Original Guest Post: Marketing Tips for Authors, May 18, 2010
You get bored answering the same questions over and over again for virtual book tours? Well, virtual book tour hosts get tired of asking them — but sometimes they don’t have a choice.
Many authors either don’t have Web sites, offer incomplete bios or little personal information for interviewers to create truly interesting or fun questions for authors.
With the exception of some self-help books, your tomes don’t offer enough personal insight into you to ask terrifically unique questions that will wow blog audiences — and keep you from falling asleep while answering them.
Here is a great example from my own hosting experiences:
Recently, a publicist at a major publishing house secured an interview. The author didn’t have a Web site and wasn’t on any social networks. For a bio, the publicist sent a paragraph of a few sentences that said virtually nothing about the author.
A paragraph.
I blinked, triple-checked the message, then emailed again to see if the author was on any social networks.
Nope.
I had a book — filled with sayings rather than a genre story — and a four-sentence biography that said nothing except this author wrote a book, with the listing of those tomes.
Creating questions for the interview was almost like baking bread without any yeast. Without good yeast, the bread comes out flat, hard and inedible. Interviews that don’t personally connect with authors have no pop and fizzle with blog readers.
The real trouble is this was not an isolated incident. Many times, authors or their publicists are totally unprepared to provide necessary information for a successful virtual book tour stop.
If you are serious about your craft, a thorough media kit — with a complete biography — is a MUST. The best way to share it is via your Web site, where VBT hosts can download what they want, when they need it.
If you don’t want the hassle (or expense) of a Web site, at least offer up a media kit via email in PDF format.
Here are some basic items you need to have readily available when you go on a virtual book tour:
Biography. This is a MUST for authors at any stage in their career. Offer up a short and long biography that discusses your writing life, career, family life, pets and anything else you want to share. A short bio is a paragraph and typically used at the end of blog posts. The long biography will help VBT hosts develop questions.
Book list. Tell people what you’ve written. If you have a series of books, it is important to let readers and hosts know their chronological order.
Book trailer. Trailers are an increasingly important element in virtual book tours. Some hosts will just post a trailer when they don’t have time for an interview. You can create a trailer yourself that will rock your fans’ to their toes. Upload the trailer to YouTube or Vimeo. Do NOT send the raw file to hosts. They don’t have the server space to host them.
Sample interview. Put together a list of the most commonly-asked questions and answer them. Some hosts will use them for the post, or as a benchmark to develop an interview.
Tour dates. Where will you be? Whether you are stepping out in the virtual realm or in a bookstore, hosts should know your schedule. Some will be able to help you promote those other stops — especially if they are in their city.
Guest blogs. Write about about a dozen articles that hosts can pick from. Put them into static pages and give the links to prospective VBT hosts.
Excerpts. Some hosts will post excerpts with interviews or in the place of interviews. You can give them a PDF of the text, or upload it to a site like BookBuzzr.
Photos. You need large photos of yourself and your cover art. Make them about 500 pixels wide; 100 pixels is way too small for many sites.
Sales info. Some sites will publish the links to your Amazon sales page.
Online sites. Share the links to all of your public sites, including your Web site, blog and social networks.
Don’t worry if you don’t have all the information here. As your career develops, your media kit will expand.