Analysis of a Guest Blogging Specimen

Wow!
       What a ride! 
                    What a thrill! 
                                     What a Blog Tour!

Welcome to The Writing Bomb where our special guest, Dr. Diik Von Carelittle, will discuss the findings from his research regarding indie author guest blogging and the affects that blog tours can have on the human psyche and announce the winners of the Reunion Kindle Giveaway!

Jeff: Welcome, Doctor Diik. All of us at The Writing Bomb are very pleased to have you as our guest. Tell us what you've discovered in your studies.

Dr. Diik: Thank you. I'd be glad to. I'll begin by drawing your attention to exhibit A - Before and After photographs of our subject.

Before

Do you see the pictures to the right?  This is what happens when you go on a 45-day blog tour to promote your new book.  Your head spins until green fluid comes out of your ears, your eyes ooze like melting cheese and you start loosing your hair as fast as Donald Trump loses credibility in the presidential race. Notice the wrinkled forehead. Do you see the confusion in the subjects demeanor? Do you see the bags under his eyes and the facial deformations? These are all telltale signs that a writer has completed a 45-day blog tour.

This was a fine specimen for my research because he was in perfect condition beforehand. And now? Blaaaach!  He gives me the heebie geebies! Apparently, a blog tour that lasts more than 30 days can transform a normal author into someone quite problematic. This specimen is now edgy, deformed, indignant, paranoid and is showing signs of dementia.

After

Of course, he will heal in time. He's in our 10-step blogger recovery program! With a little time and TLC, he'll be back to his writerly self; you'll see.

Now about our specimen's blog tour...his 45-day, writing more than ever, meeting countless reviewers, exposing himself (ummm...in a good way), ginormous undertaking blog tour. Now that's a run on sentence if I've ever seen one. But who cares? If you can blog for 45-days straight you can have the keys to the city if you ask me.

Will he recover from the trauma? Well, that's up to him. You get what you put into the ten-step program, so we'll see how dedicated he is to healing.

Anyway, while studying this author who has asked to remain anonymous, we have found that there were several positive outcomes from his endeavor. There were also a few negatives. But overall, the subject managed to stay alive and as far as our research team is concerned that's all that really matters. Quality of life post blog tour is not our objective. We simply want to see results and log those findings into our data base. Subject need not be conscious for proper analysis of this information.

Here are a few of the benefits that we were able to extrapolate from our research:

• Exposure: Blog Tours are a great way for new/indie authors to get exposure and build a platform from the ground up. Several months ago, our subject didn't even have a twitter account. He had zero platform. He now has dozens of book bloggers waiting for his next book (Act of Vengeance, coming in late 2011). Furthermore, the authors book was exposed to tens of thousands of blog followers.

• Connections: The process of contacting book bloggers is a great way to make connections in the world of books. Book bloggers will refer you and your book to bloggers that they follow. To find similar bloggers in your genre simply investigate the blogs they follow.

• Personalize: A blog tour is a great way for you to share the message and story behind your book. Readers enjoy learning about the authors that they read through guest posts and interviews. It enhances the reading experience.

• Grow: Guest blogging is also a great way to show blog readers that you are creative and friendly. As a result, you might find that your blog will grow as your new audience looks into your blog or website. Our patient shown above gained about 50 blog followers over the course of 45 days.

• New Fans: Blog tours sell books and continue the selling momentum after you've exhausted your personal fan base (family and friends). This can propel you into a whole new readership. Many of our subject's most dedicated blog-tour followers were new fans that found him on the tour. When a fan likes your book, he or she will talk about it and recommend it to their reader friends.

• Reviews: Book bloggers write book reviews and good reviews sell books. A good review wins the trust of someone considering a new author. We can not emphasize the importance of getting reviews...NOT after your book goes on sale...but before!!!! This way when you launch your book, your family, friends and new fans can be confident that your book is a good one. Our specimen began his blog tour 15 days before the book launch. He began querying reviewers over 30 days before the tour began. The reviewers at the beginning of the tour were the first to post reviews, the others followed. Note: He had zero contacts when he began approaching book bloggers. 

• SEO: Many book bloggers have a lot of followers. These followers will take note of your book, add it to their "to-read list" and then refer back to the blog when they want to find you. Which brings up the concept of SEO (search engine optimization). Leaving your book links and buy links and blog address at all of these sights will take your searchability to new levels. After reading this article, do a Google search of Jeff Bennington for example (although he had nothing to do with this experiment) and keep in mind that he, like many of the writing bomb followers, is new to publishing and has only begun to build a platform for his work in the last year or so. You will notice that the Google search brings up countless guest posts, reviews and other mentions about his work. That's how SEO works!

