Guest Blogger: Stacey Cochran on Digital Touring

Kicking of my own return to regular blogging, I’ve got a guest “traveler” and fellow technophile.

Amazon Kindle link: http://www.amazon.com/CLAWS-ebook/dp/B0024NL6QS/

Thanks so much, Shelley, for hosting me today as a guest blogger. As you know, I am currently on a 45-Day blog tour to help promote the release of my new novel CLAWS. Truth is I’m coming down to my last couple of weeks of the tour, and so I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect a bit on what I’ve learned. Specifically, I’d like to talk about how technology has affected me as an author on this tour.

First the good news; over the past 4-5 weeks, I’ve sold around 2,300 copies of my books. 97% of these sales have been coming on Amazon Kindle; the other 3% in trade paperback. This is the first time I’ve ever released novels on Amazon Kindle, and this has been the biggest breakthrough of my fiction-writing career.

The blog tour has certainly helped to concentrate my efforts and energy, and the momentum has been great. As I’m writing this guest blog post late Friday evening, I’ve done three interviews today alone.

The way these interviews were done is worth examining. My first interview today was a text interview that I did with an author by sending her questions about her book in a Word file. Once she wrote her answers, she sent the Word file back to me as an e-mail attachment. I posted the answers and questions on my new website onlinebookreview.org

The second interview was a Skype video call interview that I recorded using Call Recorder on a MacBook Pro. I spoke with an author via video call who lives in another part of the country, and I saved it as an .mov file and uploaded it to YouTube. From YouTube anyone in the world can watch this video interview; it’s really amazing!

The third interview I did this evening was on Blog Talk Radio and it involved my calling in via telephone to a buddy’s talk show for one hour. The conversation was recorded digitally via Blog Talk Radio and streamed Live via the internet. Additionally, the conversation was saved and is available permanently for listeners via Blog Talk Radio.

Three very different kinds of interviews and three very different kinds of technology driving them.

The point of all this, I suppose, is that today’s author can do a “book tour” without ever leaving his/her home. Technology is in place in 2009 to enable “habitation” of virtual space. It makes me think of N. Katherine Hayles come to think of it.

So how do I feel after doing these interviews all in one day?

I’m tired. My back aches. My brain feels like it’s worked through 45 crossword puzzles. Not unlike how an author feels when having to drive from strange city to strange city to find bookstores while on tour.

And while I’ve been writing up this guest blog… I’ve sold four more copies of my books according to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform.

Truly, our Brave New World has arrived.

Thanks so much, Shelley, for hosting me today. You were one of the earliest readers of CLAWS way back in 2004 when it was in its rough draft state, and it wouldn’t be half the novel it is today had your wisdom, grace, and good humor not informed its pages.

Thanks so much! And thanks everyone for reading!

June 20 2009 | Posted in Guest Bloggers