NAWW Member, Patrice-Anne Rutledge, shares tips on Virtual Book Tours: Reach Thousands of Potential Readers Without Leaving Home

A virtual book tour is an integral part of a comprehensive online book promotion campaign and can generate outstanding results in far less time than a traditional book tour. A virtual tour is similar to a traditional book tour except that the tour stops aren’t at physical bookstores but at websites or blogs. Online radio shows, podcasts, and teleseminars also make good virtual tour stops. The advantages of a virtual book tour are that they’re far less expensive than a traditional tour and offer the possibility of reaching far more people.

In general, an in-person bookstore visit attracts only a modest crowd unless you’re a well-known author. However, the results of a virtual tour remain available on most sites and blogs for a long time after the tour itself, making your information available to thousands of people including those who didn’t participate at the actual time of your tour. On a virtual book tour, you can:

– Act as a guest blogger on a blog
– Participate in an online chat
– Participate in a text-based, audio, or podcast interview
– Answer questions from site visitors
– Offer prizes or freebies to site visitors
– Have your book reviewed
– Post original content or a book excerpt

Here are three tips to ensure a successful virtual tour:

1. Select the Right Tour Stops

Choosing the right sites and blogs to visit on your virtual book tour is critical to its success. You probably already have some ideas about good candidates based on the sites that you already visit. To find others, first think carefully about the target audience you want to reach and then formulate keywords that relate to this audience and your book’s topic. From there, start searching for good prospects on:

– Major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN)
– Tagging and social bookmarking sites (Technorati and Del.icio.us)
– Blog directories (Google Blogsearch and Blogwise)
– Podcast directories (Yahoo! Podcasts and iTunes)

The number of visitors a target “tour stop” draws is also an important consideration. The more people you reach during your tour, the greater your chances for success. To determine how much traffic a site or blog receives, take a look at the statistics available at traffic monitors such as Metrics Market or TrafficEstimate. Also check out a site’s Google PageRank, available from the Google Toolbar.

2. Be Unique

Virtual book tours are still new enough to generate interest, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make an extra effort to come up with a unique angle for your tour.

Be creative. Don’t just give away a book; consider offering a big ticket item such as a free coaching session to entice potential readers on a high traffic site. Make a special offer to encourage visits to your own website, where visitors can sign up for your ezine and learn more about your book. Focus interviews and chats around topics that will generate buzz rather than simply focusing on you and your book.

By making each tour stop an event, you’ll draw a larger audience and generate more publicity and more profits.

3. Publicize Your Tour Everywhere

Again, the relative newness of a virtual book tour can make it easier to get publicity for your own tour, but you still need to get the word out. Here are several ideas that work well:

– Prominently feature your tour on your website, blog, and ezine, highlighting the benefits it provides
– Seek out promotional opportunities with any writing, publishing, or professional organizations to which you belong
– Ask your tour stop websites and blogs to promote their participation on your tour
– Publish a press release, optimized with keywords and links, through an online press distribution service to reach both the media and your target audience
– Post your press release on your website for ongoing promotion

A virtual book tour can generate buzz and book sales that extend far beyond the actual timeframe of your tour. Focus on your target audience, generate pre- and post-tour publicity, and then reap the rewards of your tour for months, or even years, to come.

Patrice-Anne Rutledge is the bestselling author of 24 books, a successful technology journalist, and an online book promotion expert. Her most recent book is The Web-Savvy Writer: Book Promotion With A High-Tech Twist, which shows authors how to profit from new technologies such as blogging, RSS, and podcasting. She has also written numerous books for imprints of Pearson, Macmillan, and Random House and has contributed to magazines, newspapers, and websites around the world. To learn more ways to promote your writing career online, visit her website at: www.websavvywriter.com.