Happy New Year!

What better time to spark up a blog than the first day of the year? I've joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge because I know from past experience how important daily blogging is to heating up the popularity of a blog. I often include a blog-a-day challenge in my blog book tour classes.

So what will I blog about for 31 days? How about my journey completing the Blog Book Tours Kindle book? I'll start by offering short daily tips to help you organize your own blog book tour.

Are you planning to have a blog book tour this year? Leave me a message and let me know what book you'll be promoting! I plan to host a few more blog book tour stops at this blog this year, so if you have a book related to these topics, keep me in mind as a host for your tour:

• Children's picture books
• Cozy mysteries
• History mysteries
• Organic and environmental non-fiction

May we all enjoy the best year ever in 2013!

Oh, How I Miss You Blogfest

One of my favorite peeps of all-time, Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an instigator of yet another blogfest. This one I can handle!

Here are the bloggers I've missed lately:

Ann Parker who writes the marvelous historical mystery series set in Leadville, Colorado. The Silver Rush Mysteries blog is so... dead. Ann, where are you?

My own fault I don't visit Susan Wittig Albert's blog more. She always has interesting updates about her life in the Texas Hill Country, and what's new with her latest novels. Yes, she usually is cranking out at least three books, and the latest is a novel exploring the life of Rose Wilder Lane and her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Another fave blog I miss is Crunchy Chicken. I do stay caught up with this author on Facebook, but still... you know that good posts like the most recent one are worth it to fans, right?

Who would I miss if they disappeared? So many to choose from, but here are three:

The Little Pickle Press blog, because I helped bring it to this state of wonderfulness over the past two years. It's a blog any company can be proud of. I certainly am! If you have children who are readers, do bookmark it and visit often because they have great specials on their new releases.

I'd also miss Pat Bean's blog. Pat travels the country in her little SUV with her pal, Pepper and shares stories of her adventures. She's writing a travel memoir that I'm sure will be a bestseller some day.

Finally, a group blog because I love them. One of my faves is Jungle Red Writers because these are authors I read, they post regularly, they write really well. Oh, I'd miss them if they were gone. Please don't go away!

Okay - onward to discover more great blogs. What are your favorites - leave me a comment!

Promoting Your Blog Book Tour

The first day of a blog book tour is always a bit stressful for everyone involved, because it sets the tone for the rest of the tour. Also important is getting the word out about the blogs hosting you and this is a process that you "work" all through the day, each day of your tour. Here's the basic procedure:

1. Go to host blog and make sure the post is up
2. Get the permalink (by clicking on the blog post title to expand the URL which is
the unique URL for just that post), then make a shortened link if you are set up
to do that (I use bit.ly)
3. Leave a comment on the blog
4. Post the permalink or bit.ly to your Facebook page and post a status update explaining a little about the tour stop
5. Share the link with your online groups and mailing lists (no reason your
friends and family can't help, right?)
6. Use the bit.ly on Twitter throughout the day
7. Share on Pinterest if you are set up over there
8. Promote all through the day and be certain to drop in on your host blog for the day and check the comments - then join in the conversation. You should be addressing the questions and comments throughout the day as any good host would

Today, Little Pickle Press kicks off a blog book tour for their new picture book, Ripple's Effect. Here's a link to the first host:


http://bit.ly/U49qE9

You can follow the tour for the next two weeks. The entire schedule is here.



If you have questions or comments, please share them here!

A BIG Blog Book Tour

Today we kick off a blog book tour for Little Pickle Press. Their newest title, BIG, by Coleen Paratore is a colorful children's book that encourages children to think big in ways that go beyond size and stuff. It's a pretty powerful message for adults, too! Go here to read an interview with the woman who creates the free lesson plans to go along with the picture books.

If you're wondering what a blog book tour is all about, the best way to learn is to follow along on one. Here's the entire schedule for the BIG tour.

Hot blog book tour tip of the day: Be sure to change your daily blog URL to that post's permalink so you always have the exact link to the blog book tour stop.

More Numbers To Consider

Originally published on 11/6/2009

One of the most important statistics on your blog book tour are those of your once-and-future blog hosts. You want hosts that get at a bare minimum, 100 or more hits per day. To some of you, this sounds like a paltry number because your own blog may get thousands of visitors each day. But more of you probably don't get anywhere near that many on your own blogs, and building the blog that does seems like an insurmountable challenge. But you must, because this will help you find and choose blogs at least as good as your own.

In the blog book tours classes, we experience great resistance to this concept of finding high-traffic blog hosts. Some people even get downright ornery about the idea, and insist that any blog is good enough, and it's just too much work to vet them for popularity.

Those people should simply pay large sums of money to a tour service to plan an impersonal tour for them. Why? Because it's simply too much work to put into a tour that no one will see if you insist on any old blog. Let's think this out.

You can expect to spend 40-60 hours planning a blog book tour of 10-15 stops. A good portion of that time - up to half - is spent crafting your tour stops and doing the actual writing of the blog posts that your hosts will enter on their blogs. You can plan on spending 2-4 hours for each stop, so why would you spend that precious time on a blog that gets 2-3 visitors a day? It makes no sense to gamble that those people will buy your book. Aunt Mabel and many well-meaning friends will offer their services, and by all means humor them if you must. Just don't count them as part of your professional tour of 10-15 really good blog hosts.

