One thing about being a self-publishing author doing everything on your own is that sometimes things start to get overwhelming. Especially when you're planning promotion and things like that. You have to worry about budgets, time-management, and a dozen other things that usually a publicist would deal with. Right now, for example, I'm prepping for my blog tour in March. And that means doing a lot of things that take a lot of time.
And that sucks.
I usually spend an hour or so a day writing emails to book bloggers requesting reviews or putting out feelers for blogs who would like to host a stop on the blog tour. Maybe I'm being a bit to ambitious for my first tour since I'd like to do 30 stops in 30 days, but I'd like to really get my name out there. It might be time to think more realistically and shave down those stops to 10 or 15.
On top of figuring out how many stops I want to make and finding the right blogs to host those stops, I have to make sure I have the materials to take to those blogs. You know, eBooks in the right format, bookmarks and other swag materials to give away. And I have to plan guest posts to send in and answers to author interview questions. It's hard enough planning posts for my own blog a month in advance, now I have to figure out post topics for a different blog?
And then there's the big swag giveaway at the end of the tour. The last stop is my blog (smooth, huh, to drive traffic to my website) and it's a huge prize pack. And that means I have to have physical copies of the book as well as other swag products to fill up a tote to give away. That also means shipping costs and stuff like that. Setting a budget for this thing is crazy, because I don't have any idea what it's going to cost. I don't know what a realistic budget for something like this would be!
So that's why prepping for a blog tour sucks. Because not only am I writing on a brand new project and getting ready to go back to do revisions on the second Elemental Royals novel (ugh, which reminds me there's a blog tour for that one in June), now I have to worry about all the blog tour stuff too.
Welcome to the world of the self-publishing author.
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