Guest Post by Mary Martinez

Thank you, Jean, for inviting me to be a guest on your blog today. I’m having a wonderful time on the Mystery We Write Blog Tour. I’m meeting a lot of new people.

What do you think a blog tour is? Would it be marketing and promoting? Do you know the difference? Actually, the good old Webster’s dictionary had this to say:

Promotion: 1. The act or an instance of promoting; specif., a) advancement in rank, grade, or position b) furtherance of an enterprise, cause, etc.—

Marketing 1. The act of buying or selling in a market. 2 all business activity involved in the moving of goods from producer to the consumer, including selling, advertising, packaging, etc.

Advancement in position and moving the goods in my opinion are basically the same. Your books is your product. You want it to advance up the charts and to do that you need to move the goods from yourself, web site, publishers web site, etc. to the consumer or reader.

In other words you need to do both to have people buy your book. My plan is this, offer an attractive product that makes the consumer feel like the need to have it.  Need is much stronger than want, if you can put want on the back burner, but if you need something, it’s now.

Cover art is very important. The next is your blurb, it needs to hook and real in the customer. This would be the packaging—so the marketing portion. Something else that could be considered marketing would be a book signing, and your display to draw people to your table would be your packaging.

My next plan would be promotion, which means get my appealing packaged product out for the world to see with information where to buy.  

There isn’t much difference between the two, both are important. Without one, it’s hard to do the other. Give me your thoughts on my original question about what would a blog tour be, marketing or promotion.

Everyone who gives me their opinion and their contact information in a comment today will be placed in a drawing for a signed copy of Romance and Misconceptions.My newest release is Classic Murder: Mr. Romance

Blurb, excerpt and trailer: http://www.marymartinez.com/mrromance.html

ISBN: 978-1610343350

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1610343352/bookstrand-20

Barnes & Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Classic-Murder/Mary-Martinez/e/9781610343350/

Web Site: www.marymartinez.com

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