More Romance Please: Spotlight & Guest Blog: Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours by Roxanne Rhoads

Secrets of Successful
Virtual Book Tours
Quick Tips for Authors Guide
Roxanne Rhoads

Book Description:

Are you considering a virtual book tour?

Not sure where to start or exactly what an online tour will entail?

Roxanne Rhoads, book publicist and owner of Bewitching Book Tours, shares her virtual tour expertise in this Quick Tips for Authors Guide.

Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours will guide you in utilizing the best marketing tool available- a virtual book tour, which can create online exposure for your book, jumpstart your book sales, help build your author brand, and expand your network.

In this guide you’ll learn:

· what you should do before a tour
· the components of a great author website
· the best social media outlets for authors to utilize
· tips for building your author brand
· how to write great guest blogs
· what to expect from an online book tour
· the secrets of successful book tours
· how to schedule your own virtual book tour

And you’ll receive in-depth details about what to do during a virtual book tour to guarantee success.

I've worked with Roxanne for several years. In addition to being an awesome lady, she is professional, hard working, and dedicated to all facets of her craft. She is tireless in helping and promoting fellow authors, and is a great author in her own right. I'm happy to host her today, and look forward to gleaning from her wisdom.
Thank you for joining us today, Roxanne!
~Cary Morgan

Quick Tips for Authors- Guide to Using a Pen Name

By Roxanne Rhoads

Many, many professional writers use pen names. Kim Harrison and Nora Roberts are two NYT Bestselling Authors that instantly come to mind.

For years I wrote under both my real name and a pen name. At times it was really confusing, especially in the beginning when I had no idea when I should use both names and when I should just use my pen name.

Throughout the years of operating Fang-tastic Books, a book review and promotion site for paranormal authors, I found that many new writers are just as confused as I was in the beginning.

One time an author, who is man but writes as a woman, sent me all his promo info for his book under his pen name and his bio under his real name. His email and web sites were also under his real name. So I assumed that he had no problem with both names being used to promote his book (since he didn’t specify otherwise). As a reviewer and promoter I publish what authors send me, I don’t change their words except for misspellings.

Well, the author contacted me a few days later very upset because I used his real name and the pen name. I explained to him the problem and suggested a few ways to stop any confusion in the future.

The things I suggested to him are ways to keep writing names separate while making your professional life much easier.

First of all, set up an email account in your pen name. Many email servers like gmail offer this for free. Use this email account for all writing transactions and submissions under your pen name.

Create a signature line for your email. For a long time I wondered after I sent an email if I accidentally signed the wrong name. Now I use signatures with my email accounts that include my name, email address, and web addresses so I never have to worry about signing the wrong name.

Create a bio for your pen name. This bio should not include any writing credits, jobs, degrees or memberships that are under any other name. When someone tries to verify the info in your bio and can’t find anything under your pen name you’ll look like a liar. So keep your names and bios separate unless you have no problem with both names being linked or being public knowledge. Some authors use different pen names for different genres, not because they are “hiding” or trying to keep their real name from the public eye. In that case you can include something like this at the end of your bio: “Suzanne Case also writes as Susannah Monroe”.

Set up separate social media accounts for your pen name. That way all your promotion can be done through those networking sites under that name alone. This is extremely helpful when you want to remain anonymous plus it helps build your author brand.

Set up a blog using only your pen name. This is extremely easy to do, especially with Blogger, WordPress or Weebly and it will help with promotion as you can publish all your book covers and publishing information on the blog, entertain readers and draw people in. Try to get the URL with your pen name in it, such as www.JadeDesire.Blogspot.com or grab a custom domain name from GoDaddy.com and point your blog to the domain www.JadeDesire.com.

The last and most important thing to remember when using a pen name…don’t ever give anyone your real name unless absolutely necessary. Book reviewers, bloggers, book promoters- none of these people have any reason to know your real name. Publishers and agents are the only ones that ever need to know your real name and sometimes there are ways around that as well.

In some localities you can file a DBA (doing business as) under your pen name. This is the same as filing for a business name. Some cities/counties/states won’t allow you to file a DBA under a person’s name while others do. If you can, this will allow you to legally use that name for all transactions. You can even open a bank account using your business/pen name. To get around the use of a social security number you can file for a taxpayer id number.

The only drawback to going this route is that it leaves a paper trail that anyone can have access to if they know where to look but you won’t have to give your real name to publishers, editors or agents.

Decide which route works best for you then stick to your guns and keep your names as far away from each other as possible.

About the Author:

Roxanne Rhoads has been working in the world of online book promotion since 2005. She has worked as a freelance writer, author, book reviewer, book blogger, editor, self-publisher and book publicist. She has a unique advantage of knowing how multiple sides of book publishing and promotion operate.

Roxanne understands how book bloggers work and what they want to make their jobs easier while also understanding that authors need promotion to be streamlined, easy, and less time consuming.

Roxanne shares some of her knowledge in her latest release, Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours.

Author Links:
Website | Bewitching Book Tours | Bewitching Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Blog

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