Over all, the Carelittle Research Group found the 45-day Blog Tour to be a very effective method for an author to launch a new book. However, there is also a dark side. Like most things, there's good and bad.

Here are a few of the negatives:

• Time: The number one negative is the amount of TIME it takes for an author to cold call, schedule, and then follow through with guest posts, writing, interviews and responding to comments. Our patient spent between 40-50 hours in the initial contact and scheduling stage. He then used at least 90 hours writing posts, contacting the bloggers and responding to comments over the duration of the tour. That's right, you can't just write a guest post and walk away. You should respond to any comments on the day that the article is posted at the very least. You can save time by paying someone to schedule a tour for you, but those can cost you around $300 and if you sell your ebook for .99¢, you'll have to sell 857 books to pay for it.

• Material: The second negative is that if you write guest posts, you'll have to come up with A LOT of original material. I know, you're a writer, that's no problem. Well it is if you're blogging about your book or the book's subject. Wasn't it hard enough to write the back blurb? Try communicating the essence of your book 45 different ways! You could use a blanket article and post it at every blog stop, but who wants to follow the same post day after day? No one, that's who. 

• Energy: Our subject found that the amount of energy he had to dedicate to the blog tour drained him of the will to continue working on his next project. His usual  4-5 hours dedicated to writing dwindled to less than one hour on average. When life happens, and it will, the time you set aside to write the next guest post or interview can easily be stolen by more demanding issues such as family, work or car accidents! Besides, have you seen our victim...I mean specimen? He looks like crap. Good thing he's going on a vacation with his family very soon. He deserves it. 

Jeff: Thank you, Doctor Carelittle. We so appreciate your insight into the benefits and repercussions of blog touring. We thank you for your time and dedication to the cause and to the betterment of writers everywhere.

Now I'd like to open the floor to our audience for questions? Also...I'll post a short video later today and announce the winners of The Reunion Kindle Giveaway!!!!! I'll post it later in the afternoon because I need to catch a few zzzz's (I work nights). I hope you understand. Look for it after 5:00 p.m. EST.

I'll close this post with a BIG thank you to all of the book bloggers and book reviewers who took a chance on Reunion. You should know that I didn't know what I was getting into before I contacted you. And I didn't have any idea what you would think of my book. You took it on and enjoyed it and that is extremely gratifying to me. Thank you for the nice reviews and for all of your support throughout the Reunion book launch. I can't wait to find out which one of you will win a Kindle.

To those of you who faithfully followed the blog tour, I send you gobs of gratitude. Your comments and encouragement and kind words along the way kept me going, giving me energy to continue. One of you will win a Kindle today! BOOM!

Jeff Bennington

Author of Reunion and other thrillers

If you haven't read Reunion yet, you can get it in print, kindle, nook, iPad, and at smashwords.

And now...let's pick the winners of the Kindle giveaway!

Links to the participating Book Blogs can be found here!

Lessons Learned on the Publishing Trail.

Welcome to The Writing Bomb, where authors of every kind are appreciated and cared for like a calf at the teat!

As part of The REUNION Blog Tour, I’d like to share just a few things that I’ve learned about writing, my expectations and the lies that we writers often tell ourselves. If you’re a newer author, an indie author, or considering taking the plunge for the first time into the winding river of the digital publishing age, you’ll want to hang around and soak up some of my thoughts.

PART 1:

To begin with, you need to know that I published my first book, Killing the Giants, with Outskirts Press in 2009. Other than selling a couple hundred print copies, mostly to family and friends, I had a pretty miserable book launch experience. I had less control than I thought I would, I sold fewer books than I anticipated and I knew nothing about ebooks and platforms and blog tours. Yes, I was a literary virgin and I bled miserably.

Two Years Later...

PART 2:

Over the last two years, I’ve learned so much about publishing, marketing, but more importantly, I’ve learned that I’ve had expectations of an industry that does not bend to my wishes. Without boring you with the usual “get edited and a good book cover” redundancy, I’d like to share 5-Fascinating Facts I’ve learned that might help you with your book launch, and prepare you for an industry that’s filled with vipers and wild stallions.

      
      A Crash is Coming! If you’re a new or newer author without a platform, be prepared for a sales crash soon after your release. No matter how hard you market your book before you let that baby fly, you will only be able to reach so many people. Think about your family, friends, twitterverse, and facebook cult members. You may have hundreds or even thousands of peeps cheering for you, but they will only take your sales so far. A couple hundred sales on day one are great, but they will not keep your sales rolling. The rest is up to you. The days or weeks after a book launch to a newer author can feel like you’re the Grand Marshall of a parade who walked ten miles into an uninhabited desert, only to discover that you’re waving and smiling at no one. 

