Episode 50: Book Tour Companies Honest Review

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Hello all my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of month you’d like to be. Welcome to The Writer’s Triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. Today we’re going to be building off of the episode about marketing. And we’re dedicating this entire episode to book tour companies, we’re going to be reviewing four different companies, three that we’ve used one that is sort of an honorable mention, because this is part of my journey of making advertising marketing. And just another thing that there’s really a lot of mixed information out there. And I’m looking at, okay, how can we make this more accessible for authors, indie presses, and even zine you know, if you have a new zine, think about a virtual toy thing. They’re great for books and zine, they’re great for a wide variety of things, because they do get the word out there and, and raise the number of people that are hearing about talking about and relating to whatever publishing efforts that you’re making. So yeah, let’s dive right in. I’m going to start with a company that we haven’t had experience with, but I think deserves an honorable mention. Espresso Book tours, and it starts with an x, we’re going to have a link for all of the tour companies that I’m talking about down in the description. If you have an experience with any of these tour companies, please feel free to leave a comment down in the comment section, and let’s talk about it, Your experience may be completely different than mine, I’m only one person I can talk about my lived experience. If you have something that’s different, I think it’s worthwhile to talk about it and mention it and share as many points of view as possible, because I want everyone to be able to maximize their marketing dollar and maximize their marketing strategies, so that their books are successful. The more that the I feel like the more noise that we can make in the indie scene, the more eyes we can have on the indie scene and those that are supporting the indie scene, I think benefits all of us also for for those of you who have published with the Big Four, and they’re just you don’t feel like they’re marketing your book I or any other, there’s no a lot of hybrid presses out there. Not every press advertises their authors books. And that’s just down to budget, I think every press wants to, but may not be able to. And I’m being generous, and including the Big Four in that as well. I don’t think they have a marketing budget for every single book they sign for every book they purchase. And for every author, they sign, it’s just variable. And so I want this information out there for nd processors and authors who may be considering or thinking about marketing their book themselves, or complementing any marketing that your your publisher may be doing. And I think it’s a good idea to ask your publisher, hey, what’s the marketing plan for my book, so that way, you’re not doubling down, we do have some authors who hire publicist to sort of build on what we’ve done. And I can be very honest and transparent, that the several authors who did hire publicist reported back to me that the publicist didn’t really do anything that we weren’t already doing. And I think that’s helpful information to know most publicists will work, work on a book three to four months before the books launch right up into the books launch, or through the end of the first month of the books launch. And all of the things that they were doing our things that we mentioned that we already do. And if you want to know what we do, you can check out our episode on marketing. And aside from virtual book tours, I think we covered most of what we do, I might have left a couple of things out just you know, in the interest of saving time, things that I didn’t feel was worth mentioning, for whatever reason or slipped my mind, because I do have the habit of doing this without notes. And I’m trying to get better about that. And I’m so busy. I just hop on the mic when I have time. And I really like this sort of rough unedited indie feel like wild wild west of the podcast as sort of like an anti podcast for all those really polished ones with like, background music and fancy editing and graphics and all of that. And I like just coming on here and you know get on the mic and sharing my thoughts. But that said let’s dive on into the episode and talking about expresso book tours. And it’s espresso spelled with an X as I said before, and I really love their their tagline reach for the stars. I think that’s really sweet and cute and I really liked them. And they have like a really pretty website of all of the tour companies.

