Are you pinging?

Pinging is a way to give your blog a little boost by notifying an online service that you've updated your blog. This technique is much more proactive than waiting for the web crawlers at Google to notice you. I use Pingoat and once you're there, it's easy peasy. Just fill in the blanks, and click on all the services you want notified. If you click on the header in each category, all the items within will be checked. Don't do this too often, but once or twice a week after you update your blog is a good idea. This takes less than 60 seconds. Do it!

"Bee" a perfect blogger

Pro-blogger and blogging guru, Chris Garrett explains how to "bee" a perfect blogger. Here's good advice for authors preparing their own blogs for an impending blog book tour. Be sure to read the comments, too, because there are plenty of good insights and tips there.

Be sure to bookmark Chris' site and stop by often for the very best blogging help available. He's also on Twitter, and the above-mentioned article was picked up there. If you're not tweeting yet, I recommend it for a quick and easy way to give and get valuable information and links.

A Smashing Idea

Picked up at Twitter, Smashing Magazine offers up fifteen tools purported to make your blogging life easier. Do any of them work? I haven't tried them since the actual act of blogging isn't that difficult for me. But, if you're a virtual gadget lover, this might offer you some tools you'll like, and the article is definitely worth a read. Clear overviews and a clean wrap-up make it worth your while. This eMagazine is definitely worth exploring further.

Thanks, aboutbooks, for the heads-up.

The Perfect Plan

Few things make an entrepreneur's heart sink quite as deeply as the prospect of creating a business plan, and yet that one monumental step might be exactly the thing to ensure success in the long-term endeavor. It doesn't have to be as daunting as it sounds, and it can be downright fun.

The same holds true for blogging. Having a good blog is an important part of your long-term blog book tour success, but you must have a plan so your blog does all that it can and should accomplish.

You can start by answering a few simple questions:

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• How?
• Why?

Arrange them in any order you like, and each day think about one question and it's relationship to your blog.

Today, let's use Who. Look at your blog with an objective eye, and decide if it truly reflects who you are. Who is the person behind the image? Is this an author's blog? Who is that writer? Is your readership seeing you the way you would like them to? Who are you? And what can you say in your next post that will give a clearer indication? How can you change your blog to more closely reflect the personality you'd like to project? Are you all over the map? Sound whine-y? Foul-mouthed? Or do you seem like someone you'd like to meet? With interesting commentary and good writing that makes people come back for more.

If you have time, take it a step further and look at who you're linking to. Do they reflect your focus on the blog? Or have those links just been there forever and they really need a little housekeeping?

Happy August and good blogging!

August Blogging Challenge

We're issuing a challenge to all you blogging authors to help get your blogs in good shape for a blog book tour. August is The One-Post-Per-Day Blog Challenge. Post each day, every day.

Anyone who participates can leave a comment and link here so we go over to leave messages on your blogs. The idea is to get your blog active and noticed by the search engines before your tour. So start thinking about how you're going to beef things up on your blog; you don't want to bore us to tears with useless drivel.

If you don't know what a blog book tour is, go read The Quickest Blog Book Tour Guide Ever. You'll find more useful tips to get your blog in topnotch shape for a dynamite blog tour. It all starts with your blog - that's the launching pad for the best tours.

If you want to participate with a group, this challenge is homebased at the Blog Book Tours Yahoo!Group. You must give your full name and book title to join the group.

Starry, Starry Night

Tasha Tudor, beloved children's book illustrator, recently passed into spirit. She led a life of 1830s simplicity and fans know her not only for her Corgyville art, but also for her love of dollhouses and miniatures. She, like generations before her, was fascinated by the wonder of smallness, and I confess an intrigue of dollhouses myself, though I prefer someone else's collection to enjoy, living vicariously through their intense and intricate efforts in creating these magical worlds.

When a new book for young readers recently came to my attention, it was not only the subject of miniatures but the “Starry Night” included in the title that caught my attention. As a professional artist, Van Gogh's painting immediately came to mind, and indeed the book deals with a stolen Van Gogh, but this one a professional copy created for a dollhouse collection. The mysterious plot deals with recovery of the missing miniature, and who amongst the avid gallery of miniatures afficianodos could have coveted it enough to commit theft. Best friends join up with a clever pet Dachsund to find the thief and recover the painting.

Although the book is written for youngsters age 10-15, the information about miniatures is in-depth and technical enough to hold the attention of an adult. On the flip-side, this aspect might make it too involved for just any teen, unless they were passionate about art in general, or miniatures in particular. Still the plot moved things along nicely, the descriptions are well-written, and the characters well-drawn. I wouldn't hesitate to buy the book for the right young reader... or for an adult fan of the miniatures world.

Searching for a Starry Night is my second foray into eBooks and both were Echelon Press imprints. I am impressed with the quality of the writing in each book from this publishing company. Visit their website to view more of their publications. Most of the titles are available in eBook and paperback format to suit the reader's choice, options that are becoming evermore popular in book publishing.

Be sure to hit all the blogs on this book tour - each stop will give you added and interesting information about this small but captivating art form.

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Featured Guest at Stories for Children Magazine

May 31 - Sam from Searching for a Starry Night tells her best friend's story at My Best Friend's Story

June 11 - Mayra's Secret Bookcase

June 12 - Elysabeth's Stories Blog

June 17 Margaret Grace, author of Murder in Miniature and I answer the same questions as she hosts me at the Killer Hobbies and I host her at Candid Canine

June 27 - The Stiletto Gang

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Stop by and ask some questions. Post a comment on each of the blogs, sign up for newsletters and enter to win some miniature prizes and books!

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Finally, you may purchase a copy of the book at amazon.com.

