As noted in last year’s blog tour post-mortem, I feel as if I spent way too much time on the “Homespun” blog tour writing guest posts — time I could have spent more usefully writing more novels! Not that guest posts aren’t useful — they’re vital to networking, really, and I deeply appreciate people giving me space on their blogs! — but I felt like I poured far too much energy into writing long, detailed guest posts compared to the amount of return that I got on it. Most people don’t do blog tours as in-depth as my first one. I can see why.

This year was MUCH more efficient. I did nearly all of my guest posts in one day … okay, largely because of time constraints, but I don’t feel like they suffered terribly for it. Not every guest post has to be a lovingly detailed work of art. I included more excerpts, which are fast and easy, but probably just as good an enticement (if not more so) than the photos, videos and so forth that I was doing last time. I also had a more streamlined blog tour with fewer stops, but spread out over just as many weeks.

… that said, my sales on Held For Ransom are definitely down from where Homespun sales were at this point (if I remember correctly). So maybe the extra promo actually made a difference? Except we aren’t deep enough into either blog tour this close to the release date for it to make that much difference, I don’t think. It’s so hard to say because every story is its own creature. Homespun was a little more unusual and maybe therefore it found readers more easily in the early days. (But HFR is more conventional so I would expect it to do better? DIFFICULT.)

On a small point of squee, Held For Ransom has a review on Amazon already, and the reviewer liked it. :>