Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, you can make yourself more desirable to publishers or agents (and thus, more likely to get an offer) if you can demonstrate that you’ve already got a good grasp on who your readers are and how to reach them. Social media makes this an easier task.

Take the phenomenon of a blog tour. Sort of like an author tour without the hassle of traveling, a blog tour is when a targeted list of 40-60 bloggers are recruited to blog about a book, either using their own reviews or pulling from the press release.

You can expect your publisher to do a lot of the leg work here, but if you were to do a “blog tour,” what are the best blogs for you to target? Who reads the genre you write in? Approaching a publisher with well-thought-out suggestions will make you a more appealing author.

Blog tours are just one facet of a book promotion campaign, and it’s part of your job, as the author, to help brainstorm how to best get your book in front of its intended audience. You’ll have a richer (in more ways than one) author experience because of it.

We’ll explore other social media outreach strategies in future posts.