Planning a virtual book tour

So far in The Publishing Journey blog series we've covered the book proposal, what the professionals in the publishing industry expect of an author today, what you can be doing whilst searching for an agent, publicity tactics before publishing, YOU as a brand and finally the coveted book launch... But what happens next? How do you continue promoting your book?

Enter the virtual book tour. Of course, you can do a real life one too, but it's likely to be more cost effective and you'll reach a bigger target audience by continuing to promote your work online.

Planning a virtual book tour is much the same as planning a blog tour and I'm sure with a little refreshing, you can use much of the same material.

Here are 8 steps to follow:

1) Make sure your blog is active along with your social networking accounts - Twitter, Facebook, etc

2) Give yourself at least 2 months planning time (if not more). Determine the type of tour you want to do, what you hope to achieve, and specific dates and duration

3) Plan your content and giveaways

4) Research for prospective hosts and send them an invitation (much of this work you would've already done when organising your blog tour)

5) Once confirmations from hosts come back in, assign dates to them for the tour

6) Begin pre-tour promotional activity for the book tour (again, use the same strategy from your blog tour)

7) Write your articles / blog posts and interview questions and send them to your hosts

8) Finally, when the tour kicks off, monitor daily, be virtually visible and available, and co-ordinate any action points (like prizes for giveaways)