Today's editorial is a bit of a musing session on the humble (and not so humble) book blog tour.
Previously on the blog we've seen some brilliant guest posts from people we're actually deeply in awe of who really go the extra mile to produce wonderful and informative articles. We've also joined in with various publisher-organised tours and it's been great to visit other blogs on the tour to see what they've come up with.
We don't really have much of an idea how blog tours are perceived by our readers though. Do people tune in for artistic wisdom? That's certainly what we get out of it - but is there also a perception that you're being 'hired' to promote something that you would not otherwise endorse?
Again we're back to the age-old question of blogger ethics. Being included on a blog tour comes with the assumption that the organisers will promote your 'slot' on the tour, and thus drive a little traffic to your blog.
Picking through our stats for the last month (which were a record high at 22,984 unique hits - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!) I noted that blog tour posts were indeed the most popular posts for the given week, but not overall the most popular for that month.
Puzzlingly, the stats for 'all time' see blog tour posts languishing way way behind the types of articles we write and publish here. Top hitters are reviews, naturally. Second are articles, normally seasonal articles (for example, a post from 2012 about buying books instead of easter eggs is the second most popular post on the blog of all time). Third are editorials (aha, so SOMEONE reads them!) and last are blog tour related items.
We try not to turn down any opportunities to join book blog tours, mostly because we're rather tickled to be asked but also because we respect the PRs we work with and know how hard they have to work to put together a tour. Of course we're also in it to 'pay back' some of the wonderful artists and authors, offering them a bit of our blog space to strut their funky stuff on.
I am genuinely intrigued to hear how others feel about blog tours. Do you love 'em or hate 'em? Do you join in on your own book blog or do you think they're a bit of a waste of time? The comments are open, drop one in the box below!