294. Are Book Tours Worth It? With Richie Billing

Author and podcaster Richie Billing is back talking about book tours, what they involve, how much they cost, and what you could possibly do instead.

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Check out Richie's website:
https://richiebilling.com/

Listen to The Fantasy Writers' Toolshed Podcast:
https://richiebilling.com/the-fantasy-writers-toolshed-podcast

Find Richie on all platforms:
https://linktr.ee/richiebilling

Book tours mentioned:
https://kellylacey.com/love-books-tours/
randomthingsthroughmyletterbox.blogspot.com
https://zooloosbooktours.co.uk/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Authors have several choices available to them when it comes to marketing their books. One of these options is the book tour. But how should you pick a tour company, and will the results make up for the time and expense involved? Author and podcast host, Richie Billing, conducted an experiment to answer these questions, and he's here to share his results. This is, "Are Book Tours Worth It?"

Jennia: Well, it's always lovely to chat with you!

Richie Billing: Yeah, lovely to chat with you as well. How are you getting on?

Jennia: Really well. How about you?

Richie Billing: Good, yeah. Working on all your edits that you've done for me (Jennia laughs) and a couple of projects.

Jennia: That's also good to hear.

Richie Billing: Very helpful as always.

Jennia: Aw, thank you. Well, would you like to introduce yourself for people who don't know you and maybe share a little bit about the book that you used with this book tour experiment?

Richie Billing: Yeah. So obviously my name is Richie Billing and I am a writer from Liverpool. May have heard the Fantasy Writers' Toolshed podcast popping up about. That's my podcast as well. And I've got a website, richiebilling.com. Love writing fantasy. I love writing literary fiction as well and just write whatever stories pop into my head. But they mostly focus on, like, human issues. They're the kind of themes I like to explore. But I think fantasy is what I'm drawn to most of all because I love—I just love good versus evil. Like, what is it? Like, what is each side all about in this eternal struggle? I like to play around by taking my sort of theory on what these things are. And I'll just write—and I'll write stories that may be about homelessness in Liverpool, but I still keep in mind that sort of good versus evil thing.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: And it's still in the same universe as a fantasy story about magic weapons or something. I've always tried to promote books as well because I'm not very patient—I have patience with certain things, but not with certain individuals. Let's say, like, literary agents and editors. So I like to as much as I can—

Jennia: Well, not all editors (laughs).

Richie Billing: Not you! Not you, Jennia, you know. But, yeah, I like to, as much as possible, take the sort of power out of their hands. And last year I did an experiment with one of my novels, Pariah's Lament, and worked with seven or eight different book marketing companies. These companies specifically focus on book tours, which we'll speak a little bit about, shortly, I imagine. But yeah, that experiment was quite interesting. It sort of gave me a good insight into how effective that form of marketing is.

Jennia: Yeah. How much research did you put into researching each of these book tour companies before you decided to sign with them?

Richie Billing: Well, what I did first was reach out to the community that I'm in.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: And people suggested different companies and stuff. So I made a short list that way. And then I did research as well. Just Google, obviously. Start with Google—

Jennia: (laughs) Yes!

Richie Billing: —and then just see what you can find. Make a list of everybody. Like, some, for example, specialize in romance—

Jennia: Right.

Richie Billing: —and won't bother with fantasy or whatever other genres. So you just got to make sure that you—when you're doing your research you're picking out—not just picking any name, you're filtering it and looking to see if they're going to be a good fit. Because what you're looking for with these companies is their network.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: You're looking to access their network because they should, in theory, have contacts with influencers, social media people, maybe media contacts as well. So that they could pitch and sell your book more easily. And if they've got an audience there, that's what you're paying the fee for.

Jennia: Well, did you look up some of their past tours to see how those went? Maybe to see what the engagement was like from some of the different influencers they chose?

Richie Billing: Well, the tricky thing is with a lot of these companies is the extent of the knowledge that you're able to glean about them is limited to what's on the websites.

Jennia: Ohh.

Richie Billing: So if they, and I'm always—because I work in digital marketing, I build websites and I manage and grow them. So I know that you've got complete control over the con—every bit of content on a website. So people put testimonials on there. There's no way of verifying whether their testimonials are real.

Jennia: Oh exactly (laughs).

