Friday, May 01, 2009

First Stop on the To Hell in a Handbasket Blog Book Tour

Please stop by and comment on the first blog stop of my May virtual book tour:

Planning a Book Tour on the Cheap

I'm discussing Planning a Book Tour on the Cheap, and I'd love to see if anyone else has more ideas--especially since I'm planning my own cheap book tour in June! The ideas could also apply to traveling cheap in general during these tough economic time.

Remember, every time you comment on one of my guest blog posts, or comment on my blog during the tour, you will be entered into a drawing for an autographed set of both books in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series: A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket!

3 comments:

Connie Martin said...

I've wondered if combining book tours with other author/friends might be a good idea. Sharing travel costs (if by car, anyway)would certainly help, but each would have to have their own schedule. I don't think doubling up in the same book store would be a good idea: we have enough competition. I'm not sure it's a good idea, just something I was mulling over. What do you think?

Beth Groundwater said...

I've done a fair number of multi-author signings, and I think you can make it work if:

You keep the number of authors small, say 2-3.

You write books in the same overall genre, say suspense, but in different subgenres or settings or whatever. For instance, one is a cozy mystery and one is a thriller, so you can make the choice to the customer clear and also make it clear that you don't expect the customer to buy books from all of you, only their favorite.

And, all the participating authors should have about the same level of notoriety, so you don't have one best-selling author that everyone congregates around and they ignore the others.

If all the authors work as a team, cross-promote each other's titles and view the endeavor as a cooperative vs competitive effort, a multi-author signing can work well and draw in more customers than a relative unknown signing alone.

Sheila Deeth said...

I'd never thought about how authors do book tours. Your tips for keeping costs down sound great. But just the costs themselves are scary. How does anyone do it?