Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘DIY’

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The Benefits of the Virtual Book Tour

The DIY book tour has become more and more popular (or should we say, necessary?) as publishers cut funding for traditional book tours and as self-publishing becomes more feasible for emerging writers. For the author arranging his or her own publicity, the most obvious route is old-fashioned in-person bookstore visits, which we’ve discussed quite a bit here at FWR over the past year—a sign that writers increasingly need to act as their own marketers, perhaps. But while the internet era makes life harder for writers in some ways—the increased challenges it causes for traditional publishing, for one—it also gives the […]


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Control your own book tour destiny

We’ve written several posts over the years about the emergence of DIY book tours, marketing and self-publicity (read them here, and here, and here). Not only do self-published authors need to get their hustle on, but writers who publish with small presses, or find themselves mid-level (or lower) on a big house’s list can find their book off the radar within months of a debut. Yet many writers find they’re woefully unprepared to find the right venue in Kansas City or drum up buzz ahead of time so they don’t show up to an empty house at an Austin coffee […]


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More on the DIY Book Tour

Jeremy recently posted about Allison Amend’s tips for a do-it-yourself book tour. Author-arranged promotions are becoming more and more common as publishers cut back on marketing and publicity, and the L.A. Times has some firsthand accounts of what such a book tour can be like: 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 […]