I was visiting another book blogger’s site when I observed a bulleted point: “I don’t participate in book tours and other forms of spam.”
Oh.
That was my reaction: Oh. And then I had a kind of “oh?” reaction.
I can understand that some people might consider seeing release blitzes as a form of spam A book comes out and all of a sudden your reader page or inbox has posts about a book you’ve never seen before and you wonder, why is that post here? What is it trying to accomplish? And you decide that it must be spam because it’s obviously trying to sell that book.
And this is partly true.
Many of the release blitzes and cover reveals you will see on most book blogs are typically for Indie books. Indie authors (nor small publishing companies, for that matter) do not have the deep pockets that the top 5 publishers have. An Indie writer is hoping that word-of-mouth and blog or other social media posts will attract readers to their book. So they pay money to PR companies who hopefully will make beautiful or tantalizing teasers to attract the attention of the people who read blog, FB, twitter, or Instagram posts.
Strangely enough many book bloggers take the time to share these posts free-of-charge. We support Indie writers and small publishing companies this way. We get the word out for fellow writers or favorite writers and we share with our friends, readers, followers, one of our favorite things: books. And most of us don’t earn a single thing from it except for satisfaction and maybe an Indie ARC once in a while.
To Indie authors, however, these posts may help to get their name known, their book read, all against a great deal of odds.
Thanks for reading and tell me what you think. Do you consider release blitzes and cover reveals spam? Do you see them as nuisances? If you’re an Indie writer, do you use them? Do they help?
How interesting. I’ve never heard someone refer to them as ‘spam’, but it is like advertising I suppose. I’m interested in how helpful they are. They don’t bother me at all…I’ve only participated in a few though. 😉
I suppose they’re helpful depending on the audience. Because of them, I’ve read writers that I ordinarily wouldn’t have come across…but then I’m a book blogger. I do wonder if non-book bloggers ever follow up on any of them. 🙂
Great post! I love doing blog tours to help out authors/publishers. I am happy to see them and have never considered them spam.
Yay!
I’ve never considered them spam or I would have thought more than once about doing them for the past few years. Read on! 🙂
I like to think these posts are for readers, to get the word out about a new read. And I actually have no idea what a blog-tour entails! Sad, but true.
However, if the first few lines of the post interest me, I read the rest. A writer is ever a reader, and new stuff, particularly by indies/smalls, are of more interest to me than big marketing tactics by trad publishers. I like the personal touch.
One day, maybe, I’ll do something about a blog-tour … but I will definitely keep looking at those first lines of a post about a blog tour!
Yes! There are marvelous Indie writers out there who just need to get the word out.
Interesting discussion! I’ve heard bloggers on both sides, some who consider book tours spam and others who love them.
I personally don’t mind them, as usually they are a great way of supporting indie authors and hearing about upcoming releases. It can be a good opportunity to hear from a bunch of different bloggers on the same book within a short space of time. It helps me decide if a book is worth checking out, particularly if book bloggers where I trust their opinion are participating.
It’s really hard for indie authors and some lesser known ones traditionally published to get their books out there. I do believe for every book there is a reader so hopefully the blog tours find the readers for some of these books. 🙂