DIY Blog Tour: Research

Now that you know who your reader is, it's time to get down to business. The most important part of a blog tour is the blog. After all, you can't simply show up one day, bang on the door, and crash someone's blog. You'll need to do a little research to figure out which blogs to target.

The good news is there are tons of book blogs out there. The bad news is there are tons of book blog out there. What this means is that you have a lot of blogs to sort through to find the ones that are perfect for you, but you shouldn't have trouble finding enough. 

It's never too early to start this process. You can't just pick a blog from a list and expect it to be perfect. You need to visit it frequently, read through the archives, check out the style of the blogger. Yes, all of this takes time. In DIY marketing you pay in time instead of dollars. Even in the paid tours, no one is handpicking blogs for you. It's usually an open call for bloggers who want to participate in a blog tour based on genre. 

All this sorting is a pain in the rear now, but carefully selecting the right blogs will make a heap of difference to your tour.

I kid you not, the best place to hunt for bloggers is Google. Try it now. Pull up a Google search tab and type in "Book Review Blogs 'your genre'". You'll get back tons of search results every time, no matter what you write. It's the upside of the thousands and thousands of book bloggers out there. 

For those of you who are indie authors, I've heard rumors that there aren't enough bloggers who review self-published books. To you I say, "You aren't looking hard enough." A quick Google search for Indie Book Review Blogs pulled up over 42 million results. I'm pretty sure you can find something in there. I found this handy site which lists book reviewers by genre preferences who are open to indie books.


Start researching blogs and make a handy list in an excel spreadsheet. Include the blog name, URL, and the site owner's name if it's listed. I also suggest adding a link in your spreadsheet to the reviewers submission guidelines since you'll need those later. 

Don't try to weed down your list yet, unless you get to the site and realize it's not somewhere you want to splash your book. Otherwise, add it to the list and trim it down later.