A Book Blogger Tells Us How It Really Is

Since I write frequently about book publicity, I'm sent a number of links on the topic. But none of them has been quite so useful lately as Barb Drozdowich's eBook, The Author's Guide to Working With Book Bloggers.

Whether or not it will be your own job (or your publicist's) to set up a blog tour, the book will help you understand what to expect. In the first place, the author is a book blogger--therefore she's seen every author blunder first hand. From the cover copy:

Do you feel out of your comfort zone when dealing with book bloggers? They are the New Gatekeepers to book publishing success – but how can you tap into that source of free promotions by putting your best foot forward? 


The Author’s Guide to Working with Book Bloggers combines the advice of 215 blogging professionals collected in a survey covering all aspects of communication between authors and Review Blogs. Whether you are a new author, or have many titles under your belt, let us demystify the promotion of your book on a book blog.


You’ll learn about whom and where book bloggers are, and the following: 

The Query, The Review,The Giveaway,The Author Interview, The Guest Post, The Book Blurb Excerpt and Cover Reveals and more

When the author mentions 215 bloggers, she's not kidding. That's how many responded to the survey she put out. Their quotes add depth and useful examples to Drozdowich's no-nonsense how-to manual.

There is technical information here: the uses of Triberr, the various databases of book bloggers just waiting to be explored. Then there are the more philosophical topics. Chapter Three is all about the etiquette of interacting with bloggers. And etiquette is ever-shifting, lately. Auto DMs for new followers are passe, as the author points out. Also, she points out how tiresome Goodreads "events" invitations have become. (In short, hearing the politely stated pet peeves of a real life book blogger is darned useful.)

Chapter Four covers the query letter, and includes a perfect check list of all the info you need to provide a blogger in order for her / him to decide whether or not to cover your book. Even a seasoned self promoter will find useful tips here.

There are also guest post ideas, and lots of thoughtful advice about offering giveaways. Chapter Eleven helps authors understand and utilize a blog tour.

Yet it's Chapter Twelve which is worth the price of admission alone. The author asked the bloggers she surveyed, "if you could give an author one piece of advice about promoting their book, what would it be?" Hearing their thoughts and motivations is excessively helpful!

If you have a blog tour coming up, it's worth a couple hours of your time to devour this book. An Author's Guide to Working With Book Bloggers is available for Kindle, Nook and at other major eBook retailers.

Disclosure: I received an epub copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This review first appeared on Blurb is a Verb, the book publicity blog.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Book Blogging for Fun and Profit

Wait... when I said "profit" I wasn't referring to actual money. The "profit" to authors who take the time to do some of their own book blogging is real, however. Experience, depth in your genre and new friends are some of the rewards.

If all goes according to plan, my next foray into publishing will be in the YA market. So a few months ago, I began poking around on YA book blogs, and I liked what I saw. There's a lot of energy and love in the book blogging world. Some book bloggers are authors, too. And some aren't.

The new model of publicity at publishing houses relies heavily on book bloggers to get the word out. It's not uncommon for a publisher to offer 100 ARCs or egalleys to bloggers. If you're an author who hopes to be on the other side of this transaction someday, it sure doesn't hurt to see the process in motion.

Because I don't have the time and energy to start my own book blog and give it the attention it needs, I found two book blogs which were willing to take me on as a contributor. These days I'm writing reviews for The New York Journal of Books and also for The YA Sisterhood. Each has a very different tone, and I love both of them.

Book blogging has led me to learn:

• The ins and outs of NetGalley 
• How Eidelweiss/Above the treeline works (another electronic galley delivery system)
• How publicists reach out to the blogging community
• The many variations of publicist pitches

In short, book blogging means that you're not just asking questions about the publicity process, you're experiencing it every week. 

And the big bonus? As a reviewer, I have access to most any YA book several months before its publication date. I've never been so up on current releases as I am now.

As Spiderman would say, with great power comes great responsibility. Each book sent to me by a publisher deserves a thoughtful review from me. And this gets sticky if I don't like the book. But there's always something nice to say, and there's always a diplomatic way to express your frustrations.