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I think they have the most beautiful website of all of them. And they have like this really cool, light blue dark blue thing going on with some mov mixed in there that makes it just Really pretty. And every time I look at their, their website, I just think this is a really beautiful website. I love the way it’s laid out. I love the way that they have their sidebar and their scroll and everything. So when you’re looking at tours,

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companies looking at their website is where you start, right. And I’m like, they have to be joining a lot of people in because it’s just a gorgeous, gorgeous website. The reason that we don’t use espresso tours is because the things that they that they offer, aren’t really the things that that I’m looking for. And our price point is a lot higher than other tour companies almost double the art tour company of choice goddess fish. And so that kind of looks a little bit, a little bit of sticker shock for me, because doing a virtual book tour, they have different book tours, but a one week tour is $120. And that’s a lot of money to me for a book tour, when you’re looking, you know, when we’re comparing it to our tour company of choice, and you get $85 for two weeks for a book tour, versus $120 for a book tour that doesn’t have all of the same features that goddess fish has our tour company of choice, and we’re going to be comparing everybody to guide us fish. It was quite shocking for me and I that’s why we didn’t go for them. But the reason that they have an honorable mention is because they do have something that is a fantastic value. And that is the Net Galley Co Op. If you have an audio book and you’re looking for ways to promote it, that won’t break the bank. Doing a one month coop with them is $65. And if you have a little bit more money to spend, you can get three months for $108. And it posts to their site. And we’re going to link their general tour site and we’re going to do a separate link for their Net Galley coop because I just think that is such a brilliant offer. And I’m so excited to see a tour company doing that because I do think there’s a lot of indie authors with audio books out there. And a lot of just general, you know, authors that have audiobooks that aren’t getting the promotion that those audio books deserve. And I think this is a really great way to get onto that galleys. The reason that we don’t use it is because we do three months for each book, but we want the book to be on our pub site. And we’re marketing the book as well as the pub. And this would prevent us from getting all the benefits for the you know, for the publishing house that we would get. And so I think for us paying a little bit more and doing it through our own Net Galley is is better for us than doing it through a tour. If you’re not looking to market a publishing house, it’s a really great opportunity. And for I would say go for the 180 and do the three months because with Net Galley I love the feedback that the way that Net Galley breaks down the feedback, you get a feedback on the cover art, you get feedback on the narrator feedback on the book. I like those three pieces of feedback because it lets you know, does your cover have that wow factor. It lets you know what they think about your your narrator. And it lets you promote your narrator I think promoting the narrators of our audiobooks is so important. They put their blood sweat and tears into it. And I really think that they deserve the shout out. So it gives you a way when you’re sharing those reviews on social media that you can share their opinions of the narrator as well. And then you get that cross promotion that I talked about in the marketing thing that you get for free, right when you shout out, your narrator narrator is going to shout out you and gives you something to talk about on social media with your narrator to get that great interaction between the accounts and it’s just a win win win for everybody, right because the author wins the narrator wins and the pub wins. So I think that the the Net Galley coop is absolutely worth doing. If you haven’t an audio book specifically. I do think audiobooks are tricky and difficult to market. And Net Galley for me is the most efficient way that we found to market our audiobooks. The reason for that being that Net Galley allows you as I said in the marketing thing, it allows you to reach educators and librarians, as well as you know, just the general public. I think the point of reaching educators is because whatever age group your book is an there’s an educator in that age group. And there’s a lot of lit professors that are out there looking for books to suggest and also political science, you know, Professor, so any teacher of any subject at any age group is looking for books. So I think Net Galley provides that that added benefit of being able to reach educators. And I think that that’s worth the price educators and librarians are notoriously difficult to connect with. And this is a great way. And I find that for all of the ways that we market, audio books are the best for reaching those two demographics. For some reason, they just to be they tend to be voracious consumers of the audiobook. And I guess I’m guessing time, because you can speed up the audio book, to however fast you, you want to listen to it, and really condense the time it takes to consume literature. And that’s why I think espresso tours is really great in terms of value added. It’s that specific Net Galley club, the rest of their tours feel a little bit pricey for me. And I’ve, I’ve looked at their, the different places that that they advertise in and share stuff on. I do you think that they are worth what they’re charging. If we were more active on Facebook, I think, because we’re still building our Facebook, I have them. I know, I have them earmarked for consideration when we’re wanting to do a Facebook reach out, as well as primarily focusing on Twitter, but goddess fish has a lot of bloggers that are on Facebook. So we are getting Facebook promotions now. Especially book tours, some seems to be really heavily Facebook. And so I feel like that’s one difference between them and Goddess fishes that they do just really target Facebook.

