Week Forty-Three: To Blog Tour or Not to Blog Tour?

A book blog tour is when a writer promotes a book at a different blog every day for a set number of days, often during a crucial time in the life of their book, typically publication week or month.

I've had various book blog tours in the past, always organised by my publishers around publication week, and though I'm sure they helped get my name out there a bit more, I don't recall any massive sales boost during the tours or in the immediate aftermath. They are lovely for the ego, but can take a great deal of energy to prepare for - all those blessed blog posts and endless Q&A's that steal time away from actual writing - and it can become very repetitive, going on Twitter or Facebook each day to point people towards the latest blog stop.

Blog stops can involve some fun and interesting posts, it's true. But also they may result in some same-old, same-old posts, or a few less than exciting questions, like 'What is your favourite colour?' or even, 'Where do you get your ideas from?' (See this post for more about that old chestnut!)

So if, a few months ago, you had asked me if a book blog tour was worth the expense and hassle, I would probably have murmured, 'Unlikely, no.' But very quietly, as I know many people - publishers, in particular, and book bloggers, in general - put great store by such promotional tools, and rejecting that opinion can make you look like a Difficult Author.

However, something happened last month that has drastically changed my attitude to blog tours. Possibly forever.

My latest psychological thriller, FORGET HER NAME, came out with Thomas & Mercer.

FORGET HER NAME, UK AMAZON

To celebrate this event, and in the hope of reaching a wider US readership than I've enjoyed so far with my psychological thrillers, I decided late last year to pay for a blog tour.

It felt like a gamble. A real shot in the dark. But for several years I had been online friends with a lovely blogger called Rachel Gilbey, whose enduring love for my romcoms (written as Beth Good) had made me love her in return and got me to the sweet spot where I was pretty much inclined to trust her with anything. So when she started running blog tours, under the fun name Rachel's Random Resources, I became interested in the idea of asking her to run a tour for me. But being a busy person, I kept putting it off. Until FORGET HER NAME was nearly due out, and I thought, what the hell, and sent Rachel an email ...

Rachel is a total star. And a hard-working star at that. She asked me for a few basic details about the book, and some jpgs of me and the cover etc, and charged me an extremely reasonable fee. She did everything else at that stage. She asked around her blogger friend contacts, and got together a group of bloggers interested in my book and willing to take part. She sorted out dates for each blog stop, and made a poster for the blog tour. She also sent me a list of blog posts I would need to write - about nine in total - sorted out review copies for everyone, and which blogs would carry reviews or just straight promo for the title.

And for some weeks, that was it. I forgot about it. No sweat, no worries. I just cracked on with writing my next book. Until the deadline for my blog posts approached, and I had to sit down and write them.

That was quite hard work. But nothing comes of nothing, so I did my best to make all the blog posts lively and informative and strongly differentiated from each other. I sent the posts to Rachel, and she liaised with the bloggers on my behalf, and again, that was it. I just sat back and waited for publication day. No hassle!

Publication Day dawned. There were three blog stops on that day, all promoting FORGET HER NAME, and it was the same every day for the next fortnight. (Rachel very kindly allowed me a longer tour than most, as so many bloggers were keen to be involved, which was nice.) All I had to do was retweet bloggers' tweets and occasionally mention the tour myself ... Though I'm sure I could have got away with not even doing that. Except I was enjoying the process too much to take a back seat.

Rachel's Random Resources blog tour was the only promotion I had for the book. But it worked. Boy, did it work!

FORGET HER NAME rose steeply into the UK Kindle Top 100 almost immediately. Later it reached the Top 40. It rose into the top 2000 on Kindle US, higher than any other of my books previously, except for a couple of one-day Bookbub promotion spikes organised by my publisher. The first month sales figures blew me away. And my publisher was pretty pleased too.

But it didn't stop there. Although FORGET HER NAME has since settled into a nice position just above the UK Top 100, its stablemate LOCK THE DOOR, my previous thriller from 2017, has shot past it into the Top 100. In fact, at the time of writing this post, LOCK THE DOOR is at number 14 in the UK.

LOCK THE DOOR at #14 overall, and #2 in Women's Fiction, 26th Feb 2018

Although other factors may be at play here, including a price reduction to £1 by my publisher, I also attribute that massive success to Rachel's blog tour. Especially since I've been able to promote my books using some of the lovely quotes from bloggers that you can see in this post! (Which Rachel also organised for me, another of the useful services she offers to save busy writers time during promotions.)

So the blog tour was a catalyst for the success of my backlist thrillers, which are now all selling strongly after a few lacklustre months. And I don't think any of that would have happened if I had not reached out to Rachel and booked a blog tour with her excellent service. Running a launch tour with Rachel's Random Resources is the best thing I could have done for my book, and has made the publication of FORGET HER NAME a resounding, spectacular success.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Rachel, and ... I'll be back!!

And if you are a writer considering the expense and hassle of a blog tour, I would certainly recommend taking the plunge if you have a book which might respond to that kind of promotion.

Yes, it costs. But not a massive amount. Not given the possible success you could have. (Unless you have to pay for review copies or a Netgalley presence.) And yes, it's hard work when you have to write blog posts for the tour. But you can ask for a tour without author-contributed posts, or just write a few and request reviews or promo for the rest. And I can testify to the fact that it is wonderful to see bloggers' reviews going up on Amazon, Goodreads and Netgalley within days of your book's publication ... There is no guarantee that bloggers will give you the thumbs-up, of course. That's the risk you take when giving out free copies in large numbers. But I was lucky and most seemed to enjoy my book!

