I have a very special guest today.  Paul V. Stutzman, author of the memoir, Hiking Through: Finding Peace and Power on the Appalachian Trail, has been on a virtual book tour since March 1 and will continue appearing on blogs throughout the world until the end of April.

So far, he has become Virginia Beach Publishing Examiner’s Pick of the Week, been interviewed at Beyond the Books, guest blogged at The Story Behind the Book about why he decided to hike over 2,000 miles by foot across the Appalachian Trail, and was interviewed by April Pohren at Blogcritics.

Simply Stacie, while admitting she rarely reads books about hiking, said the book made her laugh at times and cry at other times.

Paul talked about living at Red Raven Circling, talked about God being relevant in our lives at Thoughts in Progress, was interviewed about his writing life at The Writer’s Life and today appears at Island Chick Travels with some beautiful pictures of his journey.

And he has 29 more stops to go before Paul ends his virtual journey.

Before Paul embarked on his virtual tour, I asked him some questions.  Being a newbie at the game, I was curious how well he was already doing as for promoting online and if he knew what he was getting himself into.  For a guy who trekked 2,176 miles by foot, surely he would be ready for a 30 stop blog tour no problem.

So far, he’s doing great, his Amazon rankings are climbing and I’m very pleased.

Are you curious what he felt about virtual book tours before the whole virtual journey began?  I interviewed him before his tour and his answers are below.  I’ll do a follow up at the end of his tour to see if his tour was up to his expectations and if he felt it was all worthwhile.

Thank you for this interview, Paul.  Can we start out by having you tell us briefly what your new book is about?

Hiking Through: Finding Peace and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail by Paul V. Stutzman (click on cover to purchase at Amazon)

The book “Hiking Through” is about two pathways. The first is the pathway of life, and its continuation after encountering a condition we know as death. The second pathway is the Appalachian Trail and the thru-hike I undertook in the summer of 2008 while on a healing hike after losing my wife to breast cancer.

More and more authors are realizing the potential for sales that derives from virtual book tours.  Can you tell us your personal reasons why you chose a virtual book tour to help get the word out about your new book?

Whether you are self-published or published in a more traditional way, the success of the book still falls on the author’s participation in the promotion of his book. The internet is the quickest and most efficient way to get a product in front of people.

Is this the first time you have heard of them?

Yes it is. I discovered this book tour while searching the internet for resources to promote my book.

What do you hope to achieve through promoting your book through a virtual book tour?

Obviously I hope folks will be interested in buying my book, but I also hope that I can reach folks with my message not to take their spouses and families for granted.

Do you promote online through other means?  Website?  Blog?

I have a website where the book can be purchased at www.hikingthrough.com I also have a blog accessible from that same site.

Do you promote through Twitter and Facebook?  What are your links there?

I am on Facebook under my personal name.

What are your experiences with offline booksignings?  Which do you prefer – online or offline and can you give us the reasons why?

This is my first attempt at an online book tour. I have done numerous book signings and have really enjoyed meeting people. I do look forward to sitting in my easy chair while this tour is ongoing.

Here’s a fun question.  If money were no object, how would you promote your book?

I would give a copy to everyone I met.

Thank you for this interview, Paul.  Do you have any final words?

Wow! That sounds so final. Do I get a final meal? I will say this. Enjoy the folks around you. Appreciate your family and friends. Do not take them for granted. It really is true that you don’t know what you have till it’s gone.

You can visit Paul’s official tour page here!

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Are You Oprah Material?
Saturday, March 13th, 2010 | Author:

I truly believe that if someone took every author in the world and divided them into two groups, those groups would be–the dreamers and the realists, with no fine line in between.

Think of an author friend you know. You can pretty well figure out which category they would fall in. On the one side, you have those who believe that their book is so darn good, it’s right up there with Oprah’s Book Club. The other side? They’re shaking their heads and laughing at the dreamers side.

