#BehindTheBooks an interview with Sarah Hardy from Book On The Bright Side @BOTBSPublicity #BlogTourOrganiser

Today I’m thrilled to welcome the awesome Sarah Hardy to the book review café. Sarah is one of the most successful book bloggers I know, and if you haven’t checked out her blog it’s a MUST Bytheletterbookreviews

Sarah is the first to feature in a series of articles I’m hoping to run called Behind The Books. Sarah has started up her own business Book On The Bright Side  running blog tours for authors and publishers. I wanted to learn more so here’s my interview with Sarah, hope you enjoy it.

Hi Sarah I’m thrilled to have you visit the book review café, first things first, tea or coffee?

I’m into my green teas at the moment so would love one of those thanks 🙂

Congratulations on your new business venture Book On The Bright Side, why did you decide to set up your own blog tour business?

Thanks Lorraine. Blog tours are something I’ve always been enthusiastic about. For one I love blogging and I also love to shout about books and authors and blog tours are a great way to promote both. I love taking part in them as well as organising them. It’s something I’m very passionate about and doing it for myself seemed the next step.

Can you explain what a book tour is?

A book tour is a promotional tool to help authors/publishers promote themselves as well as their books. It is a virtual tour where by bloggers will either read and review the authors book or host an extract/Q&A/guest post and share on a designated date alongside more info about the author and book. It’s a great way of making it visible on social media.

Would you mind sharing with us a typical day in the life of a book blog tour organiser?

I’m lucky that at the moment I am able to work from home. After dropping my son off at school, I get straight onto my laptop. If there is a blog tour running, then the first thing I will do is go look for stops that are on that day so I can share and re tweet. Then the majority of my day is spent sending or replying to emails. Time will also be spent, organising and finalising new blog tours that are coming in as well as creating blog tour banners and getting the media pack together which compromises of the images and all the info that the bloggers will need. It’s certainly not a 9-5 job but there is a lot of flexibility to it.

What’s the best thing about organising blog tours?

The best bit has to be getting to know and working with some great bloggers as well as discovering new authors and books to me. The book community is a great one to be part of.

Which brings me to my next question, what’s the worse thing about organising a blog tour?

The down side is probably that there is no fixed working times. I can find myself working late at night as well as weekends, of which I try to keep to a minimum.

Is there a book/genre/theme that you would refuse to arrange a blog tour for?

I can’t think of any as such that I would refuse. There maybe some I would turn down as I don’t think it would be a popular reading choice with the bloggers I have signed up. Will let you know if I ever come across one lol.

If I was an author or a publisher why should I have a blog tour for my book?

Blog tours are a great way to create a buzz about a book as well as raise awareness across social media. Lots of the bloggers have a wide reach on various platforms and I think for the authors it’s something they can really get involved in and enjoy.

What is the best timing for a blog tour?

Definitely around the time the book is due to come out. I usually recommend starting them on the publishing day itself. Of course a lot of authors have titles which have been out for a while, of which they want to give it an extra push so may want to coincide the blog tour with a price drop. I would always recommend authors who are thinking of doing one for a new novel, to approach an organiser no less than 2 months before the publishing date.

How do you measure the success of a blog tour?

For me, it’s the great reviews from the bloggers and getting great feedback from the author and the publisher. It’s especially lovely when a blogger will email you thanking you for inviting them to be part of the tour as they loved the book so much. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Have you got any blog tours coming up that you are really excited about?

I get excited about them all but am especially excited about Noelle Holten’s debut novel, Dead Inside. This will be my biggest blog tour to date. I met Noelle through blogging and she has become a very close friend. I couldn’t be more prouder of everything she has achieved and was over the moon when she asked me to organise it. I think I was grinning for a fair few days after her asking me.

And finally if you could choose one author who you would want to run a blog tour for who would it be? and why?

Apart from Noelle aka  Crime Book Junkie  of course, I’m lucky that I have actually already organised a blog tour for the author who I would choose. I am a huge fan of Robert Bryndza’s books and he was actually my very first client when I set up my free lance business. Apart from being a huge fan of his books, he always takes the time out to thank or acknowledge his readers comments and posts and is just a genuinely lovely guy. He was an absolute pleasure to work with, as are all the authors I have been lucky enough to work with so far. He is an author I have always championed since discovering his novels though sometimes I do feel a bit of an author stalker but he hasn’t put a restraining order on me yet lol.

My thanks to Sarah for taking timeout of her busy schedule to answer my questions.

About Sarah

I am an avid reader and blogger and have two years experience working with a digital publisher as their publicity and social media person. I made the decision in 2018 to go freelance and now organise blog tours directly with authors as well as publishers for crime and women’s fiction novels.

For more information and prices, please email Sarah at:
sarah.botbspublicity@gmail.com 

Or contact her via Twitter BOTBSPublicity

Book bloggers who organise blog tours….

Anne at Random Things Through My Letterbox

Emma at Damppebbles

Shell at Bakers not so secret blog

Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources

Tracy at Compulsive readers

Kelly at Love books group