Blog Tours from A-Z - Images & Information

Remember the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words? I believe in it. Writers know that book covers are a powerful marketing tool. They work even better in combination with other promotional material put together to market your book.

If you’re hiring your tour out, your organizer will produce a nice badge with the name of your book, the tour name and dates, along with other key information. If you’re trodding the DIY path, you’ll have the freedom to create your own material.

I’m not an expert on graphics by any stretch of the imagination, but I know what I like and I also know what information I want to capture on a banner or badge. I tend to think of a badge as an infographic. According to Wikepedia, an infographic or information graphic is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Infographic re Christine's Odyssey

That said, there’s so much and no more that can be contained on a badge, so it pays to know how to edit to bare bones and being a ‘squeeze artist’ helps immensely.

Use high-quality images, including that of your book cover to ensure attractive results. I’ve learned through trial and error that JPEG images become degraded each time they are passed from one source to another. Say I copy an image of your book cover from your site and someone else copies it from my blog and so on, the image becomes less well-defined with each save. Ever notice how some book covers look fuzzy when included in a blog post? That's why. Since learning that lesson, I try as best as possible to use original images in whatever I’m trying to create.

Use your imagination to come up with additional banners or badges which can be used on a specific page where you’ve compiled information on the tour. (See masthead at the top of this page. Books are all from one series) You don’t want to create confusion, but if you’re promoting books in pairs as I did for my recent book launch, you can create images such as the one below. These are simple to do in programmes such as  Canva, FotoFlexer, iPiccy, Phixr and Photobucket. My favourite of these is Canva, which I now use for most things because it is easy to use with a variety of templates, the fonts are great and so are the results. I choose a background image I like, crop it, position the pictures, add the words and fiddle with the badge until I’m satisfied with the results. 

Once all your visual material is good to go, you will send these along with posts to your hosts. It's fun and easy to create badges, so if you like working with graphics this will be right up your street.

 

In a Nutshell

• Create an attractive badge with key information.
• Make information concise.
• Use high quality images.
• Use your imagination to create additional badges.