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Blog Tour Highlights: A Weekend Break Rather than a Two Week Cruise!

31st March 2018 by KA Hitchins Leave a Comment

I’ve come to the end of my blog tour for The Gardener’s Daughter, and thought I’d share the highlights for those of you who might have missed it. I can’t thank the wonderful book bloggers who took part enough for helping my launch go off with a bang. Writing is only one side of the coin; an author needs readers and reviewers otherwise the whole process is just speaking into the silence.

 

 

Day 1 https://lovebooksgroup.blog/2018/03/19/bookish-the-gardeners-daughter-by-k-a-hitchins-kathrynhitchins-instantapostleauthor-interview-ya/ 

“I dedicated the book to my late father, Alec Hitchins, who was a professional artist and keen gardener. Since losing him, I’ve realised what a wise, loving and stable influence he was on my life.  Knowing where you come from plays an enormous part in the formation of your identity and I wanted to write a book about the search for a father and the search for one’s self. When my heroine, Ava, accidentally discovers she’s adopted, she sets off on a dangerous journey, looking for the truth and finding instead a can of worms. She comes to realise what she lost when she left home. I drew on my own sense of grief for my father when writing those passages, so it’s only fitting the book should be dedicated to him.”

 

Day 2 http://www.swirlandthread.com/the-gardeners-daughter-ka-hitchins/

“When people ask what I do and I tell them I’m a writer, I can tell from their expressions and comments that they imagine me sitting peacefully in a book lined study, tapping away at my keyboard, adding daily to the pile of crisp white paper on the desk which grows methodically from chapter 1 until I type ‘The End’.

 

“Nothing could be further from the truth. In the first place, I very rarely sit in my study to write. I’m either at the kitchen table, with half an ear on the wash cycle and the other making sure the saucepans don’t boil over; sitting in the car and jotting in a small notebook while I wait for the kids to come out of school; or snatching a quick cup of tea in a supermarket café, far away from the pile of ironing and the bathroom floor that needs washing. 

 

writing pad for blog

 

“Instead, writing a novel is more a question of harvesting snippets and catching thoughts before they fly away and are lost for ever. It’s jotting down conversations between characters you’ve yet to create, capturing their voices before they fade to silence. It’s about lists of possibilities, little diagrams, sketching floor plans and googling baby sites in search of the perfect name for your hero or heroine.”

 

Day 3 https://dearreader915.wordpress.com/category/hitchens-k-a/

“This is a thriller, with a strong storyline, lurching from incident to incident.  At first, it’s about Ava trying to find out what she needs to know for herself, but, as the story progresses, it becomes about Ava and Zavier trying to work things through together.

“Instant Apostle is, of course, a Christian publishing company, but nowhere is God mentioned.  (This is not uncommon in Instant Apostle books.  The religious hand is normally very light.)   The Gardener’s Daughter is a clever reworking of the parable of The Prodigal Son and the conclusions drawn at the end, by Ava, reflect Christian teaching on love and redemption, but applied to the storyline, not as a sermon.”

 

Day 4 https://novelgossip.com/2018/03/22/blogtour-the-gardners-daughter-by-kathryn-hitchins-kathrynhitchins/

“I decided I wanted to write about identity and how this is affected by the fathers we have – good fathers, bad fathers and absent fathers. My motherless nineteen-year-old heroine, Ava Gage, accidentally discovers she’s adopted when trying to do a good turn. In a fit of anger, she impetuously runs away in search of her biological identity. Penniless and cut-off from everything she’s ever known, and trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a ruthless criminal gang, she unearths the shocking truth behind her mother’s death and discovers who her real father is – with a sprinkling of romance and humour along the way!

“I have to admit, that writing YA was more difficult than I envisaged. Having two novels under my belt I thought it would be a breeze to write something for a younger audience but in fact the opposite is true. It isn’t a question of simplifying the writing. Teenagers don’t like to be talked down to, and they won’t waste their time reading something unless they’re gripped from the word go and the storyline relates to the issues in their life.  After all, YA authors aren’t just competing with each other for teenagers’ attention, they’re competing with computer games, YouTube, and social media.”

