Why Have Your Book Reviewed In The CSFF Blog Tour?
This is just a quick note to say that I checked my blog’s statistics, and no less than 54 people came to my blog in the last month looking for information on the specific Christian fantasy novels that I’ve reviewed as part of the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour.
My blog statistics show me the actual search terms they used in Google, so I know for sure that they were looking for information on these books. And these are not necessarily the most recent books I’ve reviewed … some of my reviews date back to 2007 and 2008.
Over a year, if the statistic holds (and I don’t have time to check), that would amount to 600+ people looking for book reviews on my blog alone. Multiply that by the many other blogs that are part of the tour, and that may be a pretty significant number.
The authors whose books were represented in Google’s search terms during the last month were (in alphabetical order):
- Wayne Thomas Batson
- Ted Dekker
- Christopher Hopper
- C.S. Lakin
- Stephen Lawhead
- John Olson
- Jeffrey Overstreet
- Donita K. Paul
- Tom Pawlik
- Andrew Peterson
- Jonathan Rogers
So … do blog tours work? I don’t know how much they translate to actual sales, but I do know this: readers are looking for unbiased information about your book, and they are definitely looking for reviews on blogs.
It would be nice to have some quantifiable statistics related to blog tours vs. book sales. They probably have some affect on reader’s decisions to buy, but most of the time I just look at all the reviews on Amazon for a particular book. All the reviews are in one place there instead of going out to various sites. If I do a “blog” tour, I will just request my readers post their reviews on Amazon and link to my novel on Amazon.
That’s an excellent question, Stephen, and I hope, if I ever have MERLIN’S BLADE published, to find a way to quantify sales that directly result from any blog tours. I wonder if setting up an Amazon affiliate account would allow one to know (as long as everyone in the tour pointed there rather than just straight to the book).
It is a strange thing about the Amazon reviews, too. I would have thought that people would just go there, but for some reason they search for info on the book in Google. I can’t explain the behavior, exactly, but I do know it’s happening … people really do come to my blog.
In fact, since I started this topic on my blog, eighteen more people have come looking for information on books I’ve reviewed. Why? I don’t know. People just like Google, I suspect, or maybe they don’t buy from Amazon and their kids asked them to buy it.
It’s a good idea, either way, to get the reviews on Amazon … great advice!
Hey Robert, just wanted to drop by the blog to say hello and thank you for reading and responding to my review of The Skin Map. Provided a few follow-up comments.
Also, great collection of writing/publishing resources here. Quite admirable!
Josh,
Thanks for visiting! You’ve got your own slew of writing resources which I just posted about on Facebook … very helpful stuff.
I also subscribed to your blog and look forward to following your journey toward publishing.
-Robert