Bloggers on Blog Tours - Plain Talk Book Marketing

Welcome to part 3, the final part of the blogger collaboration series. In this post we talk about blog tours and how, if you are an author, how you should contact bloggers to help promote your book.

Bloggers book marketing — Photo by Photofunia

Question: What do you like best about blog tours?

Clarice, Clarice Book Nook – I get introduced to some pretty cool new books that way. Some of the books I have read were because I was doing a blog tour or something similar for the author.

Lynda Dickson, Book Direct – The thing I like best about blog tours is that they drive a lot of traffic to the blogs involved in the tours. By participating in blog tours, I get visitors who might not have found my blog otherwise. Once I get that first visit, I am hopeful that they will like what they see and come back for more. Blog tours also help me find new blogs and connect with other bloggers. And of course, they usually have great giveaways! I have won my fair share of books and gift cards thanks to these giveaways!

Nytali, A Little Love Book Blog – I like that so many bloggers come together to boost an author’s work. I love reading other reviews because it gives me so many different points of view.

Evette Ashby, Sassy Girl Books – Finding new to us authors, reading amazing books and promoting the hard work of the authors. We are both readers first and it is always about the story for us.

Dawn Heslin, Bound 4 Escape – I like having all the information about the book, author, etc., ready to post so I don’t have to go searching for it.

Tina Williams, A Reader’s Review – I like being part of something bigger than what is happening on our blog. The opportunity they present in introducing others to our page is also very welcome.

Gillian Felix, Plain Talk Book Marketing – I love the blog tour giveaways, and the guest posts. Guest post usually get more views because it targets and educates a specific group of people.

Question: What do you wish more authors would do when they contact you for a promo?

Contacting bloggers — Photo: Wiki Commons By Eugenijus Radlinskas

Clarice, Clarice Book Nook – Make sure you give plenty of notice! Sending information for posts the day of or before makes it harder to post on time. Giving bloggers extra time is helpful!

Lynda Dickson, Book Direct – I wish authors would spend of bit of time looking through my blog and finding out what my requirements are before they contact me for a promotion. It’s all set out in the List Your Book page of my blog. I once had someone message me on Facebook asking for my blog’s email address, which is clearly listed on both my blog and my Facebook page!

Nytali, A Little Love Book Blog – That is a tough one. I’d appreciate it if authors would take the step of reading my blog and my reviews and establishing a bit of communication before they approached me. It would definitely make me feel like I was chosen because of my writing and not randomly.

Evette Ashby, Sassy Girl Books – Introduce themselves, have read or interacted with the FB page or blog. Try to get to know us before asking us to jump 🙂

Dawn Heslin, Bound 4 Escape – If it is an author that I haven’t worked with before, I wish they wouldn’t contact me and want a review within a couple weeks.

Tina Williams, A Reader’s Review – When we are hosting an author it is always a help (although not essential) if they can provide additional promotional material that we can post on our blog page or share on our Twitter and Facebook page. Fortunately most authors do this already.

Gillian Felix, Plain Talk Book Marketing – Give me at least two weeks notice before the tour or be flexible with their tour dates. I am usually booked a whole month in advance, sometimes a tour gets cancelled and I have a last minute opening but that is very rare, which is when being flexible comes in handy.

Question: What genres do you host?

Book bloggers Authors — Photo by PhotoFunia

Clarice, Clarice Book Nook – All, but I do have some rules on what I post. Sometimes something will slip through the cracks, but otherwise, I try to keep things on a level that I won’t get kicked into Facebook jail because it’s too ‘risque’.

Lynda Dickson, Book Direct – My tagline is “Books for the whole family“, so I like to feature something for everyone – except erotica. I review all genres bar erotica, religious, fantasy, and science fiction, but I will make some allowances for books that I find intriguing.

Nytali, A Little Love Book Blog – Books,Food and Me hosts all genres except Romance. Give A Little Love Book Blog hosts romance and occasionally spiritual/empowering books. I do not prefer hardcore erotica or LGBTQ for now. I also do not do Christian Fiction.

Evette Ashby, Sassy Girl Books – Any and every. Between the two of us we read everything. I believe westerns are the only ones we don’t actively look for!

Dawn Heslin, Bound 4 Escape – I’ll host just about any genre. I like to read a variety.

Tina Williams, A Reader’s Review – Whilst the majority of the genres we review and feature are romance in all of its sub-genres (paranormal, erotic, historical, suspense, you name it), between us we are avid readers of other genres such as crime, horror, thrillers, historical and comedy. We read and post our reviews, post promos, participate in blog tours, blog hops, release blitzes and we also love to host author interviews in which we quiz authors about their current work and their writing process.

Gillian Felix, Plain Talk Book Marketing – Most genres, not too much kids and NO hardcore erotica. I’d like to keep Plain Talk Book Marketing a site that you can open at work and not offend the prude among us.

Final word

Clarice, Clarice Book Nook – I love helping support indie authors and respect the amount of effort any and all authors have to put out to create books and market them.

Dawn Heslin, Bound 4 Escape – I’m always excited to receive audio books to review because I don’t get many and I like to listen to them in my car. I have a second blog , Bound 2 Escape, that I started a few months after Bound 4 Escape for the authors and blog tour companies to promote books: cover reveals, blog tour promos, spotlights, etc. I know authors can use all the help they can get promoting their books but I didn’t want to overwhelm the readers on Bound 4 Escape.

Tina Williams, A Reader’s Review – Apart from reading I am also very interested in history and I’m a member of my town’s Civic Society – it’s no surprise that historical romances feature high on my reading list. I’d also love to pen my own novel one day.

There’s little more to say other than you are very welcome to come and check our blog out to see if you think we can help you promote your work! You can email me direct on

ti***********@ou*****.com

if you’d like to discuss any opportunities further or if you have any questions. You can find out more about me and my co-blogger Caroline by visiting our ‘About’ page: http://areadersreviewblog.com/about/