And when something great comes along, I read it early. And that never gets old.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Cora Carmack and Her (Smokin' Hot) Path to Publication

Last fall, Cora Carmack hit the big time with her debut novel LOSING IT. Hers is one of those stories—the sort that give hope to authors everywhere. It proves that good girls (and good guys) win, and they do so by paying attention, taking risks and working hard. Thank you, Cora, for stopping by Query Tracker today to talk about LOSING IT!

Was LOSING IT the first novel you ever wrote?

It wasn’t. I completed one novel before LOSING IT, and started 3 or 4 others. Some of those books (including the unfinished ones), I poured months and years into only to have them go nowhere. Ironically, LOSING IT took three weeks to write, and caused my life to change dramatically almost overnight.

When did you self publish LOSING IT, and how long did it take before you knew you had something big on your hands?

I published the book in Mid-October 2012. And… Um. A day? It hit #1 on B&N a little over 24 hours after it went live. I dared to hope before I published because I got great feedback from the bloggers on the blog tour, but after I published things went incredibly quickly.

I found out it hit the New York Times bestsellers list and the USA Today list about 10 days after I published (the same day I signed with my agent, actually).

Whoa! Okay, let’s back up a minute. I've read that book bloggers were essential to getting your story out into the world, including a cover reveal which involved 30 or so bloggers. How did you get so many bloggers to care about a cover for a book that didn't exist yet? [Note: the answer may well be that it is simply a smokin' hot cover, end of story.]

Bloggers were. Absolutely. But I actually didn’t even show the bloggers the cover before they signed up for the reveal. The YA Sisterhood blog was vital in organizing it. They contacted bloggers that they knew and had worked with in the past with only the story’s blurb, and bloggers signed up based on that.

I've read that you self published this book because you thought New Adult wasn't selling to editors well. That strikes me as a very confident, informed, bold position to take. (And makes such a great story.) My question is, how did you know?

Well, here’s the thing… Cora Carmack is actually my pseudonym. In my real life, I actually work in publishing. When I started writing LOSING IT, I was an intern (at both a publisher and a literary agency), so I was very familiar with the market and the industry. When I decided to self-publish, I actually already had an agent, and we were preparing to go on submission, but at the last minute, I changed my mind.

I just had a gut feeling that self-publishing was the way to go if I ever wanted my book to make it into actual bookstores (which sounds crazy, I know. But I was hoping, desperately that a strong book with the right marketing at the right time could be very successful through self-publishing, and that hope paid off). I split with my agent shortly after that.

But I really didn’t have any inside info. I was just well informed. I read insatiably, was active in the blogging community, and had a publisher’s marketplace subscription. So, I would have to have been blind to not see the connection between bloggers and popular e-books and self-published books being picked up by traditional publishers. I highly encourage writers to treat their writing like a business, not a hobby. That means doing research and being as knowledgeable as possible.

Did you land your agent as a result of your successful sales?

I did, yes. BUT… in addition to my New Adult contemporary writing, I also write Dark YA fantasy, so it was very important to me that whatever agent I signed with was interested in that side of my career as well.

I talked to a lot of agents once the book started doing well. Most contacted me, but I reached out to two or three myself because I wanted to make sure I was making the best possible choice. I ended up signing with Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary. There were multiple agents that I liked and connected well with, but Suzie actually asked to take a look at one of my YA Fantasy WIPs before she offered. Then when she offered me representation, I knew it was because she believed in both sides of my career. That made the decision pretty easy, and I haven’t regretted it a day since.

Did you have to choose an agent and a publisher almost at the same time? (That would have made for a very stressful week or two.)

Oh, it was definitely a stressful time. There was a one week period where I woke up and went to sleep feeling nauseated for no reason other than stress. When I signed with Suzie, I had interest from a few publishers, but I handed that over to her. She went out on submission very quickly after that. There was a slight delay in the process by Hurricane Sandy, but once New York was back to work, things moved very quickly. We went to auction, and I signed with William Morrow/Harper Collins shortly thereafter.

You can find Cora Carmack at her blog, and her book in bookstores.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist at Blurb is a Verb. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.