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So for me, and they do have have Twitter, as well. But I don’t really count on the tour company for getting Twitter interactions, I just count on them, posting it on Twitter for me as an easy way for me to index and catalog and shout out the tour promoters and looking and sharing the tour promoters post on it. So I tend to just like it and keep moving, if you look at at any tour company’s Twitter feed, you’re not going to find a high number of interactions on their Twitter feeds. So for me, I just look I use the Twitter or wherever they post for indexing. And that’s why I have espresso tours kind of earmarked for me to look at once we’re up and running and get our Facebook up to speed. We’re currently onboarding social media team. And they’re right now just sort of finding their sea legs. And this is August, no September of 2022. And once they have their sea legs I think we’ll feel more comfortable with with reaching out to companies that are primarily focusing on Facebook, I do think that espresso has a certain level of, of nuance with in terms of their Bookstagram, Facebook and Twitter, and how much you can customize where your marketing is killing that makes them unique. In addition to having the coop so when you’re looking at a tour company, it’s important to look where you’re going to be promoted. Are you active on that social media platform, whichever social media platform you’re most active on, I recommend that that’s where you should target your tour for wherever the posts are going to be. We’re most active on Twitter. And that will always be the case even when our social media team is on boarded. Because I’m always going to do Twitter, I love Twitter. I’m not giving that to anyone. I love the relationships I have on Twitter. And there’s so much more beyond what I want the social media team to be doing that I do on Twitter, because it is winter is where you get the face and voice of cinnabar moth publishing and our more nuanced opinions on things. So for me, I’ll always be doing that. And I love it. So looking at a suppressor that was our honorable mention. The tour company another virtual bookstore company that we do have experience with is rabbit tours. It’s our abt book tours and PR we had a really positive experience with them. We did several different tours with several different tour packages and now they have an audio addiction and audio addicted all of their tours have like you know some little quirky name for them. And we have really really positive experience with them. The difference was and look and they have just a really great breakdown. They haven’t feet deepest breakdown in terms of the right Add of packages they have the widest variety of I want to say goddess fish rivals them goddess fish and rabbit tours together both have a level of variety that I haven’t seen any other tour companies come close to reaching, they have everything from a one day all the way to, you know, three months I think two or three months. And that’s like wow. So you can you know, have a tour that runs too you can have a tour that runs a day you can have a tour that runs two months and they have everything from

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cover reveals to full book tours. And I think they the difference between rabbit and Goddess fish for me and terms in terms of the the tour packages is that goddess fish does offer just review only tours and rabbit I don’t think they offer any review tours. I think all of their review tours are a mixture of review excerpts and interviews, which is the exact same package that goddess fish offers in their tours, they offer a mix of reviews, excerpts and, and interviews. And I think having those reviews in there is a really great value added bonus for me, because it gives an opportunity for the book to be reviewed, you can offer the book to be reviewed, you share an ePub or a PDF with them. And they’ve been really good with not having any pirating or leaking up the book before launching, which I really really appreciate the professionalism of the bloggers that they use. Rabbit tours and goddesses tours have, they had a lot of overlap and tour in terms of tour host. And the same with espresso, all of the tour companies have a lot of overlap with the different blogs. And that doesn’t bother me. I feel like of course, if you’re a blogger, and you’ve built it up well enough to where you’re able to become a, you know, a tourist tour host. Now that’s where you’re going to get your steady money, and how you’re gonna monetize your blog. So I’m not mad at that. I do think that they’re a little bit I know that they’re a little bit pricier than goddess fish. And for me, there was sort of, I don’t know, when you do a virtual tour, they send you like, you sign up for the tour, you do your genre, and then they get the tour stops. And once they have the tour stop, they send you the request for information. And that’s either a guest blog, or you’re going to be reviewed, or they’re going to want