Richie Billing: I like websites like Trustpilot and stuff like that because they are independent and you can literally trust them a bit more. But it is—it's tough because just straying into, like, the pricing of these things, like they're not cheap. So if you've got a—if you've got a limited budget, it's a big gamble to take, and you need to be sure that you're gonna get what you—what you want. So just as an example of range here, just of the—yeah, so there's 11 book tour companies on this list I've got. And the range goes from $60 up to $130, $150, so—So.

Jennia: And then, what do you have to include with that? So that's just the price for them arranging the tour, right? And then you also had to provide books, I'm assuming. So did they have to be—

Richie Billing: Yeah, a small bit.

Jennia: —Yeah. And did they allow you to do e-copies or do they all have to be physical books?

Richie Billing: Well, some of the influences that they work with and, like, some of the better posts that you get on social media, they're when the person has the physical copy and they're showing the book and stuff like that.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: One of the frustrations was that you couldn't restrict who got the physical copies. I was just told, "Oh, eight reviewers have requested physical copies." And now if you're shipping them to America from the UK, you're looking at, like, 20 quid. It's a big expense. So 55 bucks, for example, is like 100 pound. It's an expense. On the flip side, if you get someone who's got a physical copy of the book, and they've got a massive following, and they do a really good post, it could be well worth it. So you're seeing how much control you've got.

Jennia: Yeah, but that goes back—Exactly. The whole control thing. If you are not able to choose who gets those physical copies . . . or even, I'm going to guess also, you don't have any say in which influencers they pick to even be on the tour.

Richie Billing: Yeah.

Jennia: So what sort of picks would you get?

Richie Billing: And, to be honest, you don't even pick. So what these companies will do is they'll have a network and they'll just, like, email the network or contact the network and say, "This book's up for a tour. Who wants to sign up?" Now, nobody could sign up. Like, this is what happened on one of the tours. Nobody signed up.

Jennia: Oh!

Richie Billing: So they still took me money—

Jennia: Oh no!

Richie Billing: —And what they did is they just copied and pasted, like, the same information about the book and just posted it on, like, four or five random blog spot websites, which nobody goes on, and then charged, like, a hundred dollars.

Jennia: That's awful! (sympathetic laugh)

Richie Billing: Yeah. Well, that's not even the worst of it.

Jennia: What is the worst of it?

Richie Billing: The worst is the fake reviews.

Jennia: Oh yes, I remember you talking about those! How many reviews do you think, if you had to assign a percentage, were fake versus real?

Richie Billing: Well, I think it was limited to a few companies and the company that did do it, they charged me $130. Now, what some of these companies do is they probably wrongly guarantee, like, a set number of reviews.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: Which, if they send the book to 10 people, 10 people agree to read it, 10 people might hate the book and not finish it. So it's not really, like, possible to guarantee reviews. But what these companies do is they create fake profiles on Goodreads, look at the different reviews that have been left already, and, I'm guessing, just copy and paste a load of them into ChatGPT. And then just get ChatGPT to write a review based on them other reviews.

Jennia: Yeah, and it's so obvious when those reviews are fake, too, because you can see that there's not anything specific to the story. It's all something that's been pulled from that back copy. And it's usually just very generic, but it's also very, very flowery with the wording and it's heavy on the praise. Like, you'll never see them say anything bad about it.

Richie Billing: Yeah, I know.

Jennia: Well, just for people who don't know, can you explain a little bit why people should not want to have AI reviews or AI written reviews, even if they're all four or five stars?

Richie Billing: Well, you write the book at the end of the day because you want human beings to read it. So it's not the same. It's just, it doesn't count for anything if no one's read it.

Jennia: I think it was Threads or something. There was, like a little group from the Bookstagram community talking about when they go to a book's landing page on Goodreads, or Amazon, or wherever, and if they see that it's mostly AI written reviews—which, you know, like you were saying, once you've seen a few, you start to just pick them out. And they were saying that it makes them feel a little less like they can trust that author because they don't necessarily know that the author didn't just plug those in themselves under a bunch of dummy accounts.

Richie Billing: Yeah.

Jennia: But also, yeah, it's not a real review. And so it's kind of like with anything where we're going to determine whether or not that's worth spending our money on. If we see fake reviews, it lowers that trustworthiness.

