Authors Electric

I've been a blogger for a dozen years now--I started blogging in 2008, as a daily writing practice. Daily (w)rite has grown since then--from the initial days of crickets to the more than thirty thousand followers today. That sounds like a half-decent number, but engagement is always much lower than the number of followers. It took years of blogging to build the small community I have today-- of all my followers, I possibly have about 200 bloggers who I regularly/ semi-regularly interact with on the blog and over social media. Others drop by less often, and my interactions with them is sporadic at best. The best thing about blogging was the amount of information exchange. The guidance on book marketing and the writing life has also been invaluable. I follow blogs by other writers and publishing professionals, and the generosity of their sharing has made it possible for me to carve out a path for myself as best as I could, learning from others' mistakes, and hopefully, ...

Yesterday I launched the second book in the series “The Adventures of Letty Parker.” It’s a MG book, aimed at the 8-12 market, though as one reviewer, Kerry Parsons from www.chataboutbooks said “ it will be enjoyed by children and adults alike. I think it would sound great read aloud and enjoyed by the whole family.” There were more reviews, loads of comments on FB and Twitter and I felt much supported by friends, fellow writers and book-bloggers. All in all a very positive experience, but one which left me totally exhausted. Switching off the computer, pouring a glass of wine I wondered why I was so tired. What I’d been doing was enjoyable. I love interacting with people on social media and it was great to be able to thanking friends for their comments and likes. After all, I hadn’t done any hard physical work. I’d sat at my desk most of day, fuelled by cups of coffee and glasses of water –I’d made sure I wasn’t dehydrated, so I should have been fine. Talking to othe...

You don't even have to pack a bag! Though I’m sure most of you will know what I mean by ‘blog tour,’ I’d hate to start my post by making assumptions, so a brief explanation wouldn’t hurt…           Think of an excited author travelling from city to city, bookshop to bookshop, eagerly waiting for readers to bombard them in their droves, desperate for signed copies of said author’s new book. Maybe even have a little conversation too. Well, ditch that image because a blog tour is quite different (although you’ll still have the excitable author).           A blog tour happens via social media – namely blog posts, Facebook and Twitter. Each day of your blog tour a blogger will hold their ‘stop’ on the tour and feature your new release on their blog. It could be a review, author guest post, book extract or giveaway. Or a combination of these things. Usually, the blogger will then share their post ...

Until three weeks ago I had never heard of a book blog tour. I had also never looked at many book blogs. When I was raising the funding for my memoir 'Dead Babies And Seaside Towns' I had some great support from book blogger Isabel Costello at The Literary Sofa. I was also asked to write for various book blogs. But still the whole world of book blogs remained a bit of a mystery to me. Then I realised that authors now often have a book blog tour and so I thought - why shouldn't I do that as well? It turns out that basically a book blog tour is a schedule of 'visits' which a book / author makes to a number of blogs. It is rather like the traditional book tour but instead of going to physical bookshops you are 'visiting' blogs. These visits might involve a review, an author interview, books being given away or an author Q & A / interview. I asked a number of writer friends for advice. I soon realised that the problem for me is that not many book...