In recent years, as publishing budgets have shrunk and the digital world has gained an ever-more-powerful footing, marketing and pr people have begun to redefine the book tour. While some major authors still occasionally ‘go on the road’, a new mode of publicity has begun to take over as the pr vehicle of choice – the ‘Virtual Book Tour.’

A Virtual Book Tour is one in which the “stops” are websites instead of cities, stores or other ‘real life’ venues.  Authors connect with readers online, via websites, blogs, podcasts, vlogs, teleconferences, chats, web-based articles and reviews, and Internet radio and TV, plus YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking communities.  Sometimes the author throws a ‘book party’ at his or her own website, but generally speaking he or she is visiting other people’s sites over a period of days or weeks in a structured, co-ordinated effort.  During these visits the author may be interviewed, answer questions from readers, have their book reviewed, or contribute original content in the form of an article, essay, guest blogpost, vlog or podcast.

Just as with ‘real world’ book tours, in order to be successful, the Virtual Book Tour must be a carefully organized and factor in the book’s subject matter and perceived audience.  Well before the tour begins, the highest profile and most related bloggers and website hosts are identified, queried and sent advance copies of the book, as well as media kits including press releases, author bios, photos and other pertinent materials (usually also in digital form).

It’s possible for authors to plan and set-up their own Virtual Book Tours, but as with the old-fashioned kind, tours are often most successful when a specialist is brought in to assist. Most of today’s publishers and marketing/pr agencies are well-versed in managing virtual book tours. In addition, there are some individuals and organizations who have made names for themselves exclusively in the Virtual Book Tour market. Among some of the better-known are Alex Mandossian (“VirtualBookTour Secrets.com“), Kevin Smokler (“BookTour.com”) and John Kremer (“BookMarket.com”).

Once the tour begins, it functions in many of the same ways that the ‘real world’ tour does, except that the author never leaves home – and possibly never even gets out of his or her pajamas.

There are essentially two different types of conferences that children’s book authors should be aware of:

1)    the Sales and Marketing kind, at which booksellers, librarians, educators and publishers gather to confer, and most importantly, shop

2)    the Professional Deveopment/Educational kind, at which authors and illustrators gather to learn from one another and to network.

The first category encompasses the following essential book fairs, expos and festivals:

BEA/Book Expo America – Once a year, every May. Primarily for the trade -  for bookseller’s and publishers to do their “shopping” and promoting to one another. Librarians and educators also frequent BEA.  Authors should be sure their books are being represented there. www.bookexpoamerica.com

SCBWI/Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators – 2 major fairs a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. The fairs are usually in New York, but there are local chapters which send out newsletters and host events that authors should be sure to take advantage of. You can find out more at http://www.scbwi.org

ALA/American Library Association – One enormously important annual fair, attended by librarians, educators and authors from all over the country. Bear in mind that ALA is also in charge of some of the most influential children’s book awards, such as the Caldecott and Newberry.  www.ala.org

Bologna Book Fair – Primarily about selling rights to the international market. http://www.bookfair.bolognafiere.it/en/

Other major national events in the industry include the LA Times Festival of Books in April (http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks ), TLA (the Texas Library Association) (http://www.TXLA.org) and the San Francisco Book Festival (http://www.sanfranciscobookfestival.com) – and of course, on a very local basis, there are always annual author events at local schools, bookstores and libraries, plus writers workshops, book fairs, presentations, and signings that may be worthwhile to pursue in your own district.

The second category is all about professional development and your own learning curve. These conferences are strictly for writers to learn from one another, and from editors, agents and publishers in their genre. Many of these offer credit, and afford opportunities to network and build connections that might otherwise be elusive. Some examples:

AWP – The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, which celebrates authors, teachers, writing programs, literary centers, and small press publishers. One of the biggest and liveliest literary gatherings in North America. http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/

The Southampton Children’s Literature Conference – Sponsored by Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA in Writing and Literature. Part of the acclaimed Southampton Writers Conferences (which also include fiction, memoir, poetry, playwriting and screenwriting), and rapidly becoming one of the best writers conferences in the industry. Full disclosure: I’m the director of, and teach for, this Children’s Literature Conference.  http://www.stonybrook.edu/writers

There are also a number of other statewide children’s literature and writing conferences that can be found by Googling “children’s literature conferences” or “writing conferences.”

Writing can be a lonely business, so wherever you are drawn to, confer, confer, confer!

Having a niche means being known as “The Person Who Writes X,” as in “Oh, that’s the person who writes those talking truck books” or “That’s the person who writes those steamy vampire novels.”  When you have a niche, you can still do other things – you don’t have to limit yourself  – but having a particular area of strength and reaching out to that specific community can be hugely valuable when it comes to building a marketing platform. It’s otherwise known as “target marketing.”  And once they’ve bought one of your books, chances are they’ll buy another.

For instance, if you know a lot about cats and you write a series about cats, then you have a built-in audience of cat lovers out there that you can reach out to. You can market your book not just to families who love cats, but to cat rescue centers and pet stores, anything that specializes in cat.  Maybe a cat food company would be interested in using your book as a giveaway item, or maybe you could do a signing at your local SPCA or veterinarian’s office or pet store.

One of our niches is the arts, which my mother and I both have a background in and which is a recurring topic in a number of our books.  So when we wrote The Great American Mousical, which is about a troupe of mice who live and perform below the boards of a venerable Broadway theater, we marketed the book to “show-folk” in every way we could think of. We stuffed the book in give-away bags at the Tony Awards, we became Amabassadors for Kids Night on Broadway, we reached out to theater memorabilia stores in Times Square to see if they would carry the book and to Playbill magazine to see if they would do a feature on it.  We created trivia games for theater fans and a mouse dress-up-and-put-on-a-show game online. We wrote articles on theater etiquette and offered links to theater camps for kids on our website. We’re even developing a musical theater adaptation of the book for family audiences.

In the publishing industry, they call this “special sales,” and most publishers have special sales divisions whose job it is to reach out to non-bookstore type places. But our experience is, you’ll have a lot better chance of success if you come up with ideas of where to pitch to yourself.  It’s your area of strength – even the best special sales departments won’t know the places to go in your niche the way you do. Every niche-marketing approach we did for Mousical we came up with ourselves. So think outside the box… Whose your audience? Where do they hang out, what do they buy, what do they like to do? Then come up with ways to sell or promote your work there.