Getting the word out on your new book, or a backlist of books, is always difficult. But when you can hand over some of that work - if not the bulk of it! - to another person, especially someone as friendly and efficient and gifted at working with others as Rachel Gilbey, then you should find launch week a little less tiring than usual.

Not to mention the chance of it being mind-blowingly successful!

You can find Rachel's blog tour website here: Rachel's Random Resources.

FORGET HER NAME UK

FORGET HER NAME US

Week Thirty-Four: The Ups and Downs of A Writing Career

This time last year, I was in a bad spot, career-wise.

I was out of contract with all the publishers with whom I had previously worked, my debut thriller had been rejected by multiple publishers, and I was only surviving by self-publishing romcom novellas under the name Beth Good.

We were forced to leave our lovely rented farm on the edge of Bodmin Moor and rent a very small terraced house in a Devon town instead, jettisoning over half our possessions and having to part with some of our beloved pets in the process. It was a traumatic time. I started editing other people's manuscripts freelance, but the workload was heavy and the money not quite good enough to get us through. I decided that if I couldn't make money from writing or editing, I would have to get a 'proper' job again. But as I was home educating my kids, it would have to be an evening or night job. Which would mean no time left at all for writing. Or sleeping, in fact!

In the run-up to my job search, I self-published my debut thriller GIRL NUMBER ONE. I hoped for the best, but planned for the worst, in other words.

GIRL NUMBER ONE came out in late September 2015.

After a sluggish start, it began to climb the charts.

In mid-December, it hit the Number 1 spot in the UK Kindle chart, and stayed there nearly a week, selling many thousands of copies.

By then, it had already excited huge amounts of interest and comment, and had come to the attention of an editor at Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon Publishing imprint. I contacted my agent and signed with AP for a life-saving two-book deal. My second psychological thriller, LOCK THE DOOR, is already finished and on pre-order: it will be published January 2017. 

Today, August 9th 2016, a new, revised edition of GIRL NUMBER ONE has been published in digital form. A gorgeous paperback edition will follow in September.

Following on from that two-book deal, possibly because GIRL NUMBER ONE's meteoric rise had come to the attention of the team I had worked with previously at Hodder & Stoughton, I was approached by that publisher to write a Christmas book for them. That story is BERTIE'S GIFT, a whimsical, feel-good adult read about a Beagle on a mission to save both his sister and his adopted family.

BERTIE'S GIFT was a delightful change from my thriller writing - I had to write it almost in tandem with LOCK THE DOOR, sometimes morning for one book, afternoon for the other. It will be published in hardback and ebook on October 20th 2016. It is coming out under yet another pen-name, this time Hannah Coates, in order to differentiate it from my other writing.

I am now working on a third thriller, with a side venture into a brand-new romcom for my Beth Good persona, as I know many readers have been waiting for a new one from me. We are back on our feet financially, and I have been able to abandon the idea of getting a 'proper' job in order to pay the bills. Thanks to the fantastic success of GIRL NUMBER ONE, which came utterly out of the blue, I already have a 'proper' job as a full-time professional writer again - and am very, very happy indeed.

So this post is not only an indication of the often terrifying vicissitudes of a writer's life - even a relatively successful writer - but also a massive thank you to everyone who bought, read and/or supported GIRL NUMBER ONE.

However hard a writer works, they can't get anywhere without readers, and I have been incredibly lucky to have such loyal readers, many of whom have followed me from historicals to contemporary romcoms to thrillers. And hopefully will now follow me to feel-good adult doggy fiction as Hannah Coates!

Thank you, and happy reading!

Amazon Publishing acquires GIRL NUMBER ONE

I'm utterly thrilled to announce the sale of my self-published debut thriller GIRL NUMBER ONE to Amazon Publishing's crime and thriller imprint, Thomas & Mercer.

GIRL NUMBER ONE: a No. 1 Bestselling Thriller

Some of you will recall the convoluted history of this book, which was rejected last year by well over a dozen publishers. I believed in the book, and wanted to find it a readership, so decided to put the book on the market myself. I did everything on my own: editing, cover, blurb, marketing, and published the book in September 2015 at 99p, under my maiden name Jane Holland.

After a slow start, GIRL NUMBER ONE entered the UK Kindle Top 100, and reached Number 1 in the UK on December 10th.

It stayed in the Number 1 position for five days, when I cannily put the price up to £1.99. It began to drop, but thankfully slowly, and remained in the Top 100 for 84 days. The book has sold coming up to 44,000 paid downloads to date, plus over 4 million reads via Kindle Unlimited.

I was called by an editor from Amazon Publishing back in November, who had read GIRL NUMBER ONE and was very excited about it. Although I had already made some super sales on my own, she felt that teaming up with Amazon would open up new territories for the book, and after some research and discussion with other authors, I had to agree. I was particularly pleased that she wanted to acquire a second thriller from me as well.

I took the offer to my agent, and finally signed the contract last week. GIRL NUMBER ONE will be re-edited and republished with a new cover by Thomas & Mercer later in 2016, keeping all its current reviews. Meanwhile, I will be working on a second psychological thriller for them, which we are currently discussing.

This whole experience has been a real vindication for me of my personal belief in this novel. So if you're out there now, with a rejected novel, and you're unsure whether or not to self-publish, I would say, don't wait for someone else's permission to believe in your book, just go for it. If you go down the same route I did as a self-publisher, you will have little to lose and a great deal to gain.

I've also used this opportunity to make my first-ever podcast, to announce this publishing deal and also discuss my screenplay entry in the Red Planet Prize. Why not check it out? It's only 5 mins long - and I'll be starting a whole series of writing podcasts soon, so you might want to subscribe.

My other novels like MIRANDA are selling well too, on the back of GN1's success