 

 

Day 5 http://www.christianbookaholic.com/2018/03/23/the-gardeners-daughter-by-k-a-hitchins/#more-2494

“When I began The Gardener’s Daughter I had no idea what to expect – but oh wow, oh wow, oh wow what an incredible read. It exceeded all my expectations. Totally engrossing, full of suspense, minute attention to detail. An all round fabulous read you do not want to miss.”

 

Day 6 https://aloverofbooks.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/blog-tour-the-gardeners-daughter-by-k-a-hitchins/

“When I lost my Dad to cancer and began speaking to friends about what he had meant to me, I realised just how many people don’t have a good relationship with their fathers, or even have any real contact with them. Most of the positive things in my life are a direct result of the happy and secure upbringing my parents gave me, rather than the result of anything especially good or talented about me. What would happen, I wondered, if I woke up one day and realised that everything in my childhood had been a lie, and that my real father had abandoned me before I was born? That was the premise for the book. Ava’s identity is intrinsically linked to knowing where she’s come from and finding a place she can call home.”

 

 

Day 7 https://bbookinspector.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/blogtour-bookreview-the-gardeners-daughter-by-k-a-hitchins-tgd-kathrynhitchins/

“I really enjoyed the ending of this novel, and if there will be a continuation, I will be definitely waiting for it. 🙂 So, to conclude, this is a very amusing book, filled with very well developed and engrossing characters and intriguing plot, and I truly believe that Hitchins is incredibly good at what she does. So please give this book a try and hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did. 🙂”

 

Day 8 https://lifeinthespaciousplace.wordpress.com/2018/03/26/the-gardeners-daughter/

“I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it a gripping read as the story is full of action with lots of twists to the plot.  I was drawn in to Ava’s search for the truth and there was the constant temptation to read just a few more pages to find out what would happen next.”

 

Day 9 https://chataboutbooks.wordpress.com/2018/03/27/the-gardeners-daughter-by-kathryn-hitchins-kathrynhitchins-blogtour-authorinterview-tgd/

“I’d dreamed of being a writer throughout my childhood and teens. As soon as I realised stories were created by people and weren’t magically ‘just there’ to be plucked from the library shelves, I knew I wanted to create these worlds for myself and for other people.”

 

 

Day 10 http://www.mandybakerjohnson.com/2018/03/the-gardeners-daughter/

“I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is intriguing and kept me guessing right to the very end with its twists and turns. The characters surrounding Ava are not necessarily who they seem to be, whether from her past or in her present. The Gardener’s Daughter is cleverly written and is a satisfying read. I had been looking forward to this next book by K A Hitchins and I wasn’t disappointed. She is right up there as one of my favourite authors. I’m giving this book 5* on Amazon and can highly recommend it.”

 

Day 11 https://www.katherineblessan.com/blog/the-tale-of-a-prodigal-daughter/

“This book is targeted at young adults with the aim of conveying Christian truth through fiction in a subtle and non-preachy way. However, it can also be read by adults, and I hope it will help people have a better understanding of the Christian gospel and want to encounter Jesus for themselves.”      

 

Day 12 https://www.compulsivereaders.com/reviews/blog-tour-k-a-hitchins-the-gardners-daughter/

“An enjoyable story with some interesting characters, an insight into the world of botany and holiday parks and an overall message of  love, family and belonging.”

 

Filed Under: Uncategorised Tagged With: A Writer's Life, blog tour, Bloggers, Book Launch, Book Reviews, My Publishing Journey, The Gardener's Daughter

How I organised an Author Blog Tour

8th August 2017 by KA Hitchins 4 Comments

Authors love being featured on other people’s blogs, whether it’s having their latest book reviewed by a book blogger, being interviewed about their writing life or contributing an article on a subject dear to their heart. The pièce de résistance must therefore be having your very own blog book tour.

 

 

A blog tour is like a traditional book tour, except all the stops are virtual. Instead of going from book shop to book shop, the author goes from blog to blog. The purpose is to expose the author to as wide an audience as possible without having all the expense and trouble of travelling around the country. You can read more about blog tours here: http://www.bookmasters.com/blog/blog-book-tour/

I’ve managed to have my books featured on several individual book review blogs, but had no idea how go about organising a blog tour for myself. Having signed a contract with a small independent publisher, there was no money to pay for a publicist to organise a tour for me and I didn’t know many bloggers personally who I could recruit.

