The New Era of Book Marketing

Legacy plans to continue to use blog tours to market books, but still relies on more traditional marketing methods as well, such as sending press releases and review copies to print media outlets.

Round Rock, Texas-based public relations firm PR By The Book also is experimenting with blog tours, running its first last fall for four action-adventure novels, and starting another one this March.

For last fall's blog tour, the company contacted bloggers who cover action-adventure, and then created a schedule in which the 30 to 40 bloggers were all blogging within five days of a book's launch. The goal was to have different angles from each blogger.

Up to 20 bloggers will write about the book being released in March. "We want them all that week so it's timely," says Marika Flatt, PR By The Book's founder. "We want the power of multiple impressions on readers. We want that groundswell of Internet activity all in one week to give that big gust of book sales at the beginning."

PR By The Book got the word out about the blogs through its Twitter and Facebook pages as well as on the author's and publisher's social media sites. And once a blog runs, the publisher links to it from its website.

Marketing in this way is very low-cost, explains Flatt, costing, on average, around $4,000 per project. A more traditional campaign would cost closer to $10,000.

Blog tours can be all of the marketing for a book or just one part of it. PR By The Book is working on another campaign in which the blog tour complements print, radio and TV marketing.

"It all depends on the publisher's and author's wishes," says Flatt, "but it also depends on the budget—sometimes they don't have the budget for a $10,000 campaign."