In the City
Book Tours

WHY WE NEED TOUR COMPANIES THAT PAY 

I have been a Bookstagrammer for 3 years, and one of the most frustrating things about Bookstagram is it's severe lack of monetary respect of their influencers. The arrival of Booktok forced many more people to consider how their "hobby" that took up most of their time (and significant portions of their money) could be a lucrative option. Not only did it have that possibility, but influencers in every other section of Instagram were already making money from it.

I remember when I first realized this, from the lovely and amazing Monica from @house.of.esperanza on the DIY side of Instagram. She discussed the first time she ever got paid work on her account, and she was paid $500 for a post when she was half the size I was at the time, only a few thousand followers. This isn't exclusive to DIY, people all over Instagram were making hundreds of dollars from a single post with smaller followings and lower engagement rates than I had. The only difference was that their accounts focused on DIY, makeup, travel, gaming, or something else. It felt like pulling teeth to get some authors to even give me physical copies of a book, let alone monetary payment for my marketing. These same authors, however, were well acquainted with the costs of book tours, and were fully willing to pay for them, without knowing that money was kept entirely by the tour company and the influencers made nothing.

I knew it was going to be nearly impossible to convince authors to pay me the money other influencers received, because they aren't the big companies that can afford $500 a post. I did think however, that an emphasis could be put on the fact that the influencers deserve to be paid for their work, and that while sending emails and assets takes time and deserves compensation too, it's the influencers doing the real work. This is due, in part, to the long-held (and rightfully so) idea that paying for reviews is wrong. I could not agree more that the people who hire people simply to leave 5 star amazon reviews with no context of the book just to say "Loved this book 10/10" should not be allowed to do so. This is by no means at all what In the City Book Tours does, we ONLY market, no reviews are involved. However for some reason this idea of not paying reviewers bled into all facets of the book community, which taught authors that paying their readers, influencers, marketing professionals, editors, and cheerleaders at all was against some amazon guidelines, even though marketing is never tied to these rules. Many have said to me "But you think reading is fun right? So why should I have to pay? This is your hobby, you should be grateful you get a pdf." Authors put their blood sweat and tears into a book, and that's worth a lot, I know. But influencers put blood sweat and tears into their accounts and their followers, and that should be worth something too.

When paying these influencers, you aren't paying for a review. You're paying for marketing. You're paying for the hours and hours it takes to read your book. For the hours it takes to take the photo or video, to edit it, to write a thoughtful caption. For the years it took these people to grow accounts. To learn and relearn and relearn again the algorithms and the SEO of their platform. For the hours spent even after the post is already up engaging with those who comment. If having 10,000 followers and selling books were as easy as "just taking a picture", you wouldn't need someone else to help you do it.

The small payments that influencers will receive from these tours are likely very very far from their true worth. However, I thought I would start small, with prices that authors already expected, to teach slowly and expand, so that book influencers are not left behind. In hopes that someday, authors and publishers would be willing to pay more and more for the amazing work book influencers do. 

I understand that authors aren't companies, that large amounts of money aren't always in the budget, and that indie authors especially need more help than others. This is not to say that authors who find people willing to help them for free are bad people, but simply to say that those authors who can afford it, should compensate those who work hard to help them.  With many other tour companies, authors are already paying these rates, just not to those who truly deserve it.