Of the two groups, I would fall into the realist group. I know that just because I believe I have the next best thing, it’s really not. To me, it’s the best book written; but of course, reality kicks in and I know I’m just one little ant in a world full of anteaters.

That doesn’t prevent me from telling the world about my next best thing book, but it does prevent me from believing it’s Oprah material. Unfortunately, I’m in the minority. The realist side has but too few members and the dreamers side? They’re starting to gain in popularity to match the population of China.

It’s okay to dream, but as a realist, I think the road to bottoming out will come all too quickly for them. As a realist, I know I just keep on keeping on, but the dreamers take things way too seriously.

It’s like American Idol. Most of them are dreamers because only one can become American Idol. There might be a realist or two in the group, but because by now they have let the title consume them to the point where they actually believe they ARE going to be the next American Idol, there’s going to be a lot of bottoming out when the winner is announced.

Oh, they’ll go on, most of them, and sing for other contests or take to the road with this musical gift because they are, after all, dreamers. The ones who don’t make it and who aren’t in the dreamers’ group, will actually fare better because they knew going in that if they make it, they make it, if they don’t, well, they go on and pursue other things such as begging for that 9-5 job they lost because they had to appear on the show in the first place.

Authors are no different. We all have dreams, and even though most authors have the same dreams–getting that NY contract or even just getting published any which way they can–some authors believe from the get go that they are Oprah material even with the odds stacked in front of them so high, they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Ah, such a realistic opinion on my part, but that’s the realist coming out of me.

So, what’s my point?

I was over at the Big Bad Book Blog and they have a quiz you can take to see if you are Oprah material. I bet you can guess how I scored. Not very well. But, I took it pretty well, being the realist I am. Go over there and see if you’re Oprah material and come back here and let us know how you did.

Maybe it will open up a few dreamers’ eyes perhaps?

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Book Tour? More Like A Safari
Saturday, March 13th, 2010 | Author:

With publisher publicity departments backing away from traditional author tours, writers are left to their own devices (and strangers’ couches). A cat peeing in an author’s bag? A writer waking up to discover that a complete stranger has left him four jars of delicious homemade preserves? Such things are not traditionally part of book promotion. But they happened to Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga, an Austin, Texas-based couple who celebrated the simultaneous release of their debut books this fall by jumping in their car for an 8,500-mile, 27-day, do-it-yourself tour.

Read rest of article at LA Times.

Interesting article but what I would like to see the LA Times do is profile someone who had toured online and went all over the world in their pajamas in less the amount of time and saved $2500, wouldn’t you?  Where’s the phone…

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How many of us are bloggers who write blog posts about books – whether it’s a review or you’re hosting an author and want to include the book cover?

Did you know that you could actually be making money off of this?

I just read an interesting article. Although it was an older article, it makes as much sense today as it did then. The article was about using Amazon affiliate buttons on every post you make to make money from your blog.

While this isn’t a new approach to making money from your blog, it is one thing I notice that is neglected from a lot of book blogs, as well as any other blogs that are talking about reading books, reviewing books or promoting books.

Before I go further, I have a confession. I have been an Amazon associate for a few years now and frankly I never saw any money to be made here. This is a personal observation and I’m sure there are a lot of people out there using it and making money. It’s really stupid of me because my business deals with books. I’ve already slapped myself so you don’t have to do it. However, the more I study this, the better the equation looks at the different ways you can get people

But…read this

Okay so it’s Problogger and he gets a million hits and while that certainly would help but it’s the point he made that really made me rethink using it again.

He said that what people did was even if they weren’t interested in buying that product, they might go browsing which they did in his experiment which led to a $500 payout for him.

Get signed up for their Amazon’s affiliate system (it’s easy peasy) and get those buttons up, especially if you’re talking about, reviewing or promoting a book.

To sign up, click here. To find the buttons, look for the tab at the top that says “Associates Central.”

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Who Moved My Buy Button?
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 | Author:

I was  dutifully surfing the net working on tours  last night when I came across a blog post at Marketing Christian Books about a nifty website where you can keep track of your buy button at Amazon.  Seems one day it’s there and the next, it might not be, which translates to lost sales if someone were to want to buy your book that day.

