How Does a Book Tour Work?

A book tour actually involves various book publicity events scheduled for an author. These events may include book signings, conferences, and interviews with media. They can be local, statewide, national, or international. All of this depends upon the travel budget available to the author.

The purpose of a book tour is very diverse. On one hand it is focused on selling books. On the other hand this type of tour publicizes the author. Overall book tours are all about marketing and advertising.

Having a publicist’s involvement can be helpful with a book tour.

When an author has a publicist assist with arranging a book tour, things are much simpler. The publicist sets up book signing events, media connections, and company appearances. The book signings are typically through major bookstore chains or independent stores. These are opportunities for an author to be seen by the public. They are also lucrative avenues to sell books.

There are publicists who work to make media connections for authors. This may materialize in the form of a television interview or a radio interview. These most often are local outlets used to notify the community the author is in about the book release. This is one of the big ways authors stir up publicity for their work.

Every publicist has their own connections. Because of this, authors are able to travel quite a bit to advertise their work. Regarding the travel budget, the expense would fall to the author. If this is not possible, the book tour would be severely limited.

Publishers that pay authors advances often expect the author to use these funds to promote the book. They expect the advance to be used for travel and book tours. I personally have a problem with this. If you are going to pay for the marketing, why do you need a traditional publisher?

Authors without a specific budget or assistance will have to establish their own tours.

These tours will be limited to local venues and events. These tours also must be arranged by the author directly, instead of by the publicist. Although these are limited, they still can be quite successful. This is especially true when the author lives in or near a major metropolitan area. There are many local bookstores and conferences to attend. Using these locations can be productive ways to market your book.

Taking advantage of specific local and statewide events can be strategic marketing.

Every city and state has some events that take place annually. Many of these events are perfect venues for book marketing. Authors should make a point of participating in as many of these as possible. Some may require small fees to participate, but it will be worthwhile to gain publicity for your work. Small events can be quite productive when it comes to book sales. Authors usually have to supply their own copies in these instances.

If you need assistance with marketing your book, call us for a free consultation. We will help you market your book even if you published it with someone else’s assistance.

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Developing a Fictional Character

Image by Crystal Jing

Writers who prefer working in fiction often struggle with character development. The process itself can sound quite easy. But, in reality it takes a lot of work and consideration. It doesn’t matter which genre of fiction writing you’re doing. Developing quality characters who are memorable can be difficult.

Research and background work are crucial elements to developing fictional characters. Before you embark on either of these elements you will need to decide on the right form of fiction. For instance, you will need to determine if your story is a romance, or is it suspense. This is important information to begin with. Not only will it help to classify your book later on, but it will also assist you as you’re structuring your story line.

Once you have decided on a type of fiction, then you can proceed to work on your characters. Every author has a format to this process. Some choose their characters for specific reasons, or to represent real life people. No matter which of these is the case, working on good character development is paramount in fiction. The characters are, in essence, the instruments you will use to allow your book to take on personality.

Beginning this process with your story idea is a common way to develop fictional characters. If your idea involves an occurrence, even an actual one, using this will help you form characters. Authors often use events or relationships to provide the people in their novels. Names are typically changed as a part of the creative process, but the story can be representative of something which really took place.

This type of fictional character development is often easier than other processes. It can require nothing more than coming up with names for your characters. Other writers develop characters by first choosing a specific setting. These characters will be central to this locale. They are individuals who can be simply developed because of their origin.

An example of this would be if the characters are from the South. Depending on the city or state, you will be able to incorporate their surroundings into the characters. Your characters will not only tell your story, but answer questions about life in that place. Accents and customs of locations can really add a lot of depth to the overall story.

Many authors choose their characters because of preliminary research they have done. This is a scenario where the author has researched his or her idea. They have chosen a location and researched it, as well. Taking all of this information, the author then is able to develop the characters in their book.

Most authors will confess that a lot of their inspiration for fictional character development comes from real-life experiences. They take bits and pieces of people they’ve met and places they’ve visited, to assist in the process. Using this type of inspiration often results in some of the greatest fictional characters, because they are simpler to envision. These characters are also easy to write about.

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10 Tools for the Author on Twitter

Photo by Stitch

1. SocialOomph: There are not enough wonderful things to say about SocialOomph.  If you are managing multiple pages like a personal page, an author page, and a page for each of your novels, SocialOomph allows you to manage several accounts from one place.  It also helps you to remember to tweet, as you should tweet at least once a day to remind people that you are out there.  If you simply can’t remember to do so, you can set all of your tweets for the week or the month in one sitting, setting specific times and dates at which they will be posted to your account.

2. Automated DM: Social Oomph is a free service; however, for a small fee, you can set an automated Direct Message to be sent to any new followers, thanking them for following you, inviting them to join you on Facebook, or directing them to your website.

3. TwitLonger: You just can’t say it all in 140 characters?  Use TwitLonger, which allows you to post a long tweet; however, don’t allow yourself to get lazy and overuse it.  Make sure that the first words are compelling enough for people to click the link and read the full tweet, or its effectiveness is lost.

4. Qwitter: Qwitter allows you to find out who has “unfollowed” you on Twitter.  It is important to maintain a strong base of followers, so this may help you to evaluate the effectiveness or relevance of your tweets and re-strategize your Twitter presence.

