BookTour.com makes Book Tours pain free – By Melinda Carroll

One of the hardest things in the literary world other than getting published is connecting authors and readers. Setting up book tours, promoting appearances and actually getting readers to show up to your book signing and hopefully buy a copy of your book is a dreaded but necessary evil for most authors.

Finally, there is an online service to help authors connect to readers. BookTour.com.

From BookTour.com’s About Us page:

“BookTour.com was founded in late 2006 by three authors who believe that technology can transform how authors find receptive groups of readers.

We're a free online service that connects authors and potential audiences of all sorts, from book groups to civic organizations, from bookstores to corporate events. Authors create their own page (biography, books, tour dates and availability) and any group looking for speakers can find them and contact them directly to arrange for an appearance. Relevant information for both authors and venues can be added in minutes through a simple fill-in-the-blanks interface. Connecting authors with potential audiences then becomes as easy as searching (by geography, book titles, subject, dates of availability) and sending an email.

For authors, BookTour.com serves as a one-stop tool for book promotion, allowing authors at all levels of their careers to locate receptive live audiences. For readers and audiences, BookTour.com makes finding when a favorite author is coming to your town as easy as checking the weather.

BookTour is based in San Francisco, the city that buys more books (and wine) per capita than any in America.”

I found BookTour.com on the Booksquare blog recently. Have I told you lately how much I love Booksquare? I LOVE Booksquare! The writers at Booksquare are just fabulous at finding literary gems in the publishing world like BookTour.com. And once found I just have to pass these gems along to you all.

Booksquare had this to say about BookTour.com:

“Thanks to easy-to-use, modern technology, you can get out the word about your appearances. But wait, there’s more! By combining authors, books, and places, you get personalized content. Like, oh, a weekly newsletter telling you about author appearances in your neighborhood and, once you’ve registered, the home page gives you a listing of upcoming appearances (dates would be helpful here).

By taking a multi-pronged approach to getting author appearance information into the database, this increases the breadth and depth of information for readers. Since they’re the ones who matter, this is very good indeed.”

(Read the full blog)

BookTour.com is still in Beta phase and will only get better from here.

So authors, what are you waiting for? Get on over to BookTour.com and register and list your upcoming appearances. BookTour.com is not just for authors. So all you readers out there get on over to BookTour.com and sign up and start receiving news of when your favorite authors will be in your town promoting their books.

I know Noveltown will be registering on BookTour.com and using it as a tool to help connect authors to readers and vise versa.