Virtual Book Tour

I'm continuing to work a little bit each day to organize my upcoming Virtual Book Tour that starts on February 1, 2008. I'm delighted at how eager everyone is to get involved! Here are more tips on setting up your own:

Step One: See post on December 8, 2007.
Step Two: See post on December 12, 2007.
Step Three: See post on December 20, 2007.

Step Four:
Start scheduling "stops" on your Virtual Book Tour. First, consider which target audiences would be interested in your book. Since my book D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet is a picture book about African American history, my Viritual Book Tour might interest the following target audiences:

children
teachers
readers interested in African American history
home-schooling families
childrens' writers
writers of nonfiction for children
booksellers

Secondly, make connections with these specific target audiences. I joined a listserve of nonfiction writers for kids and connected with other writers who signed up to be a stop on my tour by posting my author's interview or book review on their blog. I explored the Internet and connected with various websites for writers and arranged live Internet author interviews, advertisements about my Virtual Book Tour in e-zines, and book reviews. My publicist helped connect me with bookstores, online booksellers, and teachers who agreed to send me questions from their students to answer in my interviews. It's all free and I make it my goal to keep everything as simple as possible to stay within my basic working knowledge of computer technology.