The site is called Who Moved My Buy Button and will automatically tell you when your buy button disappears and when it reappears.  How. Cool. Is. That.

So, being the nosy one, I went over to check it out.  Why not -  I’d love to find out if for some odd reason my buy button gets eaten up by the 900 lb. gorilla as my publisher likes to call it.

I clicked the sign up button and nothing happened.  Perhaps it’s still in the beta stage but here’s what I got off the website:

It happens without warning, always. Just ask the authors in the U.K., well published by major houses, who woke up to find their Buy Buttons had gone missing. No “pardon the inconvenience” e-note from Seattle, just a quiet severing of ties with a few million customers. It’s happened here in the U.S., too, more times than you know. See, the folks at Amazon have a headlock on the online book world, and they tend to get carried away. That’s why we developed WhoMovedMyBuyButton.com. We’ll keep an eye on your Buy Buttons, checking daily to make sure they’re safe. If they’re AWOL, we’ll let you know by e-mail. We’ll also let you know when they return.

This is a good thing, no?

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A fresh look and new ideas for Book Marketing Buzz
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 | Author:

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but Book Marketing Buzz has a new look.  The picture on the left shows you what we used to look like in case you forgot.

I have a wonderful wonderful lady who has helped me change over from the generic wordpress template to a more professional one.  I’ve got lots of templates on my dashboard to the point that if I’m not happy with this one, one or two clicks, and I have another one.  And – I’m still finding them to load on here.  I’m a happy camper now.

But it was in the middle of our redo when I got a frantic call from her.

“I lost your archives!”

Seems that HostGator told her that wouldn’t happen and they were very, very wrong.

And of course she was very very upset.

But you know, I didn’t panic.  I immediately went to my old wordpress dashboard and there was Book Marketing Buzz right there – with archives intact.  Only the thing was, I would have to reload them.  Talk about a relief.  I don’t know who was more happy – me or her.

But I love this woman.  For a small fee, you tell her what you want and she’ll set you up on a spanking new blog with all the bells and whistles.  Leave a comment below and I’ll get up with you on who she is.

The point being – I am slowly adding the archives of the old Book Marketing Buzz to the new one so if you’re a newcomer, this isn’t all we have by far.

Now if you’re wondering why I chose to go self-hosted which would cost, I’ll tell you.

Not only do you not have to depend on the generic templates they give you at Wordpress, there are plugins up the yooza that are perfect for what I want to do with this blog.  I can now add javascript, which means I can add codes to my template here that I couldn’t do on the free Wordpress template site.  I have a very cool plug-in that lets me submit my latest blog post to sites such as Yahoo Buzz, Twitter, Facebook – lots and lots of places – and I just love my new tweetmeme button which makes it so easy to announce my latest blog post at Twitter.

I still have so much more to add and between my work with Pump Up Your Book and getting these blogs in shape, it’s a race to the finish line, but stick around, I have new ideas coming up!

Book Marketing Buzz

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The Story Behind ‘Read an eBook Week’
Monday, March 08th, 2010 | Author:

For one week each year, Rita Toews, 61, a soft-spoken mother of two and grandmother of one, sits at the center of the ebook universe.

Operating from a spare bedroom in her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with her cat Lola by her side (“Every author needs a cat,” she says), Ms. Toews is the creator and chief ringmaster of Read an Ebook Week, an annual international celebration of ebooks that kicks off its seventh season this Sunday.

Read rest of article at Huffington Post.

I personally know Rita and she is one of the nicest women you’d ever want to meet.  I applaud her for all her efforts!

- Book Marketing Buzz

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Excuse the Mess!
Friday, March 05th, 2010 | Author:

Please excuse our dust…Book Marketing Buzz is going to a new template and will be back up soon!