In any case, as an unknown author I found it excruciatingly difficult to ask bloggers for their help, particularly as they knew what a blog tour involved and I didn’t. I was worried I’d look stupid and unprofessional.  Having also had my fair share of rejections through the submissions process, I wasn’t keen to expose my tender heart to more refusals.

 

 

Then I had a light bulb moment. I would ask another author if I could organise a blog tour for them, making it clear I had no experience in this area but would be willing to give it a go if they were. I knew I had to find the right kind of author – one whose work I admired, who was also a new author and who had passions and expertise outside of their book which would be interesting for bloggers to explore.

The main advantage of organising a blog tour for another author is that it’s much easier to ask for help on behalf of someone else. It’s also easier for a blogger to say, ‘no,’ to a third party, and it doesn’t hurt when they do! When they say, ‘yes’, however, you know they really want to be involved.

Having come to the end of the tour, I can wholeheartedly recommend the benefits. It was exciting to be able to enjoy someone else’s positive reviews and success for a change.  I logged onto social media every day during the tour with a sense of expectation, reading that day’s blog and enjoying seeing it Retweeted and shared into wider networks than my own.

The benefits for the author were: several great book reviews, a small increase in book sales, greater credibility as a writer and the possibility that her name and the name of her book will be more easily picked up by search engines in the future.

As well as increasing the profile of the author, I’ve also gained more Twitter and Facebook followers, and have met some wonderful people online who I might not have bumped into otherwise. I have more of a sense of the community of writers and bloggers working in my genre and I’ve seen first-hand how bloggers are able to find new angles on the same story, presenting their thoughts in the most succinct and imaginative ways. Hopefully the lessons I’ve learned will improve my own blogging.

Perhaps most importantly I’ve realised how rewarding it is to work collaboratively. The writer’s life is a lonely one. It was all too easy for me to become obsessed with my own reviews and sales figures and begin to lose perspective. There are many ways to gain a sense of personal achievement and helping to promote another author is one of them. With the internet swarming with publicists charging extraordinary sums to organise blog tours, it’s time writers took matters into their own hands.

So authors, instead of desperately searching for book review bloggers to feature your book, why not organise a blog tour for another author you know. Take a moment away from your own marketing and give yourself the opportunity to enjoy someone else’s success. There will be benefits for you both – and you never know one day someone might be willing to organise a tour for you.

And if organising a blog tour seems too much work, why not occasionally feature another author on your blog? Amazon does not allow review swaps on its site, but there’s nothing to stop you teaming up with another author to blog about each other’s books.

 

 

Here a step by step guide of how I set up the blog tour.

  1. Find an author who has several different angles to their writing, not just their book. Are they involved in a particular field or have a particular expertise? Have they an interesting life story? Can they talk about writing related issues? Some of the blogs on the tour can be book reviews, an author interview or an article produced by the author on a topic close to their heart, but the material for each blog needs to be unique in some way. Bloggers do not want to duplicate material from other blogs.
  2. Recruit a group of willing bloggers (this is the hard part!). I advertised for bloggers in relevant Facebook groups, and contacted other authors I knew who blogged. It took several weeks before I had enough blog spots to cover ten days.
  3. Set up a secret Facebook page and add in all the bloggers and the author. Encourage them to follow each other on Facebook and Twitter.
  4. Send out a review e-book to each bloggers so they can read it if they want to.
  5. Ask the bloggers what kind of a blog they want to have on their site and encourage them to coordinate direct with the author over interview questions/blog content.
  6. Agree dates for the tour with everyone and produce a schedule, ideally with a blog being published every day for a set period of time. Encourage the bloggers to advertise the schedule in advance.
  7. Select a relevant hashtag for the tour so that all Tweets can be easily found in one place and retweeted
  8. Once the tour is up and running, check that blogs are being posted each day and chase up any that are late. Share the blog posts on Twitter and Facebook, including in the secret Facebook group so the other bloggers can find them easily. Share and retweet other people’s posts and tweets.
  9. At the end of the tour, thank and congratulate everyone involved.

If you have experience of organising blog tours, I’d love to hear how you do it. I know I still have much to learn.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorised Tagged With: Author Promotion, blog, blog tour, Bloggers, Book Reviews, rejection, Writers Working Collaboratively, writing

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