I don’t mean to discourage or scare you away from publishing your work. I do, however, want to prepare you for the rocky road ahead. Just be tough, and wait. There are a few affordable and effective marketing tools that can propel your book into the next level and breaking through the plateau, but that’s another post all together. 

         Dig Deep. If you’re self-published (pay to publish), indie author or published with a small press, remember that you will be responsible for almost all of your marketing. There will be no paid book tours, no TV ads, and little to no Internet marketing other than your publishers web page, mostly viewed by other authors looking to publish their book.  Dig your heels in deep, and plan to work hard, filling every extra minute of your time doing something to promote your novel while simultaneously writing your next book.

      Grow Gator Skin. No matter what your expectations are, be prepared for a let down. Grrrr. I hate to say that, especially because I’m usually very positive, but I have to be honest about this. I can’t be sure, but I’d bet that most authors have dreams and fantasies about the sales of their book and how much everyone is going to love it. But when the reviews and sales trickle in slower and less enthusiastic than expected, we can hit a wall…a very hard and dark wall, bringing some to the point of depression.

My point is this: Adjust your expectations and remember that you’re one of thousands of authors who picked that special day to publish and you will be competing against all of them, like a single droplet of water floating amidst Niagara Falls. Don’t take it personal. That’s just the way it is. Most writers begin to grow a hardened layer of skin at this point, an undesirable yet necessary part of authorship.

 More is Merrier. Prepare for the long haul. As you may have read, J.A. Konrath, Scott Nicholson and other successful indie authors agree that the key to indie success is having a damn good book, and having lots of them. As a newer author you generally have two choices: market yourself into a bestseller (i.e. going broke on an ad campaign), or prepare for the long haul. Many of these bestselling indie authors did not enjoy their successes until they had several books out. This is the “Getting more shelf space” concept, which means the more books you have on the digital bookshelf, the more visible you will become. Again, that will take time. Plan on this when you begin publishing that first or second novel. It will save you a lot of pain and Prozac.

Build a Scaffold. Remember that your first book is an opportunity to build your platform, a scaffold to reach your dreams, not necessarily a shortcut to fortune and fame. Just because Joanna Penn wrote a top rated fiction on her first try, doesn’t mean you will, even if your book is head and shoulders better than Pentecost.

This won’t be the last time you hear me say this, but I think writing is one of the most demanding professions around.  Writing and publishing is tough and it will test your character. As I stated in an article I wrote for The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, Many great books have risen to the top and then sank to the bottom of the literary ocean, rusting and watching the crabs walk over their pages.

All I’m saying is… it’s best to prepare yourself for the ups and downs of the publishing experience before you come buzzing into an empty circus arena. And it is a circus. There are wonderful people who will help you along your journey, but also a few mean spirited folks as well. So wrap yourself with a breathable coat of thick skin and get that book published! But don’t stop there; write the next one and the next one and the next one until publishing becomes more about your full line of books than your breakout novel.

Of course there’s always room for a literary anomaly, and I hope you are that author. For the rest of us, as in the hundreds of thousands of the rest of us, we must ride our books like wild stallions, not knowing which way they may go, but carefully plotting the course for the long ride ahead. BOOM!

-Jeff Bennington

Author of REUNION

•••••

I'm Having a Book for Launch!

It's 6:59 pm on a Wednesday evening and asside from getting married and being present for the birth of my four children, I'm about to do the biggest thing in my life: an honest-to-goodness book launch, starting with a 45-day blog tour. After spending over three months preparing for April 1st, I am one day away from sharing my labor of love with tens of thousands of book blog followers and lovers of supernatural, horror, paranormal, romance thrillers. For a regular guy like me, that's frickin' scary!


The process started two years ago when the concept for REUNION flooded into my head. Like most book ideas, they seem to come out of nowhere. A year later, I had a rough draft, but was advised by an editor to put the book away for a while because I didn't write it according to the common rules of fiction.I did. 


Over the next year, I wrote my follow up thriller, Act of Vengeance (coming late 2011). When I turned my attention back to REUNION, I was also advised to focus on one protagonist, and that he mustn't be a wimp.


I couldn't do that.


