or the enamel of the pen.

Price vs Value

At $35 and $75+, these pens aren’t cheap. However, the value and reliability for what you get is stellar. Considering the low costs for the refills, these pens are a much better investment than many others I’ve experimented with, which have refill costs of $5+.

A Little More about the Refills

As I mentioned before, the Schmidt Mini Ball Pen Refills cost about $1.00 each at regular retail price, and are available in store or online. I usually buy 5-10 refills at a time due to how often I am writing by hand. I would not purchase refills in more than a three to six month supply to prevent problems with the flow of ink. (Ink, despite common belief, does go stale!) It’s very difficult to revitalize the ink in a cartridge like this, so I would use your best judgement on the frequency of purchasing your refills.

Writing Product Review: Semikolon Tabs, Assorted Colors

Semikolon Sticky Tab Markers, Assorted Colors (5100002)

As a writer and editor, I use many different writing products on a daily basis. When I started transcribing Inquisitor, I decided I would use these Semikolon tabs in assorted colors I received for Christmas. One of my closest friends knew my favored product of choice is no longer manufactured, and took it upon herself to try to find a replacement for them.

I have a love-hate relationship with these tabs. In the real life, the colors are not nearly as neon, which I like a lot better than the overly-bright presentation on amazon’s product site. Please see the pictures below of the tabs taken with my not-fancy camera in horrible lighting. (I want a camera box for products. Oh well.)

The Adhesive

(c) RJ Blain

Sticky tabs are only as useful as the adhesive used to keep them stuck to their partner pages, and here is where the Semikolon sticky tabs really shine. It’s like the super-glue of tabs. So far, once I stick these tabs to something, they stay stuck… unless I purposefully remove them. I can do this three or four times before the adhesive gives up the ghost and mocks me for my perfectionism.

Appearance

Almost as pretty as my believed Note Tabs. Almost. Colors are nice and appealing.

Materials

(c) RJ Blain

This is where the ‘hate’ part of this review comes into play. While the stock for the notes is nice and thick — almost a card stock — it is an epic fail in how the adhesive bonds to the sticky tab beneath it. The result? Tearing. Lots and lots of tearing. Because the adhesive bonds right up to where the tab begins, I tear almost every single tab trying to get it out of its booklet. This is frustrating!!

The stock isn’t thick enough to make it resistant to potential curling, however, so this is something I’m wary of. That said, because I’m using them in moleskines, curling isn’t an issue. On research projects? It’ll be an issue. You can see a little bit of the curling on the Chapter Two tab pictured above.

The solution to these problems would be to either laminate/plasticize part of the stock, or use a much thicker, sturdier stock. As is, the stock is too thick to make good mid page markers. They’re also too large. But at the same time, they’re also too flimsy to be used as binder dividers or markers for file folders. They’re somewhere right between being ideal for either purpose.

Still, for a novelist marking chapters as I am, they work. They do the job. I’ll probably invest in another booklet of them when I go through all of these, if only because they are strong enough to withstand me grabbing the tab and flipping to the page in the moleskine.

Size

These are twice as large, approximately, as my beloved note tabs. This makes them a little awkward to use in my moleskines. Without the transparent foot on the tab, I have to peel the tab off to see the text beneath, so I have only been marking the chapters when I no longer need to reference the writing on the page. This is definitely a con for me, and unfortunately, Semikolon doesn’t offer a smaller sized sticky tab — yet.

Conclusion

For the number of tabs you receive, this is a reasonably priced product. The ‘booklet’ the sticky tabs come in is clever, letting me store them in an attractive book rather than in a loose mess like other brands. This is majorly appealing for me. Still, that said, this product could use improvement, so I’d rank this as a 3*. Tearing most of the tabs is a pain in the rump, and it’s very difficult to get them out of the booklet without them ripping.

While I’d buy them again, I’m not going to necessarily jump up and down and recommend every writer gets them for their arsenal.

 

Release Announcement: Inquisitor – Coming May 16, 2014!

Cover art by Chris Howard

When Allison is asked to play Cinderella-turned-Fiancee at a Halloween ball, the last thing she expected was to be accused of murder on the same night. She has to find the killer and quick, or she’ll be put to death for the crimes she didn’t commit. To make matters worse, the victims are all werewolves.

On the short list of potential victims, Allison has to act fast, or the killer will have one more body to add to his little black book of corpses.

There’s only one problem: One of the deaths has struck too close to home, and Allison’s desire for self-preservation may very well transform into a quest for vengeance…

Inquisitor is an Urban Fantasy. It will release on amazon May 16, 2014.

Reading Addiction Book Tours: A Review

Reading Addiction Book Tours is the second book touring group I have experimented with, and I think it’s my favorite by far. It is run by a delightful lady named Cami Hensley. She’s a gem to work with, professional, and quick to respond to questions. When she says she is going to do something, you can expect it to be done quickly and efficiently.