Richie Billing: Yeah. It's difficult, though, because you do see some stories about authors, like, doing dodgy things with reviews. Very bitter, twisted. I think there's the risk of you getting authors who just genuinely want people to read the book, who spent like ages working on it. They just want to get it out there, and they turn to these companies, and these companies are predatory on what they're doing. And deceptive. So it's—it is like fraudulent and it's borderline criminal. The author then gets a bad rap because they've been, but they're the victim in it as well.

Jennia: I have worked as a book influencer for some tour companies where I've signed up for some. So I do think it might also differ a little bit on the company. Because I know that, for instance, you can't just sign up for some of these tour companies, they have to contact you. So obviously they're watching your account, making sure you actually have people commenting. And it's not just those throwaway comments like a heart emoji or something. And they are looking at, you know, your ratio of engagement, or likes, or whatever to your followers. They make sure that what you're posting is closely aligned with whatever genre that happens to be. So I think that makes a difference too. Rather than say a company that will just let any genre sign up, even if the people that are going to be posting about it don't usually post about that genre. Which means none of their followers are likely going to care anyway, because they have to know that at least to some extent, I would think.

Richie Billing: Yeah. Oh definitely, yeah. I mean there's some companies that I would recommend if you want me to share the names.

Jennia: Yeah, we can share the ones you'd recommend!

Richie Billing: Yeah. So Love Book Tours, that I was run by a person called Kelly Lacey. Her website's kellylacey.com. Yeah, and she does audiobook tours as well.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: And she was really nice and . . . I think, like you say she was, like, an example of one person who keeps an eye on the network and makes sure there's no, like, deactivated accounts and stuff like that. So you get, like, good value for that. There's another UK-based reviewer called Anne Cater—Cater, C-A-T-E-R. And her website is randomthingsthroughmyletterbox.blogspot.com—

Jennia: (laughs) What a cute name!

Richie Billing: —and she's brilliant and she works with a lot of media. But more sort of mainstream fiction for that one. And then the other one I'd recommend is, I think it's got two names, Zulu Book Tours, or Zulu's Book Tours is the main one, and I think that's also known—goes by Compulsive Reads. They do a mix, and you could do different durations. So I think one of the best things with book tours is that you can build a campaign, and that's what I did. I was trying to combine all of these tours. I didn't just do them at the same time. So what I did is, like, tried to create a period of promotion. So I think it went—run from October to the middle of December.

Jennia: Okay, that's a pretty good amount of time.

Richie Billing: Yeah. Because you can book these tours—So the idea is to have someone promoting something every single day.

Jennia: Right. Yeah.

Richie Billing: And you can book for seven days, you could book for 10 days, you could book for 12 days. Some of them do, like, three or four days. But yeah, you could sort of tie it in. So this week it's going to be this company promoting it. Week two, it's this company. Week three, it's that company. That way you can measure the success of each one.

Jennia: Ohh, that's clever.

Richie Billing: Because if you do eight at the same time, you don't know which ones work though, rather.

Jennia: Yeah, exactly. So what kind of results did you see, then, and how much did they vary from one to the other?

Richie Billing: Well, this is the thing. I wasn't happy with the results. I don't think this made any difference whatsoever. I think I spent close to a thousand dollars. I would never do it again. What I would probably do instead is, would make a list of TikTokers that I thought would be worth it. Or I thought—

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: —And just reach out to them. Agree fees with them and go that way. What you should always—if you ever agree in a deal with someone, only ever agree to pay half up front. No more than half, and the rest of it gets paid on completion.

Jennia: Was that an option with any of these tours or did they all require the payment up front?

Richie Billing: They all required payments up front, yeah. Which was another pain. So you just don't hear from them. Like, some of them don't even let you know when the tour started. They'll send you, like, update emails and stuff. So you pay your money and then it's just, like, a bit of hit and hope kind of thing. Whereas if—

Jennia: So how are you able to tell when it did happen? Did you just have to keep refreshing social media platforms and see if your book popped up?

Richie Billing: Yeah, in some cases it's just looking at the website, seeing if any new posts went up about the book. The ones that I recommended, they were the ones who'd send reports at the end and send you all the links and stuff.

Jennia: Okay.

Richie Billing: They were really good. But some of them, atrocious. And you just gotta kind of think about what you want to get out of a campaign like this. Like, book tours, historically, they've been good because they help people get reviews.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: I don't think they're as effective as they used to be because no one really reads blogs.