REUNION is not about one brilliant superhero; it's about the suffering and recovery of a group of flawed and changed individuals - survivors. This book is not a cliched paranormal romance, there are no vampires, there are no werewolves,  no zombies and it overlaps genre boundries as if they didn't exist. But that's okay. I had to tell the story as it played out in my mind, rules or no rules.


That was work. Writing, in my opinion, however, is enjoyable work. Crafting and molding the rough story into a fully developed novel is the best part. But I didn't want this book to get stuck in literary mud, read only by surfing internet shoppers. It needed to be read and I needed to do something different with REUNION, because when I launched my first novel, I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't have it all down, but I stepped out there and worked the blogosphere and put a tour together so I could share this story with as many readers as my life could practically allow. It's not a 90-day, shoot-me-when-I'm-done Scott Nicholson Blog tour, but it is a fairly modest blog tour for a rookie. If you want to know the details about how I put it together, you can get the skinny at IndieHorror.org. I wrote a guest blog there today outlining each step. I will also write a post-tour article as a follow up sometime in late May, after I take a break with my family.


I still have several guest blogs to write, and I imagine I'll spend way too many hours obsessing over book sales the next thirty days or so, but I kind of think that that's pretty normal. I'll spend some time each day reading the blog comments and answering questions, trying not to forget what day it is, because I have to do all this while working my regular job. But WHO CARES! This is such a cool experience. I really don't mind losing sleep for the next month. I want to savor the excitement, taste the fear, and enjoy knowing that at least a few people enjoyed my work.


I think new authors believe that all you have to do is write a book, get feedback from family and friends and if everyone likes it, then it's ready to be published. In the words of Dwight Schrute from The Office...False! Getting your book uploaded into the Kindle DTP is easy. Making your book the very best it can be and creating a sturdy platform, a launching pad if you will, takes a lot of work. In my case, it took two years. But what are the results? I don't know. Time will tell. So far, REUNION has not been reviewed by any of my family members or friends, and it's getting great reviews. 


I'm nervous about reviews, but more than anything, and I mean this wholeheartedly, I want this book to impact the reader in a way that other books don't. My greatest ambition for REUNION is not book sales, but that the reader walks away from my book, shaking their head, wondering why they can't seem to forget the message, the story and the characters. Be sure to follow the tour and try to win a FREE Kindle or one of two signed copies from my Goodreads giveaway that starts on April 1st!



You can get REUNION now at most online retailers, but I'd love it if you'd wait until April 15th...TAX DAY. Why? Because I'd like to skyrocket REUNION up the Amazon ranking system to take advantage of Amazon's exposure algorithms. BOOM!

Building a Blog Tour

If word-of-mouth is the best advertising, than word-by-blog has got to be the second best.

If you've written a book and want to share it with the world, the last thing you want to do is publish it and then tell everyone you have a great book for sale. After observing and studying book launches over the last two years, I've discovered that one of the best ways to get people talking about your book (with the exception of a 100K marketing budget) is to have a Blog/Review tour. 

If you aren't familiar with the term, a blog tour is much like a book tour, except as the author, you travel from blog to blog, guest blogging, interviewing and/or giving something away - like a free copy of your book, or if you really want to up the ante, give away Amazon gift certificates, a free Kindle, etc. In most cases, book bloggers focus on writing reviews, so guest blogging and getting reviewed sort of go hand-in-hand.

To have a successful blog tour, you'll want to "appear" on blogs that talk about books - books that are in your genre. How do you do that, you ask? The answer is, with a lot of hard work. I scheduled my blog and contacted all the hosts on my own. If you don't have the 40+ hours it takes to do that, I'd suggest contacting a blog tour marketing specialist. There are dozens of online businesses that can do that for you at a cost ranging from $99 and up depending on the number of stops you make. But if you want to go the cheap route, you can do it yourself.

As your own publicist, you can do this at zero cost with a little know how. 

The first thing to do is... look at your calender and plan in advance when you're "touring" in relation to your release date. Once you've blocked out your calender, you'll have to write a "Review/Guest blog pitch". Here's a link to a copy of my pitch. It worked great, I think, and covered all the bases (Sample Pitch). The next step is to google "book, review, blog, your genre" and see what pops up. After you've hit a few blogs, check out the blogs they follow and you're sure to find a bunch more. Once you've found a list of potential hosts for your tour, you'll have to read their submission/review requirements to be sure that you and the blog are compatible. If so, then you can send an email requesting a review and/or guest spot on their blog!

