This is a cross-posting of an entry that originally appeared on alanbaxteronline.com on 8/2/09.
Right, so this will be my last post on the blog book tour.
[Publetariat Editor’s note: see links to individual stops on the tour at the end of this post].
I’m sure most of you are sick of reading about it by now. However, quite a few people have asked me to write up how it went, what kind of results I saw from it and so on, so this last post will be an attempt to wrap it all up.
To sum up there were eleven posts overall, but one was a no-show. The tour was scheduled with ten guest spots on ten different blogs, but I was fortunate enough to have Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.com, interview me about the tour just prior to the start, so we had an early kick-off. The no-show was supposed to be a review of MageSign by Ruthie’s Book Reviews, but Ruthie is having computer problems. Hopefully that review will show up in a week or two. I’ll list all the stops of the tour again at the end, with direct links, so you can catch up on anything you might have missed. The tour was a lot of fun and hopefully generated a lot of interest not only in my books but also for the owners of the blogs that took part.
In terms of stats, I can report a few bits and pieces.
* Around the middle of the tour the sales rank for the print edition of RealmShift on Amazon.com peaked at around the 93,000 mark. For a book that usually floats between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 this is quite a good result.
* More impressive, Kindle sales of RealmShift were up 200% in July compared to the two previous months. MageSign Kindle sales remained much the same as previous months. Hopefully those RealmShift sales will result in people coming back to buy MageSign at a later date.
* As for Smashwords sales of ebooks, these were a little lower than I’d hoped for. With the special $1 offer on I’d hoped to make more sales. However, RealmShift had about a 30% spike in sales and MageSign about 50%. Proof that stats are pretty arbitrary and largely utterly random. Ghost Of The Black, my free novella on Smashwords, doubled its total downloads during the tour.
Of course, it’s impossible to tell how many of these sales were the result of the tour compared to general ongoing web promotion or anything else.
As for web stats, this site saw a 50% increase in visits for the period of the tour and people stayed on the site for nearly twice as long as the previous average. A couple of other participants have told me that they had their highest hits for the month on the day of their book tour post, with the exception of newly released baby pics. What an outrage, publishing new baby pics in the same month as my book tour. Who can compete with that? One participant reported ten times their usual hits for the day they hosted my post, which is excellent news.
So that’s about all the detailed info I can give you about the tour. It was hard work to organise, but definitely worth it. I’ve also learned a lot, so when I tour the next book I’ll hopefully make it even more worthwhile. Here’s a quick rundown of all the posts on the tour. These links are live direct to the relevant article:
Early Opener – Interview about Blog Book Tours at Smashwords
Day One: Guest post: Dark Fantasy – What is it exactly? – at The Creative Penn
Day Two: Interviewed by Leticia Supple – Tues 21st July at Brascoe Books Blog
Day Three: Guest post: Writing a good fight scene – Wed 22nd July at David Wood Online
Day Four: Interviewed by April Hamiltion – Thurs 23rd July at Publetariat
Day Five: Guest post: Demons and where to find them – Friday 24th July at Joan De La Haye’s blog
Day Seven: Ruthie reviews MageSign – Sun 26th at Ruthie’s Book Reviews – hopefully this will come up soon.
Day Nine: Guest post: Indie authors and the future – Tues 28th July at Musings Of An Aussie Writer
These are some really great blogs listed above, so check them out and have a look at what else they have on offer while you’re there. And don’t forget to find out where you can get RealmShift, MageSign and Ghost Of The Black at the Books page.
So, what did you think? Did you enjoy the tour? Any suggestions for things you’d like to have seen but didn’t? Leave me comments if you have any opinions, good, bad or indifferent.