Maureen Johnson: BLOG TOURS, AND THE WORD NO
So it’s Book Expo America this week, and many people are writing in with reports about various panels and what the “buzz” is. And someone just said something I enjoyed a lot:
YA marketing panel: “do blog tours & cover reveals!” My question: since EVERYONE…
Maureen is saying some veeeeeery veeeeery interesting stuff here. I shall focus on this quote!
‘Why are blog tours so popular? Why are they on just about every marketing plan? For a start, they don’t cost anything. That’s a HUGE advantage. There is, you may be surprised to know, precious little money for the marketing of books. And now there are a lot of questions about HOW to market books.
For a new author, a blog tour might be a good idea—or, at least, not a bad one. Some blogs have tons of readers looking for new books. But for authors with a following, I’m not so sure. And I think it may actually be harmful.
I know a lot of writers, and we tend, as a species, to really SWEAT over things.’
Soooo. Yes. I love blogs! I’m always happy to be on a blog (they like me! do they… like me?) and I get a lot of my reading from blog recommendations. Bloggers are smart people who are passionate about books! But yes, seeing ‘blog tour’ on one’s marketing plan makes a writer’s heart sink, because unless there’s other stuff, it means they’re not spending money on your book.
I don’t think a blog tour would be harmful to me. (Mind you, I don’t have a following like Maureen’s [I barely have a following at all, yo. Maybe like, a dozen nice internet friends who like my books OK. Hi, friends!] so it’s a different thing.)
But what *helps* in this confusing world… internet marketing, any sort of marketing, the fact that marketing is so much an author’s job these days… well, that is the question. Maureen says it well when she talks how authors as a whole have a tendency to sweat these things.
Dude, I have two books out in the next three months, and I’ve never had fancy marketing. I do break out in a cold sweat over marketing. I find it mysterious, and stressful. And I do try to only do things I enjoy, because when I do things that don’t work and I don’t enjoy, it is a DOUBLE FAIL. And then I ask myself questions like ‘If these things don’t work, what WILL?’
What book marketing works, and what is the meaning of life? Questions that may never be answered in our time. But questions authors will keep asking themselves, nonetheless.
The facts that nobody is quite sure of what works, and there is no magical ticket, and that writers shouldn’t hurt themselves more than they can help, and that every writer should march to their own beat because faking it till you make it doesn’t work… you’d have to keep faking it even if you did end up making it… are facts to keep in mind.
… My entirely unhelpful two cents.