Work hard on your blog book tour, but also work smart. That means maximizing the hours you spend preparing a good tour for your very popular hosts.

To rank the blogs your are considering, click here. Contact blogs with a rating of 2-5. Few blogs will rank higher than that.

Free on July 21, 2012

We are #52 on the big Kindle Top 100 List at this very moment, and have 4,600 downloads so far during this promotion. Please help us reach #1 by sharing this link with your friends today. http://amzn.to/Cornercafe and do leave us a review on our Amazon page if you have a minute! You can also link to all our authors over there and see what other books they've written.

No need to buy Shape Magazine when you eat at the Corner Cafe - it's all calorie-free! Haha!

Welcome to The Corner Cafe Blog Book Tour!

Join us for the latest wild and crazy experiment at the BBT Café, the online social group for all the writers who have taken my blog book tours classes over the past few years! This community of about 100 authors supports each other’s writing efforts through daily social media interaction, blog book tours, and by sharing information and conversation as the publishing world changes. And, boy, is it ever changing fast!

In the past few years, the opportunities for self-publishing have burgeoned, and the stigma attached is virtually non-existent. Only an Old Publishing School dinosaur would think of self-publishing as an inferior option. Programs like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing have leveled the playing field, and more authors are jumping into the game every day.

This fertile publishing ground is what inspired The Corner Café short story collection. We noticed that authors were starting to give away samples and old titles in e-book format, and that it resulted in increased sales on their other titles. Even a free day or two tended to increase sales when the regular price of a title came back. 

Without too much forethought about what we were stumbling into, we decided to put together a collection of our very own around a common theme: The Corner Café. The object was for readers to sample various writing styles, and tempt them to link to other works by the contributing authors. We’d promote the new project via a month-long blog book tour (what else?), and track sales each day, as well as measure download bumps the five free days allowed by the KDP Select program. (Seth Godin suggests free is a good marketing strategy in publishing. Here’s his post about it.) So we’re putting it to the test. That’s the short version of how it all came about over the past four months. You can get more gory details at the various blogs listed below throughout June.

Let me tell you a little bit about the book’s content. Here’s the description on Amazon:

Sweet, dreamy, steamy, and sometimes slightly seamy, this multi-genre collection of short stories includes something for every taste. Prepared by the BBT Café authors: Marian Allen, Shonell Bacon, Karen Casey Fitzjerrell, W.S. Gager, Helen Ginger, Dani Greer, S.B. Lerner, Audrey Lintner, Morgan Mandel, Maryann Miller, Bodie Parkhurst, Bob Sanchez, Mary Montague Sikes, Red Tash, Christine Verstraete.

These are just a few of the teasers each author submitted for their respective stories:

• In The Catfish Enchantment by Marian Allen: Cosmo’s father deserted the family and died unforgiven, his mother is sinking into depression, he’s started cutting himself to relieve the pain, and his boss suggests…a tattoo?

• In The Eyes Have It by W.S. Gager: Crimebeat reporter Mitch Malone hates going to church, but when he gets rooked into speaking to the Bible-toting ladies, he may be facing the devil himself as he investigates the prayer group's missing purses.

• In The Consequences of Breaking and Entering by Audrey Lintner, Goldilocks gets an update and her comeuppance.

• In Perfect Timing by Christine Verstraete, a rescued pup helps Corner Café owner Gina Mason find love and thwart a would-be robber.

You can also read the first two chapters using Amazon’s Look Inside feature. If it sounds like something you’d like to download to your Kindle, here’s the link to buy. Only 99 cents!

Join us during the blog book tour all month as we visit these blog hosts:

June 4 Blog Book Tours Kick-off http://bit.ly/CCBBT

June 5 Bob Sanchez with Stephen Tremp http://bit.ly/CCBS1

June 6 Red Tash interviews Dani Greer http://RedTash.com

June 7 Magic Dog Press http://bit.ly/CCMagic

June 8 Heidi Thomas http://bit.ly/CCHeidi

June 11 Marian Allen http://bit.ly/CCCosplay

June 12 W.S Gager http://wsgager.blogspot.com

June 13 Chris Verstraete http://candidcanine.blogspot.com

June 14 Helen Ginger http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com

June 15 Kathy Wheeler http://kathylwheeler.wordpress.com/

June 18 Morgan Mandel Double M http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

June 19 Pat Bean http://patbean.wordpress.com

June 20 Shonell Bacon http://chicklitgurrl.blogspot.com

June 21 Alberta Ross http://albertaross.wordpress.com

June 22 Karen Casey Fitzjerrell http://karencaseyfitzjerrell.blogspot.com

June 25 Pat Stoltey http://patriciastoltey.blogspot.com

June 26 SB Lerner http://www.susanblerner.com

June 27 Maryann Miller http://its-not-all-gravy.blogspot.com/

June 28 Mary Montague Sikes http://marymontaguesikes.blogspot.com

June 29 Stephen Tremp http://breakthroughblogs.blogspot.com

We hope you join us each day to read more about how The Corner Cafe: A Tasty Collection of Short Stories evolved. For those of you out there who know little about how a blog book tour works, a great way to get an education is to follow along on a tour. You'll get lots of ideas for your own blog book tour. Join us and do leave questions and comments here!