Six months ago, I went to a friend’s book signing event. I looked around in this large chain store and was amazed by the small turn out. In fact, had this USA Today best-selling author not been stationed near the coffee bar, there would have been eight people to welcome her release. Even though she performed a reading and answered questions, she sold only five books. Now I’ve been told this isn’t typical. Should authors send out invitations in their communities, they might sell as many as two hundred books. Yet as I considered the possibility of sitting at a table for hours on end, hoping someone would notice me, I came to the conclusion there had to be a better way.

I contacted Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours to connect my book with interested readers through the medium of weblogs and personal websites. In a nutshell, this tour consists of visiting a given number of websites in a given about of time, the same as I would do at stores during a real book tour. At these stops, I might be interviewed, take over a site for the day, answer questions from readers, get my book reviewed, or do all four.

Is it true that word-of-mouth is the best means of advertising? I would venture to say yes, but only time will tell. As of today, my travel arrangements are confirmed, I’m on the road daily, and there wasn’t any need pack a bag. 😀

Footnote: Looking to create your own book tour? Check out http://blogsearch.google.ca/?hl=en&tab=wb Put your (sub)genre(s) into the search window and it’ll bring up blogs with your genre of interest. Check the results out one by one and rank them by their Alexa ranking, from highest to lowest, and you’ll have a nice list of most popular blogs in your genre(s) to choose from that you can start approaching to ask about guest spots.