Virtual Book Tour: 7 Reasons to Market Your Book in Bunny Slippers

A virtual book tour is a good book promotion option, says publicity expert Sandra Beckwith.

She told me that she sometimes asks authors what they’re doing to promote their books.

“Oh, I have a book signing coming up in a couple of weeks,” is sometimes the answer.

There’s nothing wrong with a well-organized book signing. But life is too short to hang your book promotion on one or a few book signings — or even an entire book tour.

In this week’s Marketing Savvy podcast, I talked at length to Sandy about a virtual book tour, which is sometimes called a book blog tour. A virtual book tour allows a writer to reach a book’s specific target market at the author’s own pace and schedule.

Here are seven reasons to use a virtual book tour to promote your book:

1. A Virtual Book Tour Saves Your Time

Face it. Book promotion is going to take a time investment to promote your book, if you want to sell more than a few copies. But a blog book tour will save you time.

With a book signing, the worst case is sitting around for a couple of hours while people avoid you and the bookstore staff ignore you. The best case is being involved in a well-organized reading with a good crowd, who all go home at the end of the night, maybe a few of them having bought a book. The best case is very good and can be a valuable part of your marketing plan.

But with a virtual book tour, your time investment comes in researching sites where your target market gathers, preparing content, and then distributing it. You can do these tasks in your own time, at your own schedule, in scattered time blocks, with no commute and no sitting around in a strange place waiting for someone else to show up.

You could be writing your next book.