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an interview. And they send you the request, they send you the interview questions, they send you the blog topics, and then you send then we send that on to to the author, and they do it two weeks before the tour begins. And for me, that was sort of it felt really tight. And it was exactly two weeks before the tour begins. And it was all a request for all of the materials. And I’d like to whenever possible to give the authors more than two weeks because it is a lot of information to come up with. And the blog posts are between 305 100 words. That’s heavy lifting for the authors, the interviews, not so much. But the blog post for me, from my perspective, you’re asking a lot of an author to write that much. And all of our authors are busy writing their next book for us. And they’re on tight deadlines and a lot of them have other jobs in addition to being an author. So that you know you have to be aware of what you’re asking of your authors and aware of what you’re asking of yourself. And if you feel like two weeks before the tour is enough turnaround for you, I think that there I say absolutely explore rabbit tours and see what your feeling is and see you know what your energy was they are a little bit pricier that for some of the things they do the price is lower than goddess fish and some of the things they do the price is a little bit higher than goddess fish. So I say look at the the two tours look at rabbit and Goddess fish kind of price compare and go with whoever is matching your budget, your your time constraints and what it is you’re trying to do. And look at where they’re going to be doing it make sure to read all of the requirements how many weeks before publishing that it needs to be and you know, you need at least six to eight weeks before you want to book the tour. And I think that that’s really an important thing to consider. You know getting that that six to eight weeks lead time. I like Goddess fish Craig give a discount if you do 10 weeks But I’ll be talking about them more towards the end of the cast, because I really just want to go into detail about them because they are, in my mind the gold standard when it comes to booking virtual tours, especially if you’re, you know, Twitter and Facebook based, I think if you’re based primarily on Instagram that espresso tours would be a better a better choice, I think better than than rabbit personally, even though they’re more expensive. If you’re looking to just do for example, if you want to just do a Bookstagram tour, it’s $120. And you get between 10 to 15 bucks to grammars that will do a post for you. And I say it’s worth checking out if you’re on if you’re on Instagram, and that’s your primary, your primary social media, we’re still working on getting our Instagram up to speed. And so that’s why I kind of have espresso tours in mind. Because as we build up our different social media platforms and increase engagement on those platforms, it will make sense to have booked tours that are targeting the all of the platforms that we’re on. So for me, I think it’ll probably at the end of the day, I want to say probably by the end of of 2023, we’ll be doing a mix of Goddess fish and espresso, book tours for all of our all of our books. And I really love doing that for our back catalogue. And I think this is a great way to renew interest in your back catalogue is by doing a virtual book tour and getting that out. So when we’re looking at Espresso Book tours, I am thinking more about our back catalogue rather than our books coming out. And once we have caught up to speed and everybody’s had their espresso tours, we’ll probably do parallel tours with espresso books and Goddess fish for for all of our books. And so that’s something that’s coming. The reason that rabbit tours is not on our list of I’m still using if it’s really down to Goddess fish one the day with their person ability, their professionalism and their lead time. With goddess fish, we booked the tours, three to four months in advance and we start getting the tour stops a month or two in advance. So if you book it three to four months in advance, you can get tour stops as early I think the earliest we’ve ever gotten tour stops is two months before the books release. And that’s just been really a beautiful thing to be able to give an author, a full month or month and a half to fill out those all of all of the material and let them turn them in one at a time. So that was really beneficial to me. But again, I have one more tour company to talk about before we go into and to Goddess fish. And sadly, it’s a tour company that we had a really negative experience with that I don’t recommend, but I will be putting their link in the description so that you can have your own experience with them. They no longer list their pricing on their website, which I think is odd. I did take a peek at it before today. They have a gorgeous website. It’s mom and pop. As you can tell, I don’t think that goddess fish or rabbit tours has a beautiful website. My point is, and mentioning a beautiful website is because I don’t think that should be the deciding factor on whether or not you go with the tour company. I think it should be down to what packages that offer. And I couldn’t find a list on bewitching tours at all for any of the packages that they offer. When we booked with them, the owner of the company was really cold towards us when we booked and I was like, okay, that’s okay. And there were a lot of late and Miss stops where I had to constantly chase down around to constantly be in communication with the owner of the company and ask them Hey, what’s going on with our tour stop this isn’t

