Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The Author's Guide to Working With Book Bloggers by Barb Drozdowich (GFT REVIEW)


                      


                                    


The Author's Guide to Working With Book Bloggers
                        by Barb Drozdowich


BLURB:

Do you feel out of your comfort zone when dealing with book bloggers? They are the New Gatekeepers to book publishing success – but how can you tap into that source of free promotions by putting your best foot forward?

The Author’s Guide to Working with Book Bloggers combines the advice of 215 blogging professionals collected in a survey covering all aspects of communication between authors and Review Blogs. Whether you are a new author, or have many titles under your belt, let us demystify the promotion of your book on a book blog.

You’ll learn about whom and where book bloggers are, and the following:

The Query,

The Review,

The Giveaway,

The Author Interview,

The Guest Post,

The Book Blurb Excerpt and Cover Reveals and more!

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EXCERPT

The Guest Post

What is a guest post and how can it promote your book?

As we have discussed before, book bloggers are the new slush pile. They are inundated with review requests. Their email inboxes seem to magically fill up with emails from publishing houses, PR people, authors, and their assistants. Book blogging is a hobby, and while I personally feel that it’s the best hobby a person can have, it shouldn’t take over a person’s life.

Some bloggers read faster than others, so posting 4 or 5 reviews a week is doable. Some blogs have multiple reviewers and they can post 10 or 15 reviews a week, as they post multiple times a day. We can assume that most book bloggers post reviews because they want to share their love of books! But there are other ways to publicize your book.

In today’s publishing environment, readers want to get to know authors. Well, we want to get to know the public persona of the author. We don’t really want to know the day to day minutiae of the author’s life, but we want to know what they are like as an author, what their interests are, how they research the books they write, and how they come up with ideas (especially totally non-creative people like myself). I’m continually fascinated by the over-used question of where do your ideas/inspiration come from? We want to know what books they’ve written, and what’s coming up next. Many of us want to go to book signings or author chats. We want to be able to get a feel for their writing before we spend money on a book.

One way we can do this is by reading a guest post the author has written. Guest posts are a little window into the thoughts and ideas of an author. And to the addicted reader, they are a source of fascination and entertainment

My review:

I found this work to be a wealth of information that addresses many of the aspects of book bloggers and the symbiotic relationship between authors and these dedicated readers who are delighted to help promote them.  I think this is a great reference work that provides a quick overview of dos and don'ts that authors should take to heart.  I do object to the fact that the author only consulted those bloggers on Facebook and Twitter as it underscores the tendency to exclude those of us who don't use these forms of social media but I understand that this was probably the easiest way for her to get a large response.  I admire the author's efforts to facilitate the process and hope that authors take her suggestions to heart.



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AUTHOR Bio and Links:



Social Media and Wordpress Consultant Barb Drozdowich has taught at University, trained technical personnel in the banking industry and, most recently, used her expertise to help dozens of authors develop the social media platform needed to succeed in today’s fast evolving publishing world. She owns Bakerview Consulting and manages the popular blog, Sugarbeat’s Books.

Bakerview Consulting (Business Site)
Barb Drozdowich (Author Site)
Sugarbeat’s Books (Book Blog)
Facebook (Author blog)
Facebook (Bakerview Consulting)
Facebook (Sugarbeat’s Books)
Twitter
Google+
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Goodreads
Shelfari
Amazon Author Page


Buy link:

Amazon


GIVEAWAY!  (my apologies, I forgot to add this!)
Please enter the Rafflecopter and also leave a comment about whether you pay attention to reviews when looking for your next read!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Please visit other stops on the tour.
November 19: Reader Girls
Decembr 3: A Pen and Fire
December 10: Teena in Toronto
December 17: Nana Prah's Blog
December 31: Rambling Voices in My Head
January 7: Brenda Maxfield's Blog
January 14: Sharing Links and Wisdom 

13 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks for the reminder! My apologies for inadvertently leaving it off!

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  2. I am not a blogger, but I'm a reader who has come to really appreciate good book bloggers over the past couple of years. I hope that authors will heed your good advice for working with book bloggers.

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    Replies
    1. Good Morning Catherine! Thanks for stopping by. Thank you also for your kind comments!
      Barb

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    2. Thank you for sharing. I apologize, I didn't have the Rafflecopter info up yet, so I hope I will be able to contact you to come back and fill it out. Happy reading!

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  3. Good Morning Everyone! Thanks so much for hosting me and my book today! Thank you also for your lovely words about my book! Very much appreciated! I'll be around today if anyone has any questions or comments!

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    Replies
    1. Good morning and thanks so much for visiting!

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  4. Thanks so much for figuring out the Rafflcopter widget! I was pretty resistent to use them at first with giveaways on my blog, but I now see how they make things so much easier!!! Thanks again for your kind words.

    Barb

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    Replies
    1. I have to confess that I still struggle with getting them to work sometimes...fortunately, the Goddess Fish folks are VERY patient!

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  5. I had no idea just how many review requests book bloggers were getting. When I would post a book review on my blog I would get the occasional review request by an author and thought it was cool. But I've started guest reviewing for a blog here and there and I've been getting more and more review requests. I seriously had no idea there would be that many but I read fast and get to pick the books I want so I'm loving it.

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    Replies
    1. Yep...my idea of heaven...except for the fact that I tend to read them much faster than I get the reviews written up (e.g. I have 12 titles I need to write up right now, lol). Thanks for visiting, Mary, have a great holiday!

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    2. Hi Mary,
      Just to put things in prospective, I've been book blogging for just over 3 years and I get around 200 requests each month. It's totally overwhelming! My blog isn't a big blog - I can only imagine how many enquiries they get!! Thanks for dropping by!
      Barb

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  6. a couple

    bn100candg at hotmail dot com

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