There may come a time in your professional career as a novelist when you'll wonder whether you need a literary publicist. Maybe you have a 40 hour a week job. Or you've got small children at home. Or you're in the midst of trying to sell your home, as I am.
As the author of two published novels, I certainly understood what was needed before, during and after my novel Mâtowak: Woman Who Cries was due for release. But just thinking about it left me in a brain-fog. While I'm not great at delegating chores, nor am I good at relinquishing control, even I knew I was exhausted and needed help. They say a woman asking for help is an anomaly. I'm so glad happy I broke that cycle.
At the end of a month long virtual book tour, I'm sitting here grinning from ear to ear because I had Mason Book Tours campaigning on my behalf. While I sat back and enjoyed the process, MBT did the work.
Want to know what they did?
Here's just a few of the things:
- MC produced the tour page with all the pertinent information: bio, blurb, photo, book cover, and calendar.
- MC created the Rafflecopter.
- MC designed the tour banners and graphics and promoted the event on Facebook and Twitter.
- MC served as a middle man between all hosts and myself, so that I had only ONE person to interact with.
- MC provided books for the reviewers and collected questions from the hosts.
- MC gathered the answers to all the questions and returned them to the designated hosts.
- MC put together the tour package with the essential material.
- MC chose the excerpts and sent them out to the right hosts in chronological order to match the calendar.
- MC coordinated the hosts within the calendar month, making certain they had everything they needed before their day.
- MC updated the author's tour page each morning and sent out individual emails to those hosts. Q&A, guest posts, and excerpts.
- MC visited every single site, left a comment, and shared their links with her networks.
- MC sent a final thank you to all hosts and a wrap up to me with a complete list of all host bloggers and their blog links.
- ...
I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Mason Canyon Tours did what would have taken me a few extra months of prep work. MC took the pressure off and made the release of my third novel a joy.
Circumstances change and as authors we adjust and we cope. It only takes one published novel to understand that writing the book is the easy part.
Happy Reading.