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Shining the book promotion spotlight on Christa Allan
Friday, March 05th, 2010 | Author:

A true Southern woman who knows that any cook worth her gumbo always starts with a roux and who never wears white after Labor Day, Christa Allan weaves stories of unscripted grace with threads of hope, humor, and heart.

Walking on Broken Glass (Abingdon Press, Feb. ‘10) is her debut novel. She contributes to Exemplify and Afictionado, the e-zine of American Christian Fiction Writers. Her essays have been published in Chicken Soup for the Coffee Lover’s Soul , The Ultimate Teacher, Cup of Comfort, and Chicken Soup for the Divorced Soul. Christa is the mother of five adult children, a grandmother of three, and a teacher of high school English. She and her husband Ken live in Abita Springs, Louisiana, where they and their three cats enjoy their time between dodging hurricanes.

We asked Christa a few questions about how she markets her books.

Book Marketing Buzz: Welcome to Book Marketing Buzz, Christa. Can we begin by having you tell us a little about your book?

Christa Allan: Walking on Broken Glass tells the story of Leah Thornton, a woman whose life looks pretty from the outside; she seems to “have it all.” But appearances can be deceiving because she’s a mess. She drinks to numb her pain and, until her friend confronts her with the truth, she thinks no one else has noticed. Leah admits herself to rehab, and the novel-told from Leah’s point of view-follows her through her recovery as she attempts to discover who she really is and what she’s willing to sacrifice to find out.

Book Marketing Buzz: What is the first thing you did to promote your book once your publisher accepted your manuscript?

Christa Allan: Does wildly screaming count? Unfortunately, no! My first step was to work with Rob Eagar of Wildfire Marketing. he helped me zero in on my novel’s value to readers, my tag (“Stories of Unscripted Grace”), how to redesign my website, suggestions for a speaking and writing platform, and other strategies for debut authors.

Then I yakked it up on social networks, my blog, and anyone who breathed.

Book Marketing Buzz: If you had to pick just one book marketing tool that you’ve used to promote your book, which would you say has been the most effective?

Christa Allan: At this point, blog tours have provided opportunities for a wide range of virtual “appearances.”

Book Marketing Buzz: Do you do more promoting online or offline and which do you prefer?

Christa Allan: My novel released February 1, so I’m still in the throes of promoting. Honestly, I’ve not had time to evaluate where I spend more time. My first thought is that perhaps, at least for now, it’s about the same. Online I promote through social networks and blog tours. Offline I’ve written and sent out a number of press releases, have booksignings, send out postcards, elicited endorses and influencers to help spread the word…

Both types are overwhelming! I like the personal contact from signings and workshops. But there’s no way to beat the potential of the virtual world to connect with people I’d never have an opportunity to know.

Book Marketing Buzz: Do you use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to promote your books and have you had any success with it?

Christa Allan: Absolutely! As a teacher in the same parish for over seventeen years, I’ve found Facebook an invaluable tool to connect with former students. Many are now married with children, and they’re spread from sea to shining sea. Qite a number of them are actively promoting my novel.

My Twitter posts automatically show up on Facebook, so that’s a bit of a timesaver. I love Twitter precisely because tweets are limited to 140 characters, and I can speed scroll through them. I think Retweets (where some tweets my tweet!) have the most potential for promotion because my message is reaching followers beyond mine. And who knows how many times that can be retweeted!

Book Marketing Buzz: Do you own a blog and how often do you update it? Did you set up your blog solely to promote your book and what is its effectiveness?

Christa Allan: My blog, Fictionary, is devoted to book and product reviews, and blog tours.

My website is devoted to promoting my novel and personal blogs. Lately, my personal blogging has dwindled; I’m not so pleased with myself that it has! Juggling full time high school teaching, grading papers, marketing a book, traveling for booksignings has been challenging. It seems like every time I get one arm of the octopus in the box, another one pops out! My oldest daughter, my organizational whiz, is whipping me into shape. The first plan of attack is to update my website for promotional purposes; for example, we’re putting together a press kit, schedule of my signings and speaking engagements, and links to interviews.

