So What's a Blog Tour Anyway?
So...big doings! Starting Monday, I'll be embarking on a month-long virtual release party/blog tour for Hereafter. Hooray! I have more than 25 blog tour stops lined up with an array of incredible and amazing folks - authors, aspiring authors, book bloggers, you name it, we've got it!
So, what is a blog tour, anyway? Many people, both inside and outside of the publishing industry, are not familiar with the term. It's a relatively new concept and it's the 21st Century version of a book tour. In the "old days" a publisher might send an author on a book tour, if the author and his/her book were deemed important enough to justify the expense. Very few debut authors were ever sent on book tours--and for good reason. It's kind of painful and humiliating to tour around to bookstores, sitting there for hours, and have no one come to the event.
Through the miracle of the internet, however, the traditional book tour has gotten an incredible revamp. Now, instead of driving or flying all over the place, the author visits blogs. Blog stops can be in the form of an interview, a guest post by the author, a review of the author's book by the blog owner, a giveaway or contest (usually tied to the author's book somehow), a live Q&A chat, or anything really. The sky's the limit! A "blog tour" is a set period of time in which the author visits at least one blog every day--tours range from a one-day blitz of several blogs to month-long "grand tours," visiting a different blog every day during that time.
I opted for the month-long grand tour, and in a way, it feels like the "grand tour of the continent" young men used to take during the 1800's after they graduated from college. I will be visiting blogs in the U.S., Candada, Scotland, England, Ireland, Romania, and India!
So, starting Monday, I will have a different adventure each day--traveling around the blogosphere, meeting readers across the globe. Unfortunately, this means that all of my regular features--Old Book Mondays and general blog posts on Thursdays will be suspended during the tour (BRoP Interviews posted on Wednesdays will continue, however).
I hope you will embark on this adventure with me and check out each of my tour stops. At every stop there will be a chance to win a prize--ranging from a Hereafter swag pack to an Amazon gift card to a copy of Hereafter. There will also be a grand prize contest in which two lucky winners will win a prize pack of four books about ghosts. There will also be a live twitter chat! I hope that when you visit each site you leave a comment to let the tour hosts know you were there--they have all put in a tremendous amount of work to help make Hereafter a success; please, please show them some appreciation! I hope you'll also check out the rest of the wonderful offerings at each site--there are so many wonderful blogs involved in the Hereafter tour, I'm sure you'll find at least one that you'll want to become a regular follower of!