My blog tour starts tomorrow! I’m excited and nervous at the same time. I’ve never done the “blog tour thing” before. I’ve written four guest posts for the tour plus another one for the JMS Books blog, and answered quite a darned few interview questions for three different interview posts. Also scheduled are three spotlight posts, eight exclusive excerpt posts, and seven reviews.
There’ll be a few more (at least 6) reviews outside of the tour as well. There’s a giveaway (Rafflecopter) attached to the tour, so be sure to follow it around to boost your chances at winning signed copies of both ’Til Death Do Us Part and To Love and To Cherish along with an Amazon gift card! I’ll post each day letting you know where the tour stops are. Weekends are off, and so are November 22nd and 23rd since I expect to become a grandmother (again) on the 22nd and will be out of town.
So…”excited” and “nervous.” Why and why? Excited because I had so much fun writing this novel. I truly love the story and hope readers will too. Nervous because I’m a worry-wart. Will my guest blog posts measure up? Will reviewers like this book?
I imagine I’m not the only one that ends up on pins and needles waiting for reviews of their babies to come in. I’m experienced enough to know that they will vary, and that’s okay. I look at the reviews of books I adored and wonder what the hell some people read when they gave it a low rating. Likewise, I can’t fathom the high ratings I find on many that end up in my own DNF pile. A quote I’ve come across by Edmund Wilson states: “No two persons ever read the same book.”
That’s a fact and a half. So I expect a variety of opinions on my own writing, and I try not to obsess over negative ones. It helps if the favorable ones hit first (fingers crossed).
How much do the reviews you read influence your buying habits? Do you put more stock into your own judgment based on the excerpts and blurb? How much does the cover impact your decision? Are you swayed by seeing multiple blog tour posts come across your feeds, keeping the book in question in your focus?
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So many interesting questions!!
A great title draws my eye quicker than a nice cover, but the cover is important too, of course. I held off reading a book for months because the cover was frankly hideous, and when I finally caved and read it I discovered one of my favorite authors. That was a hard lesson in “don’t judge a book by its cover” 🙂
I don’t trust blurbs because more than once I’ve read a blurb that doesn’t reflect what happens in the book, so I buy books exclusively based on reviews. And not just 4 or 5-star reviews. I log onto Goodreads and read the readers reviews. And I like to read the low-starred reviews too because well…our tastes differ. People always tend to hate on insta-love, but as soon as I read a review saying “hated it because of insta-love” I immediately exercise my one-click finger 🙂
And yes—I like being reminded of the book so a blog tour is perfect. I probably tend to read posts prior to publication to make my decision whether to buy or not, and when it’s made I stop following the tour. A giveaway isn’t enough for me to follow around, I never participate because I can afford to pay for my books and I think it’s better for someone on a tighter book budget to win. However, if I like the author I keep track of guest posts – I like those!! 🙂
So…do I get a prize for the world’s longest answer to a blog post? 😉
I agree with you on covers. It’ll draw my eye, but there needs to be more. I have a favorite that I avoided for a long time due to a cover I thought was awful, too. It’s actually a series, and I’m anxiously awaiting the next installment, cringeworthy cover and all.
I usually decide based upon a combination of the blurb and reading the available excerpt. The excerpt is partly to see if I like the writer’s style and voice (if they are unknown to me) and partly to get a feel for the story. Generally speaking, I don’t blindly trust reviews. It’s not just that opinions on what we do/don’t like may differ, I’ve found that often enough characterizations/facts they give are flat out wrong and/or too much summary is shared and it spoils the story experience. If I’ve noticed a particular reviewer tends to align with my own preferences on books I’ve read, and I get the impression they are a more thorough reader and not a skimmer, sure, but no blind trust.
I actually don’t have a problem with spoilers. I know many people do, but I’m not one of them – I can still experience the story for myself and the spoilers don’t spoil anything for me really. Maybe I’m weird, but that’s just how I work 🙂
But, you’re so right about the flat-out-wrong-part. More than once I’ve read reviews after I’ve read the book and thought “Wait, what? Did we just read the same book? That was NOT what happened!! How can you even think that??”
It’s so interesting!! 🙂