Book Marketing Buzz: Do you recommend authors getting publicists to help them promote their books? Do you have one?

Christa Allan: I don’t have a publicist because hiring one wasn’t an investment I could afford. Though I do have to say, after everything I’ve experienced in marketing my novel, I think a good publicist would be worth every penny! Abingdon Press, my publishers, have been extremely helpful in coordinating efforts with book stores, answering questions, and generally making themselves available to help wherever they can.

For my next novel, I’m putting funds aside now, and I hope to be able to invest in a publicist.

Book Marketing Buzz: If an author prefers to do it alone rather than hire a publicist, where should they start?

Christa Allan: I think if someone is serious about publishing, a website and social networking need to happen even before the book is sold! Get yourself out there in the virtual world early. People are much more tolerant of what I call “shameless self-promotion” when they know you’ve been around for a while.

Open yourself to promoting other writers. It’s not only a great way to learn about what works and what doesn’t, it’s a way to build relationships that could help later.

Book Marketing Buzz: Thank you for coming, Christa! We wish you much success!

Christa Allan: I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thanks so much for having me on the Buzz!

You can visit Christa on the web at www.christaallan.com.

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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he’s scouring the Internet looking to turn your blog into a NY Times Bestseller.

I read the most interesting article today at Digital Book World and it was called The New Farm System: From Blog to Book. In this article, Iris Blasi, associate editor of Union Square Press, quotes from Patrick Mulligan, senior editor at Penguin’s Gotham Books at the 2010 Digital Book World Conference.

She says Mulligan estimates that more than 50 blogs nabbed book deals in 2009 and that wasn’t all because only announced deals are included in the database so the figure will be much higher.

The Internet is an incredible place to be, isn’t it? Imagine this. There are literally thousands of chances your own blog – the one you’ve worked on maybe for fun or maybe even for purpose – could be picked up by a traditional publishing house. There are prerequisites of course. People have to be talking about it enough to gain the attention of the mighty ones, wouldn’t you think?

So in the giant equation of things, there would be two sets of bloggers – one set who write for themselves and the other set would be those who write for the attention of others. Most bloggers fall in both groups, but I was curious if there were actually bloggers out there who purposefully write to gain the attention of others – mainly agents and publishers who might happen to stumble on “the next best thing” and whip them off to publishdom.

So my question of the day is: do you purposefully write your blog to gain the attention of agents and publishers?

I asked a few book bloggers who are authors or aspiring authors what they thought about it. Did they purposefully write their blogs with the main goal of getting that book contract or did they blog for other reasons?

J.W. Nicklaus who blogs at J.W. Nicklaus’ Blog says, “Directly, no. I would like to hope that either entity would be more interested in what I said and how I said it–from a genuine perspective–than in a forced or tainted angle trying to curry their favor.”

Barry Eva who blogs at Across the Pond says, “No, I don’t. At first I was blogging every day in numerous blogs around the webasphere, with all the differant subjects there were rarely items relating to my book etc. with the increase of the radio shows they have taken over the blogging this year, and while at first I just used one blog for those items I have found the need to spread them to the other blogs as differant listeners have differant blog hosts. Sure I’d like to pick up an agent or publisher but for that I’d need a book to be written lol. For now perhaps, as has happened already I have more chance of being asked to cover other radio stations etc.”

“The target audience for my blog is readers and members of the writing community,” says Morgan Mandel, who blogs at Double M’s take on Books, Blogs, Dogs, Networking & Life. “It would be an unexpected, but happy perk if an agent or publisher were to notice my posts and like them enough to want to offer some type of book deal, but no, I don’t blog with the intention of going after an editor or agent”

April Pohren who blogs at Cafe of Dreams says, “With Cafe of Dreams, my main focus is to inform readers about authors and books that I am interested in and/or share my opinions on books that I have read. For this reason, I probably do write to gain the interest of publishers, but mainly to help promote authors rather than my own personal writing. On a side note, I have actually tossed around the idea of starting a blog titled The Adventures of an (un)Super Mommy. It would be a humorous blog with bits of inspirational messages thrown in about life and family. Fiction with a bit of personal experiences thrown in, lol. With something like this, I would love for an agent and/or publisher to pick up on it if it was any good. I think that any of us who dreams of being a published author has at least a small spark of hope in being “discovered” through any means of our writing – including personal blog writing.”