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this, that and the other and she just like and it got so bad. Having this back and forth got so bad that I actually did mention it on social media, to which she sent me a flaming email just really going off on me and dragging me and I was like, okay, one if you’re a vendor and someone goes to the extreme of mentioning you by name and adding you on social media, because you’re not providing the service that they pay for. I can tell you the exact opposite. The exact wrong thing to do is then flame them because you’re gonna lose business that way and if you’re worried about your good name and losing business, the right thing to do the right way to handle that is then tag them back, quote, tweet that thing or whatever post they did apologize and say it’s up now. We’re sorry for the delay in the future. Any issues that have, please feel free to email us, that would have been beautiful, I would have been right on, you see it because I had to go to that length to get your attention so that I can get what I pay for. And that’s something that’s something I’ve always been down about, and is key to my personality. If I pay for something, I’m gonna get what I paid for, and I’m gonna do what’s necessary. And I didn’t write anything bad. I only wrote, What a bummer. This tour stop isn’t up yet. And I added them. And to me that I’m not dragging him saying what a bummer. This tour stop isn’t up yet. chase it down, see what it’s at. You can even say hey, sorry about that it’s gonna be at but sending me, you know, a lengthy email, taking me to task and telling you what a horrible person I am. Right on. You don’t like me, you were cold to us. When we booked the tour. We’ve had problems with every with not every with a lot of tour stops. And you’re not being communicative. And it was just every step of the way was a negative experience for us. And I tend to not want to do negative reviews and not say negative things. So it was just really heartbreaking for me and disappointing for me, I felt so bummed. I felt bummed for the tour company, I felt bummed for our author, who was booked on that tour and Saavik subsequently booked a second tour for them. And as I was so bummed out with how badly that tour went, it was just a bummer. Just really a bummer. But we’re gonna put a link down in the description to them. And, you know, if you have had a different experience, or if you’re the owner, and you want to reply, please feel free to, to leave a comment down in the comment section. I’m sharing my lived experience, I think lots of other people have had really positive experiences because they are a thriving software company. And I wish them all the best of luck and success we just won’t be using them again, is where I stand on that. Because it was just Magid that now on to something that is positive and happy. The gold standard of book tours Far and Away. Hands down is Goddess fish tours. I love goddess fish tours, I absolutely love them. Not every tour has been perfect. But I have never caught a mistake before. They’re messaging me about the mistake and their correction. They are just the pinnacle of professionalism. And together, they’re reasonably priced. And they really just give everything that personal touch. And I just feel so appreciated by them down from and this was from the first tour that we ever booked with them. So I think this is how they are with everybody. Because our first tour were fledgling press, we only had a few books out at the time, we didn’t seem like we were gonna be a mover or shaker on the scene. We only had like I think at the first try. But I want to say we didn’t even have 1000 followers on on social media yet. And they didn’t treat us with any disrespect or any cold shoulder or anything they treated us like we were the most important client they’ve ever had in their life. And they were already a thriving and established tour company. So they were not a fledgling company that needed to do that. I just think it’s down to who they are as people and who they want to be as a tour company, I think they must treat their host

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amazing as well. So if you’re a blogger and you’re looking for, you know, a tour company to reach out to to become one of the one of their bloggers I say absolutely, I would recommend reaching out to Goddess fish. A lot of things that they do I don’t see other companies doing for their host. Something that that they do is that they always ask us if a book is is available for review. And if I don’t check off as available for you, they reach out and say, Hey, what do you think about making this book available for review? I’m like, okay, and then something really cool happened on one of the tours that we have coming up. And the blogger that was not part of the tour, said hey, I want to review that book. So even bloggers who don’t sign up for the tours have access to to check out and review any of the books listed. And I think that is an added benefit to the bloggers where if they’re doing too many tours that you can manage your blog and not be overwhelmed with tours and still have access to free books and still have access to review books because you can do a hybrid review towards that thing. And I think that’s value added to every blogger to get those books for reviewing and then be like, Okay, this book I can review and I’ll do the tour stuff that needs to go along with the review. But the way that you place it and have it out so that your blog isn’t, is isn’t nonstop, just tours. And that was something I think is really cool that I think that they do for for their bloggers. And I also think it’s really cool that on there, when you sign up for a tour with them, you have the option to give a gift to the the tour stop the host of the tour stop to allow all of your tour stops to enter the raffle, the raffle for the gift, which I always do, because I want to thank all of these fabulous bloggers who are doing our tour stops, and you know, giving a shout out on social media and reviewing our books. I think that’s awesome. And then