Review: Your One Stop Guide to Virtual Book Tours
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 7, 2013
I have completed one virtual book tour for a trilogy of picture books about squirrels, so when the opportunity arose to review Virtual Book Tours I jumped at it, as I wanted to see how well I done on my own tour, where I went wrong and what I could improve next time around.My virtual book tour was a rather fly by the pants event, so the planning section of the book was quite an eye opener, as it gives additional places to find reviewers and other methods I'd not thought about - like searching on Google - I did a search today for "PR Friendly Mom Bloggers" and I was blown away by the first search result, which was a linky directory with over 500 Mom bloggers, which will keep me busy for a while!  There are also other invaluable links I will try out as well.One area that I could have improved on is that I could have done more interaction with my hosts and their readers, but I did convey my thanks to every host. However, I received an email the other day from a lady thanking me for an interview and a review I posted on this website and it was so enthusiastic and grateful - I'm not sure my paltry thank yous were enough!I must admit I did try to emulate Jo Linsdell's media kit for my trilogy of picture books, as I was intrigued by and a host for her Out and About at the Zoo picture book tour, but I really need to try press releases, creating some of the other promotional materials and carrying out the promotional methods revealed in this book.One piece of advice I will definitely take on board is to re-purpose content - I have a string of reviews and interviews out there on the internet, but they are not all on my media page, in fact at the moment I don't even have a media page, so that's a wasted opportunity right there.This book has taught me that for my next virtual book tours, I will need to try to find more specialized bloggers and hosts in the parenting arena.  I also need to have a sharper focus on what I want to achieve from the tour and get used to using social media more to my advantage.The resources in the book are phenomenal - there are lists of potential hosts, internet radio shows (I've not ventured on this ground yet) and much more and the final check list will be invaluable to me.A very well written and comprehensive book - after reading this, there can be no excuse not give a virtual book tour a go.There may be a time in the future that I start offering virtual book tours to picture book authors, so I will definitely digest and follow this advice in perfecting my own tours first.