Cheryl C. Malandrinos who blogs at The Book Connection, among other places, says, “While I have known authors whose books have been turned into blogs, none of my blogs focus on trying to attract agents or publishers. I don’t understand why a person would pay for something that he’s been able to get for free in the past, so I see my blogs only as a creative outlet that I enjoy, not something I would do for profit.”

Rebecca Camarena started the Dogs Rule Cats Drool blog not to gain attention from anyone, but because all the authors in her writers group had started blogs about the main characters in their novels. “I was so miffed at myself for not being an author because I thought I had nothing to write about. I gave it some thought and said, wait a minute, I have three characters in the backyard, but they just happen to be of the animal kind.” So, she created a blog about two dogs who try to exist peacefully in the yard together, but still try to figure out how to get rid of the housecat. Thus Dogs Rule Cats Drool was born and is written in the voice of each animal, each having their own distinct personality.

Rachel, who blogs over at Dig This Crazy Test Pattern, says, “Well…yes and no. Yes, I want the blogs to be a springboard to an eventual book, to show my knowledge of animation history and ultimately gain respect among “real” animation historians. But my colleague Kevin and I are also fans, and we write the blog with fans in mind. In other words, we try not to get too high-flown and intellectual.”

While not all bloggers intentionally write blogs to gain the attention of agents and publishers, some blogs have done really well at doing just that.

Stuff White People Like is one such blog. This blog has attained the most attention so it seems the right choice to begin our search to find out just what publishers and agents might be looking for.

It’s quirky, humorous and just looks like it would make a perfect book. Random House gave this blogger a $350,000 advance for rights to publish it.

Incidentally, the blog was started in ‘08 and already it’s received over 63 million hits.

Postcards From Yo Momma is the brainstorm of Doree Shafrir and Jessica Grose who thought it would be funny to post emails from mothers.

Says Doree, “I just thought of a brilliant idea. We start a website called emailsfromourmoms.com and get people to send us emails from their moms.” “OMG THAT IS AMAZING,” Jessica wrote back. “Let’s do it.”

They later decided “Postcards From Yo Momma” would make a better blog title and the rest is history. Needless to say, they got an undisclosed amount of money but it was “significant.”

More bloggers who attained book deals:

Animal Review

Anonymous Lawyer (Picador)

Awkward Family Photos

BBQ Addicts (Scribner)

Chuck Norris Facts

Crazy Aunt Purl’s Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split (HCI)

Escape From Cubicle Nation

Fail Blog

FU, Penguin

Hot Chicks with Douchebags (Simon Spotlight Entertainment)

I Can Has Cheeseburger (Gotham)

Jezebel

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (Little, Brown and Company)

Look at this Fucking Hipster

My War: Killing Time in Iraq (Berkley Trade)

Passive Aggressive Notes (Harper)

People in Walmart

Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves (cracked up looking this one over)

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (William Morrow)

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income (Wiley)

Regretsy: Where DUI Meets WTF (Villard)

Restaurant Girl (HarperCollins)

Rules From My Unborn Son

Sleeveface (Artisan)

Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan)

The Joys of Engrish (Tarcher)

The Pioneer Woman

This is Why You’re Fat (HarperStudio)

The closest I ever came to fame and fortune was when a playwrite asked me if I had rights to a paranormal comedy that I and two other writers wrote. We sent the book, then heard nothing.

Sigh.

But…since the book’s publisher went bankrupt, might there still be hope for Henri the Ghostest with the Mostest?

It does make you think, now doesn’t it?

[polldaddy poll=2711028]

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