they also have a giveaway, that is part of all of the virtual tours basically do a giveaway. And for me, it’s that added how they’re being able to suss out and pay attention, how they’re treating all of their bloggers, really reflects just how they they move through the world. And anytime that bike, they give you the time and date, they give you your tour banner, they give you your stops well in advance, if you book a tour with them, with more than 10 weeks, they give you a discount on the tour. And they also give all of the stops earlier, you’re not at that two week crunch every now and then is that that two week crunch. But for most, for most of our tours, it hasn’t been everything has just been really professional and really positive. We’ve booked every type of tour that they’ve had. And across every single type of tour, it’s been consistently a positive and professional experience. Also, we have the value added of the really engaging with their their tour host and they’re really engaging with their bloggers. And we’re always seeing different we don’t have, we have like our core, I think there’s like I want to say five or six bloggers, that always that are on every single one of one of our tours. And I’ve noticed that that is specific. I feel like specific to us. Because the amount of tours that they’re they’re doing my look at their their blogs, you can look and see his books are getting the most action and all of our books are on their blogs. And thank you,

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I appreciate that. That’s a beautiful thing. I love the relationship that goddess fish is allowing to happen. I don’t communicate with any of the bloggers at all, except if they win a raffle, of course, I have to get their information like where do they want the price sent to you and all of that. But I’m super professional. And I’m not crossing any professional boundaries. I’m letting goddess fish interact with with all of their bloggers, I’m just having such an awesome and amazing experience with them. And they really do encourage us gently to interact and be sure to thank and like our and show appreciation for every post and to thank our host. That’s something that no other company has ever asked me to do. Goddess fish is the only company that has ever asked me to thank a host and not just goes down to their beautiful energy. I think they’re just an amazing team. They’re so professional. So gracious, so kind, never anything. I’ve never had anything negative happen on a tour. On the Review tour, there was review one review that wasn’t favorable. And when you roll the dice when you book review tour, it’s an honest review. And they were like very apologetic about it and I was like it happened you know they didn’t like the book. It is what it is. But they informed me of that before it went live. If a tour post isn’t up by 9am I forget what timezone there and they always reached out to me first. So everything I don’t have nothing bad to say about them at all, nothing bad. So I say if you’re looking for the best price point with the most variety, and just a really positive experience, I say go with goddess fish. I shared the information for the other tour companies because I understand that you may not be into a highly interactive experience because it is a highly interactive experience. There is a lot of communication between us and Goddess fish. If you’re looking for something that is more Curt and quick and not personable, you don’t want that personal touch. I think rabbit tours is a is a great tour company for that it is a lot less communication. And it is a tighter timeline in terms of when you get the materials and the turnaround. So it just depends on the on the vibe that you’re looking for. And if you have a little bit of a bigger budget and you’re looking to promote an audio book, I say look at espresso tours or or rabbit tours for that. I don’t know if Got us fishers looking at? Sorry, if you heard that something just dropped off my desk. If you’re looking to, to do audiobooks, I don’t know if goddess fish is going to be adding a special audio book tour option. I don’t know. Again, this is your 2022. So by then they may have already added an audio book. And I would say, you know, check in with them and have them they would, they’re always my first stop. But I was honest and saying that, you know, we will be looking at other, adding other tour companies as our social media presence evolves and expands and once the social media team is fully on boarded, you know, so yeah, that’s my, my 50 cents about tour companies. And if you’ve had any experience with tour companies, let us know, if you haven’t understood and using your companies and you have any questions about your companies, let us know in the comment section. And while you’re at it, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe and turn on your notifications to get more videos like these. And also, we interview people in the industry, we interview authors, publishers, ziens, and all kinds of different people who work in in the publishing industry as well as artists. And we also have in addition to interviews, we have podcasts like this, where we give behind the scenes peek at what’s going on, in terms of how we run our press, and information that we get from attending conferences and different book events. Because our goal is to make book publishing transparent for everyone. Thank you to all of our beautiful cinnabar Moszer any kind of mock you want to be for listening and you can even be a butterfly, but I’m not right Carrie so I’m not trying to bite her Ryan, talk to you soon. Bye