A small warning: I’m likely about to upset some people (while others will agree), which is not my intent by any means, but as someone who has been running a book review blog for almost two years, I feel like this needs to be said, and hopefully heard. This isn’t meant as a cut on authors or blog tour companies. What it is intended to be is a reminder. A reminder that hopefully will engage some conversation. As a blogger, this is my holiday wish.
Dear Authors,
We as bloggers, (and I have spoken with several of them, so this is not just coming from the author of this blog post), adore so many of you, love reading your works, and love promoting those works when we can. Even those that we don’t know “personally”, or haven’t read, but we have promoted through blog tours, etc, our goal is to help you to be successful, as well.
That being said, please remember that as bloggers, we don’t get paid. If a reader stops by the blog, to read our review, or see our promotional post, we might get an affiliate click or two, but more than likely, not at all.
So, if we are hosting a blog tour stop, a cover reveal, or just a promo review, why would you not want to stop by and just say “thanks for hosting me”?
As a blogger, I can count the authors on about two hands that have done that. Despite having hosted hundreds of different blog stops, cover reveals, etc.
As an author, it should make sense. We are promoting you, because we want to, not because we have to. We want you to be successful, we want you to have any and all tools at your disposal to get your books out to the most readers. Does a blog tour work well? Who knows?
Maybe the issue is the “smaller blogs”. I know there are really big blogs, one comes to mind specifically, who gets a lot of exclusives, etc. And honestly, they deserve it, they work hard, and they get their info out to the most readers. But if you, as an author, are only stopping by the posts that are on the big blogs to say thanks, make comments, then you are missing, not only a lot of people, but blogs that are likely even more supportive of you than the big blogs. Often the small blogs are the ones posting your work several times, in many places, over multiple days.
I KNOW that you as an author are truly appreciative of what the bloggers do to help support and promote your work. Taking a few minutes out of your day to stop by and thank the blogs that are doing that for you, shows that appreciation.
So, the next time a blog hosts you, give them a little love. Maybe a retweet, or share. Or even more so, just a simple “Thanks for having me”. It would mean so much to us bloggers.
Well said. As a reader I have noticed some of the authors posting a thanks or even replying to comments. This improved my opinion of them and would usually mean I would look up more about them or their books. I didn’t bother making the extra effort for the other authors.