Today, I focused on connecting with bloggers, either requesting reviews of my novel, Ivory Tower, or asking to be part of a blog tour. If you have never heard of a “blog tour,” check out this great explanation by children’s book author, Nick Jones, on the Irish magazine, writing.ie, itself a great resource for both readers and writers.
Bloggers, people who spend their time writing online, often for free (like me), can be a god-send for independent authors. Many bloggers focus on doing book reviews and earn readers’ trust through the quality and reliability of their writing, taste, and judgment.
Book review blogs can be small, with a few hundred or thousand followers, like Barbara Gipson of A Different Kind of Read, who specializes in ethnic or special needs publications, to Book Riot, a wide-ranging review magazine based in Toronto with a large stable of contributors who reach a broad audience of approximately 1 million monthly visits.
How do you find blogs that might be interested in your kind of book?
Reedsy, another author resource site that bills itself as “a full ecosystem for authors and publishing professionals,” has a searchable database of bloggers that allows you to filter by genre so that you are inquiring only bloggers who might be interested in your type of book.
Today, I sent out over a dozen queries and requests for reviews. Be aware, though: many bloggers are overworked or backlogged, so you want to tap them early in your marketing plan and expect lots of silence.
Had an experience querying bloggers or purchasing blog tours? Leave a comment!
Grant Matthew Jenkins 