Last Day Of My Blog Tour!

It's the final day of my blog tour and it's ending with a nice review of BAND GEEK up at Sweet Southern Home. Thank you, Carrie, for hosting me! Readers, be sure to comment on her post so you can have a chance to win a prize of a CD and earrings!

To be honest, this all-review book tour has had mixed results for me. On the one hand, it's been GREAT because BAND GEEK has gotten so many wonderful reviews and I've enjoyed getting that feedback. I now have more reviews up on Amazon and Goodreads, which will only help me in the longrun, and the positive comments have bolstered my confidence in my writing. I truly, truly appreciate these bloggers for taking the time to read and then write about my book (some even posted reviews on multiple sites for me). Indie authors need all the help they can get when it comes to marketing and I think it's great that these bloggers are doing so much to help writers. At the end of this post I'll again link to all of the sites that hosted me; I encourage all of my readers to check out these blogs because they're written by some very thoughtful and intelligent people. A BIG THANKS once again to Goddess Fish and everyone involved!!!

Unfortunately, sales of my book are still slow. I've blogged about it, posted links on Twitter and Facebook, and have even included links on sites like Stumbleupon. And yet it's been kind of dead this month and I'm not sure why. I'm wondering if perhaps I needed to offer a different kind of prize in my blog tour, maybe something other than a CD and earrings? I thought that my gift is cool -- something handmade and different, but I see that a lot of other authors on blog tours are offering things like Amazon gift cards. Perhaps the next time I should follow the pack a bit more and do something that will encourage more people to check in and comment on the blog posts -- even if I am using some bribery, LOL. Oh well, live and learn, I guess. What do you guys think? What sort of author "prize" makes you want to participate in a tour?

The good news is that these bloggers' reviews will be up on their sites and Amazon for the longhaul so this can only help my book. It's helping me as a writer, too, because I've gotten many different perspectives on BAND GEEK. It sort of felt as if we were part of a round-table discussion! So while an all-review blog tour may not guarantee sales for an author, it certainly offers many other positives.

Once again, here's a list of the blogs who participated in my tour:

YA Book Addict

Unabridged Andra

Andi's Young Adult Books

My Neurotic Book Affair

Buried In Books

Musings From An Addicted Reader

Sweet Southern Home

Long And Short Reviews

Rogue's Angels

The Life (and lies) Of An Inanimate Flying Object

Paranormal Book Club

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, 4.6 stars on Amazon!

New Book Tour Kicks Off Today -- New Review Of BAND GEEK!

Since my last blog tour was reasonably successful, I signed on for another one with the promotional company Goddess Fish. This particular tour is an all-review tour, meaning that the bloggers simply read and review my book. I'm not writing any guest blog posts or doing any interviews; I'm just commenting on posts that readers write in response to the reviews.

This morning, my tour kicked off with a critique from Long And Short Reviews. Overall, she really liked BAND GEEK. She related to Melinda and appreciated the growth that Josh goes through during the story. I'm glad that she "got" him as a character because I really worked hard to not make him a straight-up hero; I wanted him to be flawed with a chance to make some changes about himself. She said that she really got into the story and was anxious to find out what would happen.

She does take off some points for typos. She's not the only person who's commented on this so I'm wondering if perhaps I should hire a professional editor. I've read my work so many times at this point that I think my edits would be useless and I'd probably miss typos. I thought that I got them all, but you reach a point where your eye automatically corrects them in your head because you know your work so well. I had several writer/editor friends do reads ... but all have their own jobs, kids, etc. If this book were produced by a large publishing house, I'd have an editor on hand who'd spend months going over every sentence. So perhaps it's time for me to invest. In general, I've gotten very positive comments about the story and if this will take it to the next level, it could be worth it.

For now, I'm going to wait to see what the other bloggers on the tour have to say. I'm just glad that people are enjoying BAND GEEK and getting so into the story. I really do appreciate every reader and reviewer that I have!

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, just 99 cents!