I never believed that blog book tours work.
A blog book tour, for the uninitiated, is when an author appears on as many other blogs as possible, promoting their book. Sort of like actors doing a talk show circuit to promote a new movie.
I've never tried it before, but I came by my beliefs fairly. A few years ago, I had a contest with my friend and fellow author (not to mention self-promotional genius) MJ Rose. Our contest, if memory serves, was a virtual vs. physical book tour. She tried to make guest appearances on as many blogs as possible, while I tried to visit as many bookstores as possible.
I won. Not because MJ isn't an amazing marketer. But because this was 2006, and there weren't as many blogs, or blog readers, back then.
Well, now it's 2009, and I want to give it a shot.
As I've said ad nauseum, people don't like ads. They like information and entertainment.
So I'm going to give it to them. And I need your help.
I'm going to be contacting many of the blogs that I've linked to. Check the sidebar to see those blogs.
My blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, gets several hundred thousand unique hits a year. You can see by the FEEDJIT Live Traffic Map (that world map picture in the upper righthand corner) how many people are currently reading me.
Would you like my readers to become your readers? Here's how we can make that happen.
I invite you to invite me on your blog. You can interview me about anything at all, like promotion, or writing, or publishing. You can ask me to guest blog on specific topics. You can have me do a meme list. The sky is the limit.
Then, in March. I'm not going to blog anything new. Instead, every day I'm going to post a link and tell my readers to go to your blog, where I'm appearing.
You know how blogging works. You'll get a lot of new hits from new readers, and if they like you, they'll bookmark you and return.
Besides linking to your blog on my blog (which gets 700 to 1000 hits a day), I'll link to your blog on my Twitter (383 friends), on my Facebook (1641 friends) and on my MySpace (13218 friends.)
Win-win. You get new readers. I reach new demographics.
Will this work? Hell if I know. But in my last newsletter, I asked for fifty people to review my latest novel, and I got well over a hundred responses.
If I can fill up every day in March with guest blog spots, I think it would mean more traffic for everyone involved.
So over the next few days, I'll be contacting bloggers to ask to guest post.
If you'd like me to guest post on your blog, contact me and we'll set a date in March.
I love experiments like this. If it fails, authors will know that it's a big waste of time and effort. But if it works, we could actually be laying down the framework for a way to self-promote that doesn't involve airplanes, hotels, author escorts, or big bucks.
Email me at haknort(at)wowway.com if you want to give this a shot.