I definitely appreciate that out of a book tour operator. I picked the blog tour host image for this page because Reading Addiction is one of the tour groups inviting all bloggers who love books to come and participate. You see a book tour you’re interested in? There is a form you can use here to sign up and get invitations. There is also a page you can check out to find out what books Reading Addiction is currently promoting.

TL;DR Version of this Review: Recommended. I’m using this group again.

I chose my first tour to be a 40 stop Mega Blitz Tour. This promotion puts a book feature of a novel, complete with excerpt, book cover, bio, and book description, on 40+ blogs over a single day. I did this in conjunction with a countdown deals promotion. I paid $40 for the promotion, at a discount during a sale. It is normally $50.

Signing up for a Promotion

The signup process is extremely simple. Fill out the info form on the Reading Addiction Book Tour Page, submit, and wait for a response from Cami. Cami will talk with you about the tour options, answer any questions you have, and give you a form to fill out relating to your book. Once you have selected the package that suits your needs, you’ll confirm with Cami, and she’ll send you an invoice for the tour.

Setting up the Promotion

Because I’ve already been involved in a book tour for this novel, I already had a lot of the promotional material prepared. I blatantly stole the material from my other tour, made adjustments to match what I needed for the Reading Addiction tour, and sent it over to Cami.

She handled everything else.

What is needed for a Promotion

In the case of the Reading Addiction tour, I needed the cover art, book description (blurb), bio, photograph, and excerpts from the novel. I sent Cami a selection of five or so excerpts, and she picked the one she felt would work best for the tour.

For longer tours, I definitely suggest going overkill on the amount of materials you send over; Cami and her bloggers know their readership better than you do, and it is in your best interest to let them do their job and cherry pick the material they think will work best.

The Impact of the Promotion

Book blog tours are a good way to get people talking about you and your book. I discussed this in the Orangeberry services review, and it’s worth mentioning it again. Essentially, you’re paying a group to advertise and market for you, but in a way where you’re starting conversations, not just blasting out ads to the world at random.

Sometimes those conversations will move from the blogscape to twitter or facebook. Sometimes the conversations start on the blog and stay there. Orangeberry has a strong twitter focus, so the conversations tend to happen on twitter versus on the blog.

Reading Addiction is the opposite. They have a really strong, and communicative, blogging following. So, comments are more likely to happen on the blogs. Reading Addiction also does have a notable twitter following, but this is dependent on which tours decide to pick up the novel being promoted. While twitter didn’t get quite as active as with Orangeberry, it was active enough I noticed it, and at lease a few of the Reading Addiction bloggers had 5,000+ twitter followings.

Reading Addiction provides a list of links directly to the posts added to the promotion, which is a great and easy way for me to see who is talking about my book.

I’m going to showcase one example of a conversation started because of one of the blog posts from the Mega Blitz Promo Tour. Seeing this sort of conversation start made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I only wish I was brave enough to say hi to those folks, but I didn’t want to butt in on their fun, even though those feelings and thoughts were very much at the heart of why I picked Chris Howard to create my cover art.

The Sales

This is where things get a bit muddy. Tracking the sales directly from this book promotion hasn’t been easy. Book tours tend to use affiliate linking to help make it worthwhile for their bloggers. As I believe in supporting the bloggers who are helping me, I didn’t use my affiliate link to promote the book. I let the bloggers use their affiliate links.

However, I did see a spike in sales on the day the tour was running. I would estimate an income of approximately 30-40% of the base investment on the day the Mega Blitz promotion ran.

This is a little better than Orangeberry’s performance. However, Orangeberry is a one stop per day tour versus a blast. This impacts how the tour performs. That said, I would estimate that the number of sales between the two promotions have been similar, although Orangeberry’s is a patience game versus immediate gratification.

I expect I will see an increase of sales as a result of both tours for some time. Unfortunately, my data, being that I don’t have affiliate links or singular advertising, will be skewed by the existence of the blog tours.

That said, the only form of promotion I am doing at the moment for Storm Without End is in the form of book blog tours and one instance of a sale announcement with kboards. This makes it easier to determine the true value of a book tour compared to a novel that hasn’t had a tour promoting it.

Conveniently, I have February’s numbers for sales:

Storm Without End: Promoted through 2 book tours, 1 kboard announcement: 61 sales

The Eye of God: No promotion: 28 sales.

Most of these sales were garnered through the countdown deals promotion. Prior to the promotion, Storm Without End had 9 sales at $5.99, and The Eye of God had 5 sales at $4.99.

I linked both novels to Google+, Twitter, and Facebook at the same time in the same post, so both books had identical visibility on the self-promotion front.

