How I Went From DREADING Marketing to Loving It

When I started on this publishing journey, I assumed I would hate the promotional side of being an author. Marketing, business-y stuff? Eeeewww, right?


Then I set up my first blog tour. It was just a little 4-day tour, a precursor to a larger tour for my book launch. And I fell in love with book bloggers and the whole process of book blog tours. I've since set up 5 blog tours and nearly 200 blog appearances.

Let me start at the beginning....

Prior to publishing a book, I had zero business/marketing experience and really, no desire for any. My background is in science. I'm a Medical Writer and fiction author. I don't like approaching strangers. I HATE trying to persuade people to do something and the thought of having to "sell" anything kinda just fills me with dread.

When it came time to start promoting my book, I knew I wanted to do a blog tour. Not to mention that my publisher practically insisted on it. I was wavering between doing it myself or paying someone else to do it. But I figured, hey, I might as well give it a shot before I pay someone else my hard-earned money.

I am so, SO glad I set up and ran my tours myself. By doing my own tours, I established relationships with lots of book bloggers, many of whom have become great friends and some of my most loyal supporters. I'm not sure that could have happened if I'd hired a "middle man" to manage my tours.

Also? I discovered I'm very good at creating, recruiting for, and executing book blog tours. SURPRISE! I don't hate book promotion! :D

I've Figured Out A System

So how did I, a soon-to-be-published newb author no one had ever heard of do things like
Get over 130 reviewer requests for an ARC of my yet-unpublished, debut bookRecruit so many tour hosts I ended up tripling the size of my tourGet bloggers to commit to reviewing my bookBefore I contacted a single blogger, I spent some time thinking about my approach, trying to understand what book bloggers value, and figuring out how to create a tour that felt rewarding for the bloggers and for me. This has paid off HUGE for me and it made recruiting for tour hosts extremely easy.

Now, when I put out a call for tour hosts, I get more responses than I know what to do with. I have tons of book blogger friends on Twitter and FB who are are always ready to help me. And to be perfectly candid, I adore them. They work their butts off, all for the love of books. Most of them get nothing in return except free books to read and review, yet running a good book blog requires massive amounts of time and stellar organization.

I get many questions from author friends about blog tours, everything from how to recruit blog tour hosts to how to get bloggers to review books to how to structure giveaways.

I'm always happy to answer questions and talk about blog tours - I LOVE talking about them - and I'm excited to have the opportunity to share everything I know about blog tours in a webinar hosted by StoneHouse University: 10 Steps to a Successful Blog Tour. It's $50 for 2 hours, with plenty of time to ask questions. If you're thinking about a blog tour but don't know how to begin or how to do it, you'll get everything you need in this course. You'll learn the essential steps to planning and executing your own successful blog tour, plus tips for building relationships with book bloggers and creating a tour that stands out from the rest.

StoneHouse University Webinar: 10 Steps to a Successful Blog Tour

Also in my series on blog tours:
Why Do a Book Blog Tour? 4 Reasons

Author K.C. Neal :: Pyxis Series :: YA ParanormalPlease visit http://kcneal.blogspot.com/ for more info and features. Thanks for reading!