Virtual Book Tours and Dorothy Thompson – Guest Post 7.14.09

Since I have entered the online world of books and been introduced to authors, editors, and book marketing folks (LOVE my book follks!!), many have approached me on how they can get their name and their books out there and known.  While I am loving the fact that people think they can turn to me about a book question, the reality is I am just like any other average book reader.  But of course, because I could not answer all of those questions without first hand experience I just HAD to find people who did know the hows.  Besides, one day I plan to edit and expand a story myself that I wrote years ago so I might as well find out the facts.  You know?

Today more and more authors are realizing that the internet is a wonderful place to promote their names and books.  With all the online social network groups/tools, book blogs, and websites, it is silly not to take advantage of the world wide web (hello…this reaches the world!)  So today, I have a special guest who has also become a great friend over the past year.  Dorothy Thompson from Pump Up Your Book Promotion is here to share her take on virtual book tours.

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book Promotionwith eight years experience in online marketing.  What began as an experiment after self-publishing her promotional e-book A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook and 101 Internet Radio Shows to Promote Your Books turned into her thriving new career as an online book marketer.  She is also the author of the children’s book, No More Gooseberry Pie, the relationship anthology, Romancing the Soul, and the pararanormal comedy novel, The Search for the Million $$$ Ghost which is under the consideration of a playwright in New York.  Dorothy has written hundreds of online marketing articles and has been quoted in the celebrity tabloid, OK! She has also appeared on dozens of radio shows including Lifetime Radio, Single Talk, and Achieve Radiowith Fran Silverman.  Dorothy runs several blogs including her marketing blog, Book Marketing Buzz, The Writer’s Lifeand Beyond the Books which are syndicated into USA Today, Chicago Times, Washington Post and other national magazines.  Dorothy resides on the beautiful island of Chincoteague, Virginia.  Her offline interests include traveling, biking and sitting at the end of her dock and watching the sun go down.  You can email her here. Connect with Dorothy at Facebook at www.facebook.com/thewriterslife and Twitter at www.twitter.com/pumpupyourbook

NOW DOROTHY THOMPSON’S GUEST POST…

My Story into the Virtual Book Tour World and Finding the Magic Key to Selling Books

Years ago, before book tours – virtually, that is – and before Twitter and Facebook even – when an author wanted to promote her/his book, they had very few choices in which to do this namely – e-groups, writer’s boards and forums, and wherever else they could find to get their book mentioned. They bought ads in writer magazines (some resulted in little or no sales), they started websites and later, blogs, and they hunted down websites that they could advertise their book, mainly free listings to save them some money.

When my first print book, Romancing the Soul, came out, my publisher was very supportive; however I know she felt like Octomom with all the authors she had to represent. I pitied her actually because I know it must have frustrated her as she could never do everything she wanted for all her authors and take care of a publishing business, too.

That’s when publicists come into the picture.

You either hire someone to do some publicity for you or you study online marketing and do it yourself.

I have always been a hands on kind of person. Perhaps it’s the frugal side of me, who knows, but maybe I just knew there had to be a magic key to open the door to those huge sales I wanted to be making. I had read every book promotion article there was out there and I just knew there had to be more to it. And I knew the secret had to be somewhere in that vast space they called the Internet.

Not too long after my print book was released, I studied the Internet and, eventually, a pattern was starting to evolve. If I list my book here and here and possibly here, I might see my book climb into the top rankings of the search engines which I believed was part of the equation. But might was a mighty big word.

Like all authors, I knew I had a good book which is the first step in assuring success in the sales department, but it wasn’t enough to have confidence in your book, you must take action to stand out from the pack and the secret I believed was in online book promotion. But the key, the magic key, where was it?

A few years ago, I found the answer and it happened quite accidentally. My online writing group and I self-published several e-books and I knew I wanted to use these e-books as an experiment. If my theory worked, I would have found the magic key. Whether it would open all the doors, that was debatable, but I figured I’d give it a shot and see what happens.

I had a basic formula written down. I would do A and B and see what happens, but I wanted to take it an extra step. What if I didn’t stop with A and B? What I discovered was that it wasn’t enough to do A and B, you had to do the whole alphabet if you wanted the formula to work.

This formula I speak of is a highly guarded secret, but…I do have to tell you in 24 hours all three of our self-published ebooks, and on separate occasions, ended up #1 in the search engines for their key search words. Twenty-four hours.

So what could I learn from this? By using these key search words as my selling tools, I could sell my books just by having the thousands upon thousands of Internet users find my book in the search engines. Today, there’s Twitter and Facebook and blogs, but the old system is only reinforced by this new technology.

Getting back to my story, when word spread about how I managed to get these ebooks into the first position at Google (and which I did later on with a self-published ebook I sold and still sell on my website), I had a woman phone me asking for my help. She wanted her book #1 in the search engines and told me she would pay me if I could do it for her, too.

And that was how Pump Up Your Book Promotion was born. We opened doors with one tour coordinator besides myself and now my staff has grown to five of the most wonderful people on the face of the earth – Cheryl Malandrinos, Jaime McDougall, Tracee Gleichner and Rebecca Camarena. You can find out all about them at http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/aboutus.html.

We started out with one author on tour and now our tours consist of anywhere between 15 – 20 authors a month.

Authors are finally learning it’s not enough to go on live booksignings. They’re learning it’s not enough to put up a website or blog and call it a day. They’re realizing it’s not enough to think for one minute their book is going to sell out of all the thousands of books on the market today. And this is where virtual book tours give them that chance.

Before I go, I would like to take a minute to thank Farrah and all the book bloggers who have hosted our authors. Without you, all of this wouldn’t be possible. I bow to all of you.

If you have a question about virtual book tours or anything online book promotion related, please leave it in Farrah’s comment box below. I’d be more than happy to explain anything you’d like to know.

Thank you and see you in the blogosphere!

Thank you Dorothy for taking the time out of your busy day promoting authors.
I know you just got back from a trip last night but you were so willing
to make sure to get back with me to share your tips.