Jennia: Right. Yeah. And that used to be the main one that you'd see book tours on. It used to be a blog tour and now it's almost always, like, Instagram or TikTok I think are the two where you really see it.

Richie Billing: And unless you're getting really good influencers, like, it's a waste of time. Because the algorithms don't even serve posts to certain people, you know what I mean? And you're just at the whim of the algorithm.

Jennia: Yeah, that's something else I think people should keep in mind, too, is the algorithm just changes like on a switch. You know, you have no control over that either. So what if it's one of those times when the Instagram algorithm has just, like, completely done a backslide into wherever, and now 50% of the people who would have been seeing it are no longer seeing it. But you've already paid for that time and you're locked into those dates.

Richie Billing: You might only get like a couple of posts and they might be shared at like the wrong times. No one sees them.

Jennia: Ah. Yeah, that's another thing too. So I know some of the, like, the tour companies that—and obviously I've never used—I haven't promoted a book through them. But on the other end of it, they're very strict about, "You have to post before this time of day," for instance. You know, they've gotten that figured out as to ideal posting times. And then they pass that information on. And I think that if you decide to go at a different time or not post within that time frame, you can end up having your name written off their list of approved influencers or whatever it is.

Richie Billing: Yeah. I mean, another thing to look out for, which would be probably the most powerful thing any book tour company could ever develop, is a reliable and engaged email list.

Jennia: Mmm.

Richie Billing: Like, I didn't come across any that advertised that service. It was all driven towards social media and blogs. And if you can team up with other authors who've got thousands of email subscribers and they're engaged with what that person's writing about, then you're going to get way more interest in your book.

Jennia: Yeah, that's what I've heard. Even recently on a lot of different webinars and, like, the different conferences and stuff that are happening right now virtually, at least. A lot of them are saying that that's really the way to go now. Not so much having a large social media presence or promoting the books on social media.

Richie Billing: But you can send an email out. Like, just as an example, I did an email swap with someone, another author. And they sent their email. I got 31 new email subscribers from one email. Now, like, is social media going to do that for you? I didn't get anything like that from a book tour and that cost me a thousand dollars (laughs).

Jennia: Versus a free email (laughs).

Richie Billing: One free email, I got 31 new subscribers.

Jennia: Well, I was going to ask you how you think book tours could be improved, but do you think they need improvement or do you think that they should just be abolished?

Richie Billing: Well, this is the thing, I was, like, well surely there's got to be better. Like, maybe I've tried 10 book tour companies. Like, it's not a full sample so there's got to be good ones out there. So what I started doing recently was looking at different agencies that are a bit more well-established, that got, like, better reputations, and reaching out to them and seeing what they can offer.

Jennia: Well, what were your parameters for determining whether they had a better reputation? How did you rate that?

Richie Billing: Just, like, more established client base. Like, you probably see on some websites now where they'll list, like, company logos and stuff like that. I mean, again, take that with a pinch of salt because anyone put any crap on there. But you can—I was just doing a bit more research as well. And then what I did with these as well is set up calls. So, like, free intro calls where you can sort of tell them what you're looking for, tell them about your project, and then you can sort of feel them out. Because at the end of the day they're trying to sell a service to you—

Jennia: Right.

Richie Billing: —so you can get quite a lot out of them. And then, like, developing, like, a press kit and stuff like that. So the main sort of thing that they were going for is, like, "Oh, we'll submit your book to competitions." Now you have to pay to submit to competitions.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: And in the end they came back and quoted me $30,000 for a four-to six-month campaign. Absolute nonsense. $30,000.

Jennia: My mind is automatically thinking of all the things you can buy for $30,000. I mean, you would need like a guaranteed number one bestselling list or something for that, for like six months or a year. But I'm guessing they don't guarantee anything. It's just, "Give us this money and this could happen."

Richie Billing: That's the thing with marks and there are no guarantees. Like, I know from doing PR—I do PR day to day. So I've reached out to journalists, I've done a press release, and I've sent that press release to them. And they just come back to you and say, "Oh, there's no human element of the story." It's just "someone's just brought a novel out" kind of thing. So they would just do the exact same thing and get the same answer. And then, at the end of the day, they're just going to turn around and shrug the shoulders and say, "Oh well, we tried."