In Conclusion…

If I went in expecting an immediate profit or at least making it even, I’d be disappointed. But, there is more value to these tours than immediate income. I’m viewing all of the tours as a multi-pronged marketing tool to accomplish branding, sales, and hype.

In short, I really liked working with Reading Addiction. Cami’s a dream, and I’m very pleased with the results.

Orangeberry Book Tours – A Review of Many Parts – Part 2

(c) Orangeberry Book Tours

This is part two of my progress with Orangeberry Book Tours, an online promotion venue for authors.

Orangeberry is a high ranking book tour group in Alexa, Google, and other search engines. This gives the group a certain advantage when it comes to natural search promotion in addition to the benefits of working with a book tour group.

This post will go into my impressions about my three month book tour with them. At the time I’m writing this, the tour is halfway finished.

Performance Comparison

In order to get a good image of the impact of a blog tour, I feel it’s necessary to have something to compare the performance of the campaign against. In my case, I’m comparing my debut novel, which did not have any promotions done for it against my second novel, which is the one participating in the blog tour.

Prior to the blog tour, both novels were performing roughly on par. Storm Without End has always had a slightly higher performance than The Eye of God. However, this slightly increased performance has been counted in handfuls. By that, I mean a book here, a book there, for a total of a handful of books when there are no other promotions running.

Storm Without End has a tendency to do very well during countdown deal promotions, whereas The Eye of God does not perform quite as well.

January was the first month the campaign went underway. Technically, the blog tour started just after Christmas. However, I am not including the days right after Christmas because numbers were skewed for both Storm Without End and The Eye of God due to Christmas sales and gifting.

Without any promotion beyond the single book tour, here are the raw sales numbers for January.

Storm Without End sold 26 copies at $5.99 each.

The Eye of God sold 14 copies at $4.99 each.

Generally, a $5.99 sell is harder than a $4.99 sell. However, Storm Without End is a longer novel than The Eye of God. I feel this is a factor in the differential between the sales. In addition, I suspect the covers are playing a notable factor, as well as the description. For whatever reason, the cover and description pairing of Storm Without End has a stronger curb appeal.

I have recently adjusted The Eye of God’s cover, and I will be adjusting the description. I’m also going to be doing some minor editorial to smooth out some of the more common complaints with the novel.

However, I digress: Even with these factors put aside, while Storm Without End has always had minor sales advantages to The Eye of God, without promotion on either novel, they ranked very similar, and had very similar sales figures.

January saw a notable increase in the base sales figures. This could be accounted to the one thing that I was doing differently between the two novels: The Book Tour.

Notable Observations

I’ll start this with saying that I’m very pleased with how Orangeberry Book Tours has been handling something as long and complex as Storm Without End’s tour. The operators check to make certain the blogs are running the promised pieces. While they don’t list directly to each blog post, the URL of the site and the date the piece is supposed to appear is clearly listed.

My tour consists of 128 stops (as currently planned.) The interesting thing about Orangeberry Book Tours is that this number increases as more blogs agree to do reviews. The number of book reviews is estimated, but I will likely receive 60 reviews from various blogs hosted around the world.

The downside? Because the tour is so massive, the blogs aren’t required to start showing the reviews until towards the end of the tour. So, it’ll likely be another month and a half before I start seeing reviews come in.

I went into this book tour understanding this is how this group operates.

That’s an important distinction. Many authors have an expectation that book reviews will start pouring in at the start of their tour. As a reviewer, I totally understand how overwhelming it can be to have a large review list. I still have a few books I need to address myself. (Eep.)

I would like to also observe that all of the major blog tours I have looked into share one feature: They form cliques among themselves, with each tour having a set stable of blogs who promote many of their books.

This actually isn’t a bad thing, especially in terms of search engine optimization. I’d also like to point out that while varied content is important, you don’t have to make every post unique — unless you want to. It helps, a little, but even duplicate posts and excerpts function for SEO purposes.

The Value of a Book Blog Tour

While I ultimately want to find new readers and sell copies of my book, a book blog tour serves more purposes than simply producing sales. If my only focus was on sales, the investment I’ve made at Orangeberry would be a bust. However, when I look at Orangeberry and any other book blog tour, there are a few things that give it ‘unwritten, untraceable’ value.

An Online Presence

Establishing an online presence is a major issue for debut and budding authors. Many authors say you need 4-6+ books to be successful. While I do agree that it takes this many novels to really begin reaching critical potential mass, one novel can make a big difference, especially if you’re doing long term book promotion. Long term book promotion includes things like blog posts, interviews, and book excerpts. Anything that can get eyes focused on your book — and have a long shelf life — can help build your brand.

In order to build an online presence, people need to know you exist. To do that, you need to spread yourself around the internet and become known where your readers are.

