A book is a golden opportunity to establish your voice and expertise in a given field, and to otherwise strengthen your platform and raise your profile. Through organizing a strategic book tour, you can use your book to secure speaking engagements at prestigious venues, to collaborate with VIPs in your field, and to generate media coverage. Here's how:
Choose venues that cater to your audience.
While book stores are relatively easy places to set up speaking engagements during a book tour, they are not the most strategically desirable ones. Media does not get excited about yet another author appearing at yet another book store. So instead, reach out to local venues that are related to your book topic. For example, if you are publishing a book about the health benefits of juicing, contact juice bars, vegan restaurants, and natural foods markets; hospitals, medical centers, and patient advocacy organizations; and athletic clubs, yoga studios, and community centers. In the pitch designed for each specific type of venue, be sure to spell out how your book is applicable to that venue's audience.
Collaborate with local VIPs.
Research and reach out to local experts, and invite them to co-present with you. Let's say you wrote this book on juicing, because juicing healed you from a certain health condition. So reach out to an integrative medicine doctor, who can authoritatively speak about the power of juicing to reverse that health condition. Then you've become a power duo with far more impact than you could have alone. You offer the compelling personal story of transformation, and the doctor offers the credentialed stamp of approval that, yes, juicing really works. Among other benefits, getting that doctor on board will make it easier to access health-related venues, and media will value that an "expert" is involved.
Connect your book to a national event.
Let's say that juicing helped you heal from heart disease. What better time to launch your book tour than in February, which is Heart Health Month? Look for national observances to tie in with the theme of your book. Also seek out the latest and most reputable scientific studies, to tie in with your book -- for example, a study in a peer-reviewed medical journal, proving the benefits of juicing for heart health. By piling on the time/news hooks, you give media ample reasons to feature your work -- a new book, a local venue, involvement of a local expert, a national holiday, and/or a new scientific study.
By taking these steps, you can turn a book tour into a series of community events that will help you establish relationships with VIPs, speak at prestigious venues, and get into the media. Remember that you can leverage each accomplishment to go the next level up, in an ongoing positive snowball effect.