5. @Mentions: Hitch your wagon to a star.  Whether they are a real celebrity, or just a Twitter celebrity, finding someone with a huge Twitter following, someone considered an authority in the literary world, or someone who is just plain famous and mentioning them on Twitter can be effective.  Don’t expect results, but it does happen once in awhile.  Scan through their Twitter feeds and see who is good about responding to or re-tweeting their fans.  Or find someone popular but not so popular that it is impossible for them to respond to everything that they receive.  Ex: Kim Kardashian is not likely to re-tweet you or respond, but Camille Grammer stays very on top of her Twitter mentions.  If you get re-tweeted or mentioned by someone with 10,000 or 100,000 followers, chances are, someone out of all of those people will follow you back.

6. Account Linking: You can link your Twitter account to automatically update your Facebook and vice versa; however, you should use caution in doing so.  A status update with hashtags and at-mentions is likely to annoy your Facebook friends and a Facebook status update will not do much to expand your reach on Twitter, as it is free of hashtags and at at-mentions.

7. The Twitter Updater: When you make changes to your blog, The Twitter Updater will automatically publish your Twitter account.

8. Twilert: Sends you an e-mail alert whenever someone tweets about your name, product, book, or a particular keyword.

9. Humor, Creativity, and Common Sense Tweeting something funny, clever, or eye-catching is a lot more likely to increase your re-tweeted tweets and get people to follow you, click your links, etc.  Don’t forget, people can use applications like Muuter to technically follow you but not actually have to hear from you, so make sure that you are a valuable part of their social media experience.

10. A social media professional. Twitter can be fun, rewarding, and a great tool to build your presence and customer base; however, it can also be confusing, time-consuming, and frustrating.  If you just don’t have the time or the skills, find a social media professional, Twitter jockey, or internet marketing company to take the guesswork out of Twitter.

Need help with writing, editing, publishing, or book marketing? thepublishingguru (at) gmail.com

How Authors Can Get More than 500 Friends in 30 Days

If you don’t have friends added to your friends list, being a part of a social networking site is rather pointless. On Facebook, you can be average or you can be a superstar. Obviously, since you are using Facebook for promoting yourself as an author, you want to be a superstar. You can achieve that status in as little as 30 days, but it does take a time commitment on your part.

First you should note that if you have fewer than 200 friends on Facebook, this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s an average thing. However, you want superstar status. So, this won’t do for you.

Once you have 500 friends, you are considered popular. People will gravitate to you. When you have between 800 and 1000 friends, you’re essentially a Facebook celebrity. Eventually, that’s what you should be working toward. For now, let’s concentrate on becoming popular, with 500 friends.

Do not use automated software that adds friends to your Facebook friends list. This defeats the purpose of social networking. Instead, do it the ‘hard way’. You will come to realize that the hard way really isn’t hard at all.

The first thing to do is to join all of the groups that you can find related to your subject or genre. There are plenty of them out there. Each time you join a group, send a friend request to all members of that group.

Not all members will accept the request, but the majority of them will. This can be a little time consuming, but it is well worth the effort in the end. This should easily net you 200 to 300 friends. Try to add no more than 20 new friends each day, for the full 30 days. Anymore than this might raise spammer flags with Facebook.

Once you’ve exhausted the groups, find other groups that are related to your subject or genre. For example, if you are in a mystery novel group, find mystery game groups, and start adding members as friends.

Use your existing website to get more friends, as well as your blog. Post your Facebook badge on your website and blog. Make a blog post and invite your readers to add you as a friend on Facebook. If you twitter, tell your followers to add you on Facebook. If you have a mailing list, send out a note and invite them to join you on Facebook.

Again, it does take a concentrated effort on your part, but it is well worth it in the end, and if you are dedicated, you absolutely will have more than 500 friends in less than 30 days, and if you want that superstar celebrity status at Facebook, you can continue to add new friends for an additional 30 days to reach that goal.

Need help with writing, publishing, or book marketing? thepublishingguru (at) gmail.com

How to Break Your Book into Chapters

The act of telling a story, though initiated and performed by the story teller, is actually a collaborative act between the teller of the story and the audience. The implications of the collaborative nature of storytelling is seen in many ways, and one of them is in the way story content is broken up into chapters.

For starters, the human attention span does have limits, and so chapter breaks are handy ways to allow the reader to pause if he wants to step away from the story with a temporary sense of completion. While it might seem inconsequential, it is actually vitally important for maintaining reader interest over the long haul of a novel. So there is a practical element to having chapter breaks.

How you organize the elements of the story into those breaks is actually a creative decision. Some stories are told with chapter breaks every couple of pages (or even more frequently). This constantly repeating use of breaks actually contributes (or detracts if mishandled) from the overarching story or message of the book itself. Frequent chapter breaks can connote a sense of panic, or lack of attention, or any number of things.

Conversely, long chapters with infrequent breaks can connote a sense of slowness or preference for the methodical, and this will be successful if it makes sense within the context of the story being told.

Many times, chapter breaks occur naturally around known life events, such as the end of a wedding party, or at a graveyard after the casket is lowered, or in the hospital after a baby is handed to her mother. Other times chapter breaks are intentionally inserted in the middle of the action, and lead to other chapters that are picking up after an abrupt ending.

Again, breaking your content into chapters should be done on the basis of alignment with the overall tone of the story and used as a pacing mechanism.