Jennia: Right. And like we were talking about even before the show, so much of that you can do on your own. You know, set aside two or three hours a week and say, "Okay, I'm going to work on this right now. I'm going to work on this right now." So I think a lot of what any of this comes down to is just the time aspect and the convenience. Because, like, with the book tours, for instance—And again, I just want to point out, you know, this was—What your experience was like, because I did talk to a couple of authors who were very enthusiastic about the results they received, but they also did not use any of the tour companies that you used.

Richie Billing: Yeah.

Jennia: —So I think that has to be a difference, too, just based on how this tour company operates, what kind of people they're picking to be on their tours, how they're selecting those people to be on their tours. And I would think communication with the author has to be a big part of that, too, because like you said with some of them that they didn't even get in touch with you. They didn't even let you know which week it was posting. But I would think that—Well, like, with anything where you're hiring a professional, communication has to be key constantly.

Richie Billing: Yeah. Considering that they work in communications as well.

Jennia: Right. And once you've paid someone for something, you want to know that you're going to get some sort of results. Even if it's just that promised deliverable of five people posted about your book, or six people reviewed it, or whatever that is. But if you have to check up on that yourself . . . Because it's one of those things where as soon as you start to see something slide, you might begin to wonder, well, what else is being—like, having a corner cut? Or what shortcuts are they taking? And then you end up with things, like, you know, maybe someone didn't post and they were supposed to, or three out of 10 people didn't post when they were supposed to, or that sort of thing.

Richie Billing: Yeah. And bear in mind as well that if people don't do what they say, you've got very little recourse. So you kind of—you are a bit helpless. If you find the right person and they've got a good network and—it can be a game changer. But it's—They're very few and far between.

Jennia: Yeah, that—how do you find them then? Because like you were saying, too, you go to Google and look it up. But if you are not finding anything apart from what they're listing on their own website, which obviously they're going to be biased and only choose those things which are glowing reviews. And you can't ever verify whether the reviews are even real or not. So then there's that. But yeah. And if you don't have a large author network of your own with other people to ask, it just makes it so difficult to sort of weed out those people that are worth investing your book and your time in versus not.

Richie Billing: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Jennia: Yeah (laughs). I think marketing is the least favorite topic of almost every author I've spoken to. And you almost get that, like, full body shudder when you even bring the word up.

Richie Billing: Yeah. I know. I've tried to think of, like new, ways to approach it all now. I've got something that I'm working on. The gist of it is just writers pursuing subscription-based models rather than working with other, like, publishers, and editors, agents, and stuff like that. Which I think is possible. It's just a lot of work (laughs).

Jennia: It is, yes. And even with traditional publishing, a lot of people are seeing more and more marketing being handed down to them instead of that traditional model that we sort of just take for granted or assume will happen based off, you know, the 80s or the 90s, even, or the early 2000s, and what we saw from there. But it's not the same anymore.

Richie Billing: Yeah. I think there's going to come a time where, like, I know traditionally published authors, some people who have been published for, like, over a decade—

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: —and they're now looking at, like, self-publishing models because . . . Like, they've had loads of books published and they're still not a full-time author.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: So, like, what do you do in those situations? Like, and this is what I said at the start, the power of marketing is taking the power away from publishers and put it in your hands. It's just difficult. It's more easier than ever, I think, now with all the technology and tools we have available.

Jennia: Oh, yeah. I completely agree with that.

Richie Billing: And that's why these book tour companies exist, is because they've invested time reaching out to build networks and stuff like that.

Jennia: Well, you sort of just answered what was going to be my final question. But that would be, what should people look for if they've decided that at least the convenience, for instance, of a book tour is worth it a them? What are the green flags?

Richie Billing: Well, just asking people if they've already used them and what their experience was. I mean, I've used the company that someone recommended to me. They loved them, and I thought they were horrendous. And then she ended up using them after me again and found that the experience was terrible.

Jennia: Ohh.

Richie Billing: So these things don't always—They're not good forever.

Jennia: Mhm.

Richie Billing: Sometimes you get lucky.

Jennia: Yes. Well, I appreciate your honesty, and that you've come on here to share all of this. So if anyone would like to know where to find you. Where can they do that?

Richie Billing: Yeah, best place to look is richiebilling.com. We've got loads of resources on there, and free tools and whatnot. And you can find a bit more about my books as well.

Jennia: All right!

Jennia: Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information. And please join me next week when Ian Craven visits. And he'll be telling us some of the many reasons why you should join an online writing community. Thanks again!