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Christine Verstraete is author of Searching For A Starry Night, A Miniature Art Mystery. The book was published in June 2008 by Quake. She also is an award-winning journalist whose stories have appeared in various newspapers and magazines. Her short fiction will appear in Cat Tales Magazine from Wildside Press and NEWN Magazine, as well as online at Mouth Full of Bullets and Futures Mysterious Anthology. Her short horror story, The Witch Tree, was a contest winner published by Echelon Press. She also is author of the e-book, In Miniature Style, with stories about collectors, photos of their miniatures, and how-to projects. Visit her at her website for all the latest news.

Nightshade wrap-up

Last November, Susan Wittig Albert graciously shared with us information and tips for a successful blog book tour after completing her very first. You can read about it here. In this conversation, she'll share with us her latest experience and insight after finishing a second tour, this one for Nightshade, the most recent release in her long-running and popular China Bayles herbal mystery series.

Welcome back, Susan.

In the most recent tour, you had a new approach to get blog hosts. Tell us how that worked (with the online questionaire). How many bloggers filled out the form and how did you choose the finalists?

For the past 7 or 8 years, I've been building an active email list. Currently, mailings go out to about 10,000 people. On my email list, I invited bloggers to visit an online information page: an outline of what I wanted to achieve with the blog tour, how hosts could participate, and what we both might gain. I also posted the URL on various lists. The page is here. 400+ bloggers visited the page; 24 applied. I visited the blogs, looking for those that seemed compatible with the spirit of the books. I was interested in traffic (of course), but also in introducing the books to a variety of audiences. I chose blogs that targeted gardeners, naturalists, mystery readers/writers, and (in one case) library patrons. I invited two bloggers (who had not responded to the questionnaire) because they are friends and have a different audience.

You decided to promote the entire series, and not just the new book, in this three-week tour. How do you think that worked? Could you tell if you got sales boosts on all the titles in the series? Would you do this again? Do you feel it diverted attention from Nightshade or did it help?

I promoted all the books because new readers to the series don't want to start with the new hardcover. I'd like to acquaint readers with the series, not with just one book. Does that help Nightshade sales? Eventually, sure. One of my jobs as a writer is to write a book--any book--that makes the reader want to read more. A reader who starts with Book 5, might go back to Book 1 and read the whole series, eventually reaching Nightshade (probably about the time it comes out in paperback).



Sales? No, I can't tell a thing. The only way you can ever tie sales to a specific marketing strategy is to direct buyers to one sales point and I don't do that. The books are sold in chain bookstores and big box stores, independent bookstores, online, and on my website. There's no way to judge the effect of my blog tour, as I designed it, on the book sales. I do this on faith, and because I enjoy it. And yes, I will once again promote the whole series, if I do this again. (That said, it was gratifying to see Spanish Dagger hit the New York Times extended bestseller list, the Booksense list, and two Barnes & Noble bestseller lists.)

How did you prep your blog hosts this time? Did you have any new tricks developed since the first tour? Cheat sheets? Reminder schedule? Kick in the pants? Threats from Guido??

I sent everyone a welcome email, a how-to email, an email about promoting the visit, another how-to email along with my guest post, and a post asking for traffic counts. The posts all went up on time. One blogger had trouble posting photos. Another just didn't get it (poor choice on my part—this was one of the invited bloggers) and two bloggers had no traffic stats.

How did you promote the tour? What forums, communities, listservs? How did you use your own blog to promote tour stops? Any new insights since the first tour?

I promoted the tour in my eletters, my blog, on my website, on related listservs, on MySpace, on GoodReads. I did more coaxing/directing from my own blog than I did on my previous tour (with The Tale of Hawthorn House, in the Cottage Tales series), and I posted a "preview" of each host blog. Readers commented that they enjoyed the previews--I'll do that again.

How are you gauging results of the tour? What numbers are important to you? Hits on the book drawing page, your own blog traffic, reports from other bloggers, titlez.com, what else?

All the above. The blog hosts collected the unique visits for the three days of my visit (the three days readers could enter the drawing for that blog) and reported the numbers to me. I have no way of verifying their accuracy, but they all seem more or less in line. In addition, I have the number of entries in the 15 book drawings, which stayed high throughout the blog tour. Traffic to my blog is up by about 20%, to the website, about 15%.

You had an overlapping live tour with the blog tour? How did that work? Would you do that again?

Most of the people I meet on the live tour aren't Internet-oriented. They belong to garden clubs, library Friends groups, and so on. It's not the same market, so there's not really an overlap. The time element is an issue, yes. I usually plan to devote April to book promotion, though (the books are published in April), so in that sense, it doesn't matter whether I'm blogging or live-touring.

Time commitment from me. This was a biggie. Estimated times, probably conservative:

Obtaining a pool of potential blog hosts and choosing the hosts, 8 hours.
Calendaring and confirming with blog hosts, 4 hours.
Mailing ARCs, 2 hours.
Writing blog posts, 20 hours.
"Previewing" host blogs on my blog, 4 hours.
Communicating with blog hosts, 4 hours.
Promoting tour, 4 hours.
Checking guests posts and commenting 15 hours.
Sending thank-you books to host, 2 hours

Total: 63 hours, a bit more than 4 hours per blog

Maybe I overdid it? Should I have cut back to 10 blogs and saved 20 hours? Should I have cut back on the complexity of the blog posts, or the previewing, or comments on the blogs? Maybe. I was stretched for time, certainly.

Length of tour. When the posts were written and I saw what I'd done, I thought it was too long. But some people didn't find out about it until halfway through, and were glad it was still going on. Also, now I have all that material, and am thinking about ways I can recycle it.

Thanks, Susan. I already have a few more questions, but will wait until you're back from your live tour! Anybody else? Leave a comment for Susan or me if you have anything you'd like to add or ask.