Important notes:

• The sooner you plan, the better chance you have of getting your book read, reviewed, and a guest-post scheduled. Plus, many of the reviewers require a print copy, so if you are going all digital, you will limit the number of reviewers you'll attract. 
• Although I'm printing with Lightning-Source, I used Createspace to generate my ARC (advanced review copy - or proof), while applying for my publisher account, and sent one to every reviewer who requested a print copy. I also made sure my PDF was formatted (same PDF for the printer) and in tip-top shape, and professionally edited for those who accepted my ebook version. 
• I spent a little money on the proof copies and postage, but if a reviewer/blogger has 500-2500 followers, I'd say it could be worth every penny.
• Be sure to attach a PDF and cover jpg. with every review/guest blog request so the reviewer can scroll through the book and cover and get excited about your work.
• Keep track of every contact name, blog url, and dates scheduled on a seperate sheet of paper or document, because it can get very confusing if you lose track of who's accepted and whose rejected your request.
• Finally, remember that publishers take their time publishing for a reason. There is a lot to do to prepare for a book launch. If you get in a hurry and throw your work out there without getting early reviews and bloggers helping you pitch your work, you will have an uphill battle spreading the word. Why? Because word-of-mouth is the best advertising! And bloggers were born out of the need to share messages, and if all goes well, they'll be talking about your book. BOOM!

As you can see, I've posted the REUNION Blog Tour schedule below. <----Click on the link to see all the cool topics I'll be blogging about! Then click on the links below and visit these cool sites or even contact them to get your book reviewed. And be sure to follow my blog tour, because each stop will have a unique post about REUNION, publishing, or my writing techniques.

Date            Blog                                                Topic
April
1 - Candace's Book Blog  - "The Story behind the Story." (REUNION available to eReaders.)
2 - The Cajun Book Lady  - "Meet the Survivors."
3 - Julia Madeleine's Blog - "Why write fiction about a school shooting?"
4 - Bewitched Book Worms - "Why ghosts make great antagonists."
5 - Indie Paranormal Book Reviews - "Creating back story: David Ray's dark past."
6 - The Creative Penn - "Got Story? - Get Edited."
7 - Pinnacle Writing - "Author Interview."
8 - Jemima Valentino's Blog - "From story to Book...Making it happen."
9 - Swamp Dwellers, Dark Fiction Book reviews - "The Dark in Fiction."
10 - Jennifer Wylie's Blog - "Author Interview."
11 - Kait Nolan - "Supernatural, Love, and Fear."
12 - The Writing Bomb - "Character Interview with Lana Jones & Noah Berkley."
13 - Reading Without Restraint - "Twenty years after the shooting."
14 - OPEN
15 - Preternatural Primer - "Building Suspense one Ghost at a Time."
16 - 100 Stars or Less - "Author interview"
17 - OPEN
18 - Lost For Words - "Interviewing Tanner Khan: The Lost Survivor."
19 - I Am a Reader Not a Writer - "Author interview."
20 - The Writing Bomb - "Remembering Columbine: April, 20, 1999."
21 - OPEN
22 - Reena's Blog - "Making a story go from scratch."
23 - OPEN
24 - You Wanna Know What I Think? - "The Motivation Behind Reunion."
25 - OPEN
26 - My Reading Room - "Author Interview"
27 - My Neurotic Book Affair - "Character Interview with Nick Tooley: The cRaZy One."
28 - Courtney Conant's Blog -  "Questions about REUNION."
29 - The Writing Bomb - "Character Interview With Kate Schmidt Tooley: ."
30 - Paranormal Haven - "I'll have a Love, Ghosts and Fear Martini."

May
1 - The Writing Bomb - "Character Interview with Maria Vasquez: The Lonely One" (REUNION Available in Print!)
2 - My Eclectic Bookshelf - "My life as a Guest Blogger!"
3 - Fang-tastic Books - "Why I write Supernatural Thrillers."
4 - Bookhound's Den - "Proofing REUNION, what the Bookhound discovered."
5 - Patricia's Vampire Notes - "The story of Earl: My real ghost experience."
6 - AOBibliosphere - "Getting the story into Print and the Passion behind it."
7 - Book Noise - "How to Make a Book Read Loudly!"
8 - TzhaBella's Book Shelf - "Thoughts on Bringing Life into Paper."
9 - Rex Robot Reviews - "Thoughts on Plotting: How to pull it all together."
10 - JoJo's Book Corner - "Would the Correct Genre Please Stand!"
11 - Paul Joseph Writes - "Why Bullies Suck!"
12 - OPEN
13 - OPEN: Last day of The REUNION Blog Tour!
14 - The Writing Bomb - Tour Wrap Up...Packing for Vacation.
15 - Announce Winners of Kindle Giveaway!