One book promotion item you’ll hear about often is blog tours, but where do you go when your book isn’t a YA (young adult) novel? This is a question many authors I work with have had so I did some digging and asked a few friends.
Designer Mallory Rock suggested these options:
- Mother Daughter Book Reviews (children’s books) suggested replacement Beach Bound Books
- Reading Addiction Virtual Book Tours (adult books)
- Masquerade Tours (adult books)
- Juniper Grove Book Solutions (adult books)
Author Eric Asher recommends:
Girls Heart Books Tours (adult books)
A few blog tour companies I’ve heard of:
- Xpresso Book Tours (Young Adult/New Adult focused but may work with other books if it is right for her audience)
- Goddess Fish Promotions (Romance Fiction)
- Bewitching Book Tours (paranormal, urban fantasy, and paranormal erotica books)
- Partners in Crime (crime, mystery, and thriller)
Helpful Resources:
- A Comparison of Book Blog Tour Services (2013) by Danielle Forrest
- 7 Top eBook Blog Tour Sites (2014) by Greg Strandberg
- Listing Site: Author’s Atlas
- Listing Site: Blog Tours, PR & More
- Book: The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide: Every Indie Author’s Essential Directory-To Help You Prepare, Publish, and Promote Professional Looking Books by Joel Friedlander and Betty Kelly Sargent
What a lovely surprise to see us (Mother Daughter Book Reviews) listed in your post. Thank you so much for including us! 🙂
My pleasure Renee! 🙂
I’m on tour with Enchantress of Books and it’s been a wonderful experience. I felt like I got very personalized attention. I’ve also used Sizzling PR in the past and was very pleased with them as well.
Thanks for sharing Dana! I appreciate it. Hearing from authors who have used tour companies before is the best way to find tour companies to consider. What genre and age level are your books that you toured?
I wanted to share my experience because I see you have Reading Addiction towards the top of the list.
I am not an indie author, but a publicist, and I placed 5 books on 5 different book blog tour companies. All had the same number of stops (30), but Reading Addiction Virtual Book Tours is the only company I felt I was mislead by.
These were the biggest issues I had with them:
1. More than half of the blog sites hosting stops were either very obviously run by Reading Addiction or were sites that ONLY hosted Reading Addiction blog tours. Their tour hosts had little to no other content besides Reading Addiction Virtual posts. I don’t think it needs to be pointed out that book blogs with nothing but content from a single tour company (or only content from tour companies in general) are suspect.
2. Out of the 10-15 review stops, there were—in actuality—only 7 bloggers selected the book for a review. Out of those 7, 2 never posted their reviews (and were never heard from, meaning the tour days were lost). Out of the other 5, only a single blogger cross posted onto Amazon. SO, out of 10-15 review stops advertised, there were only 5 completed and only 1 that made it off a hosts blog site.
3. Reading Addiction is really disorganized. It was left up to me to check the stops daily and to notify them when a committed post on the tour wasn’t made. Sometimes it was posted within an hour or two after, sometimes it wasn’t at all. Worst of all, when it was NOT posted for the day I never heard back from Reading Addiction. This was frequent. Nearly ¼ of the scheduled stops weren’t posted until I inquired about them. Not that it makes much difference (see #1).
There are other issues, but these should be enough to discourage authors and publicists from using Reading Addiction Virtual Book Tours. The other 4 companies I worked with all commented on stops along the way (which showed they were clearly checking for posts themselves), all had a variety of quality book blogs with both organic and tour content, and all maintained the advertised number of reviews with excellent cross-posting on both Amazon and Goodreads.
For me, My Reading Addiction Virtual Book Tours was a waste of money. Sage’s, Goddess Fish, Enchanted, and Xpresso were all perfect (professional, quality bloggers, reasonable price points). Obviously everyone will have a difference experience and some will have even had great ones, but this is mine.
Thank you for expressing your concerns, Faye. It is really important we share our experiences so other authors can make the best choices.
I am a blogger turned writer. I had to stop posting because I am too busy with my own book. But, I saw this and I wanted to express my opinion. Of the tourCompanies that I worked with I had a few favorites.
Debra the Book Enthusiast was one. She was ultra-organized. She sent us a mail on Thursday for the following weeks posts, it was never last minute. She was the nicest person to talk to if you had any problems with anything.
Girls Heart Books Tours was also one I worked with they were a great company also. Their files were always well put together. Their reminder notices were always nice.
A few others worth mentioning were Bare Naked Ladies, Enticing Journey, and Give Me Books. I love all the girls with those companies too.
Hi Brenda! Thanks for sharing your experiences with these blog tour companies. I find the best way to find a good site to work with is to ask fellow authors so I really appreciate you sharing your experiences! Best of luck with your book.
Kate –
Great article. I’m looking for a book blog tour program with expertise in “new age” or spiritual titles. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Hi David,
I’d start with the sites you see on the list here. You’ll want to email them to see if they have any experience with “new age” books. 🙂