When Sand in My Eyes released nationally in July 2010, I went on a virtual book tour and book bloggers played a significant role in the launching of my book. In addition to providing me a convenient and effective way to let thousands of readers know about my newest release, book bloggers helped me expand my community of friends. As a result, visitors to my website increased significantly, as did online sales.

Book bloggers are incredibly important to the launch of a book. They have established and loyal members and these members make up a community. When a book blogger does a Q&A with me as an author, reviews my book, or invites me to post a guest blog on their site, it is as if they are introducing me personally to every member of their community. It is beneficial to become a part of book-loving communities, or those that are relevant to the topics/themes of your books.

I viewed the relationship between me as author and the book bloggers as mutually beneficial in that they introduced me to hundreds, and sometimes thousands of potential book readers/buyers while at the same time, I did my best to write something interesting and unique for them. I would first visit the book blog site, see its style and personality, and who its followers are, then write a blog specifically tailored to what I thought they might enjoy. If book bloggers are introducing me to their precious community of loyal and established members, I am going to give them something good—not just blab about the plots, themes and characters in my book, but rather disclose the intimacies of writing novels early in the morning or late at night while my three children sleep, and so on.

During the launch of Sand in My Eyes, I also gave talks and did signings at numerous bookstores and that was very successful as well, but being a mother of three and an author, it is often difficult and costly to fly here and there whereas book bloggers would email me their interview questions, or give me a deadline by which I had to submit my guest blog and I was free to work on it all from my home late at night when time allowed.
Then, I went on a family vacation and while away, my Q&A and guest blogs started appearing everywhere and in multiple places at once all over the Internet. I was amazed to see how it improved my rankings in the search engines!

Book bloggers are vital to the launch of a book and I am incredibly grateful to them for inviting me into their unique and established communities!