Virtual Promo . . . where's the data?

Initially I thought I'd blog about the new Star Trek movie (summary: I saw it Friday, and it was GREAT!), but my attention was snagged by a comment on an e-list regarding blog book tours and their effectiveness. Personally, I'm planning to do one myself, but as a "data geek," I have to say I'd love to see some numbers on whether they "work" or not (numbers showing effectiveness of any marketing efforts on behalf of authors being hard to come by).

Eureka!

Head on over to Southern Review and check out item #17. It seems that Jack Kilborn (aka J.A. Konrath) planned a 100 blog tour for his new horror book, Afraid. He managed 96. (Quite an impressive feat, IMHO. And I begin to wonder: Does this man sleep? Eat? Prepare dinner or do the laundry? When does he write??) The article contains a little table showing selected dates on his virtual tour and his amazon.com numbers for that day (or maybe the next day, not sure which). In general, the numbers trend upwards, meaning his book rises in rankings. Of course, I start to wonder things such as: Which blogs on what days? Does day of the week make a difference, or the topic covered, or . . .

Okay. I could drive myself crazy thinking about this.

Still, it's very interesting.

Along this line, fellow mystery author Beth Groundwater is more than halfway through her 16-stop blog tour (she's doing 23 posts, but some of her stops are two-parters), and I know she's collecting data as she goes. I'll be very interested to find out what she has discovered!