That’s the point of doing a book blog tour. You’re gaining exposure for yourself and your book(s). With the appropriate linking, you can also begin building your social media platforms.

Boosting Twitter and Facebook

Orangeberry is one of the groups offering giveaway management services to those in a book tour with them. Partnering your book blog tour with a giveaway can help get your social media accounts hooked up with many new readers and begin the progress of building a fan base.

One and a half months in, and I have already noticed this working. My twitter account has had several hundred new people add it since the start of the campaign. My facebook page has more than doubled since the start of the promotion.

This is a major accomplishment, as it puts me on the map with a few more readers. Will any of these people end up buying my books?

Only time will tell. Until then, because they’re watching me, the chance exists. That wasn’t there before.

The Value of the Brand

In conclusion, building a brand is one of the key benefits to a book blog tour, and Orangeberry book tours is very good at getting the book out there on high ranking sites in search engines. This makes people aware of me and my book. Maybe it won’t lead to a sale right now, but it could lead to a reader or a fan later, when I have become more widespread.

While it can be viewed as sad by some factions of society, familiarity with a brand often equals trust in a brand. For a novelist, the name is the brand, and the more common the name appears, the more likely it will become trendy or interesting to acquire a book by that author.

There is something to be said for the bandwagon when it comes to books.

A Book Blog Tour is Not Enough Alone

This is a lesson I’m starting to learn one and a half months into this tour. Doing this book tour is already showing results and could continue to show results for months, if not years.

I don’t want to say it is an eggs in one basket situation. It’s not. A writer can have success with a single book blog tour. However, book blog tours bring hype and awareness to your books.

You have to rise to the challenge. If you’re promoting your twitter and facebook accounts, you need to make these accounts interesting and engaging for readers. You need to make the people who like the types of books you write want your book in particular.

This means forging connections with them.

A Book blog tour, like Orangeberry, gives you the tools to connect with readers. Once you have the readers’ attention, however, it is up to you to convert a reader into a fan.

Orangeberry has, so far, done exactly as advertised. They have put my books in front of readers. They have upped my visibility in search engines. (I put this to a test with some search terms, and did indeed find my book through the larger blogs on the tour — mission accomplished.)

So far, so good.

Orangeberry’s Impact on Starting Conversations about my Book

One of the goals of a book blog tour is to start conversations about my book. It is to form a brand for me, as an author, and for the title in particular. At this point in the tour, my book has appeared 55 different times. This is excluding book reviews scheduled that have not appeared yet. This includes twitter blasts (or large-scale promotion runs on a 100,000+ follower twitter account), ad promos on websites, guest posts, author interviews, book features, and book excerpts.

One of Orangeberry’s greatest strengths is its twitter presence. Since I started my tour with Orangeberry, my book and twitter account have been RT’d and promoted hundreds of times.

My twitter feed explodified. That’s not even a word, and I don’t care. It explodified. Between the giveaway and the tours linking the promotions, and people favoriting the posts being promoted, there has been a lot of exposure on twitter of my book and my name as an author. Couple this with the hundreds of new followers on twitter, and the results in this regard have been fantastic. There has also been quite a bit of feedback into Facebook as well.

What there hasn’t been is a lot of comments about the posts. I’m not surprised by that. I have a lot of people who come to my blog but rarely comment, and I expect it is no different for these bloggers and their sites as well. I get thousands of hits a month, and only a handful of comments usually. Reviews tend to generate more actual discussion than book features, in my opinion.

That’s one thing I wish Orangeberry’s blog groups had more of: Truly active commenting blogs.

But, it isn’t unusual and I’m not surprised. It’s an ‘I wish’ item that isn’t a deal breaker.

Making the Most of the Tour

I’m a very hands-on person. If I can find a way to make a mess of things, I will. I want to make my tour do well. In order to do that, I need to make effort.

So, what I have decided to do is start a pinterest board showcasing all of the appearances my book has made. I am pinning each and every place the book tour goes, so I can keep track of it and maybe drive traffic to these blogs.

They’re helping me, so it’s only fair I do my part and help them. Pinterest is a great way an author can showcase appearances and potentially garner a little favor with book bloggers and review groups, too.

It makes these people and reviewers more likely to consider working with me at the very small price of hitting a button on my browser. Just a thought for those of you who are considering a book blog tour of your own.

Final Thoughts

Was Orangeberry Book Tours the right decision for me and my book? The unfortunate truth? Only time will tell.

But, so far, I’m feeling rather good about the results of the book tour. Sadly, I’m muddying the waters as I’m expanding my marketing endeavors to other tour groups and promotion venues when I have a little spare change I can dedicate towards establishing my brand.

Still, a tour of this scale is a risk, of that there is no doubt. I’m just grateful I have started to see actual results. I know some people who have tried tours with no notable increase of sales or results.