The Virtual Book Tour with Ali Luke

Book tours can get expensive, with booking venues and all the driving. Add that to the time away if you have family or a day job and it can really be a problem. 

When I saw that Ali Luke was taking her book, Lycopolis on a virtual blog tour, I thought it sounded like a great idea. It's the best of both worlds: you get people interested in reading your book and visiting your own blog, plus you can do it all from your own home.

I've been wanting to try a video interview for a while now, so I asked Ali if she'd be game, and luckily for me she agreed. Imagine getting to chat with a writer in the UK in real time-what a treat! 

If you haven't heard about Ali, she has a fantastic blog and also frequently posts on some of the top blogs in the writing industry like Problogger, Copyblogger and Write to Done.

In the interview we talk about:

• Her book Lycopolis and writing what you know. She has a background in the roleplaying community and it inspired her to write the story of a group on online roleplayers.

• The virtual book tour she's done throughout April and May and the benefits of touring from your home by writing guest posts and doing interviews for other bloggers.

• Although this is her first published novel, she also has published a few short stories and a fantastic set of ebook guides specifically for bloggers. She's also working on the upcoming Publishing Ebooks for Dummies, which I am looking forward to.

• Some tips on coming up with new ideas for blog posts. With the constantly changing publishing industry, she always has a long list of ideas for blog posts such as ebooks and the digital publishing world. If you haven't already, I recommend visiting her blog for excellent tips on the writing craft.

• The many publishing options available for the independent author. Ali has Lycopolis on Amazon, and also Smashwords which distributes it to other vendors (Barnes & Noble, Kobo etc.) She also used CreateSpace for the Print on Demand version. Since she's in the UK, the shipping rates for UK customers were too high, so for those readers it's also available from Lulu.

You can find Ali at her blog, Aliventures or on Twitter.