Last week I conducted a survey to see how bloggers in our writing community feel about blog tours and to get an idea as to how effective they are.
Remember, you can’t generalize the findings to bloggers at large. Nor can you generalize the finding to readers, period. The other weakness of the survey is that if you write YA, it’s not going to tell you how effective blog tours are with teens.
Also, I only asked four questions. Some questions could be further expanded on based on your answer to the previous question. However, I wanted to keep the questionnaire short so more people would answer it.
What the survey will tell you is how the individuals who responded (fifty-five in total) felt about the topic. This is not a non-biased group, randomly selected off the street. These are individuals who are, most likely, committed to blogging as a form of social networking. Someone who checks out a few blogs as a lurker might not necessarily share the same view as those who participated in the survey.
Results
Of the individuals who check out blog tours (4% never check them out), 52% check out those held on their friends’ blogs, 31% check out the tour if the author is a friend of theirs, and 56% check them out occasionally (i.e. the bloggers and authors were not friends of the individual.) (note: more than one answer could be selected).
Of the individuals who hadn’t already planned to buy the book before the blog tour started, 64% ended up buying a book they saw showcased on a tour and 31% didn’t. The question was not applicable to 5% of those who answered the survey.
Of the individuals who hadn’t already planned to buy the book before the blog tour started, twenty-two bloggers checked out blog tours only held on their friends’ blog and/or if the author was a friend of theirs. Sixty-four percent of them (n=14) ended up buying a book showcased on a blog tour. Thirty-six percent (n=8) didn’t. The result didn’t change when you factored in the individuals who also followed blogs tours occasionally (in addition to the above two categories).
Of the twenty individuals who occasionally follow blog tours (i.e. the bloggers and authors were not friends of the individual), 80% (n=16) bought a book showcased on a tour.
Of the individuals sitting on the fence about buying a book before the blog tour started (twenty-three individuals), 74% ended up buying a book and 26% didn’t. Remember, the individuals who said ‘yes’ might have visited blog tours for fifteen different books, but only bought one of the books showcased.
Sixteen percent of those who answered the survey decided not to buy a book showcased on a blog tour even though they had planned to before the tour. Ouch on that one if you were the authors.
Because I don’t want to make this a super long post, part 3 will be next Wednesday.
Do these results surprise you?