BookTour Blog

California, Here we Are!

BookTour.com is based in San Francisco, California, which we've mentioned way too many times has the largest amount per capita book and alcohol purchasing in the nation. And even though that statistic makes our little barbary coastal seem like a giant drunken book club, we're proud to hold the title. Sure is a lot sexier than "most fire hydrants per square block" or "most projectile pumpkins per resident" although that last one's pretty cool, too.

Yes, We love being in California, which its great weather, better food and governor who used to pose in a speedo. So we're thrilled to announce today that our event data will now be syndicated at CaliforniaAuthors.com, the thoughtful chronicler of all things literary and left coast. Just click "event search" in their main navigation and get sent here. Then search by zip code, mileage and time. Take your pick.

CA's Kate Cohen made the whole thing way too dang easy for her users. And for us. California Authors also features a directory of authors based in the Golden State, libraries of west coast bookstores and publishers and a nice little collection of excerpts from books by California authors. 

So use it if this sort of thing interests you. We're just happy to be there.

BookTour at AWP:

BookTour.com will have a booth (#526) this weekend at the Associated Writing Programs annual meeting, held this year in New York City. If you're in the neighborhood, please stop by and say hello.

We're Not Passe!

So hey, the Christian Science Monitor is asking if book tours are passe', siting new uses of the Internet and social media in book promotion. They were kind enough to mention us in these words from Chris.

"We're all authors, so we've seen the ugly side of book touring first-hand," says Mr. Anderson. "The reason we chose to start our company around the book tour itself, is we believe in face-to-face contact.... We believe in author tours. We just think they can be done a lot better."

Indeed.

Double Shotta Love...

Don't look now but BookTour.com was the recipient of not one, but two sunbursts of love this past weekend.

First up, the New York Times: Reporter Kara Jesella featured us in an article titled "The Author Will Take Q.’s Now" on the importance of online media in book touring. She included our sevice as an example of the new electronic offerings for authors and publicists. Arleady, we've been hearing from friends and well wishers around the globe. With the fall publishing season kicking in, we're hoping to see a new crop of publishers and their books up on the site.

Second, Adam and I were interviewed by the inimitable Dr. Moira Gunn on her show Tech Nation. Tech Nation has been around since the early days of the internet so we got to sit in the same chairs once occupied by giants like Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Yahoo's Jerry Yang and David Filo.

Let's hope some of the good juju rubbed off.

Click here if you're curious what Adam and I sound like. We come in about 3/4 of the way through on the little slidy thing.

Let the love reign, ya'll.

The Mash...

BookTour.com has been at the center of two Mashes (neither Monster nor Potato but who's counting?) these past weeks and we couldn't be happier.

First up, Mashable featured us on Aug 20th and had a few nice things to say about our Google Earth feature and several of our newer wingdings.

Three days later, we win Mashup of the Day.

Life is sweet. Like mashed candy.

BookTour at TOC:

Tomorrow (June 19th), all three members of the BookTour.com team (that's Chris, Adam and me, Kevin for those playing at home) will be at the O'Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) conference at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California. TOC is in its inaugural year and aims to help the publishing industry discover and take advantage of helpful changes in technology products and services. Like ours.

The schedule tomorrow has Chris speaking at 8:30 and 11:50 AM and Adam demoing BookTour during the "lighting demos" which begin at 7:30 PM. We'll be on hand the rest of the day to talk about BookTour, meet with and answer questions of anyone who like to know more about us and our service.

See ya in San Jose.