Working With Book Tour Companies: What If Someone Doesn’t Post?

In the last posts in this series, we talked about how to choose a book tour company to set up your tour, how to get in touch with them, what to prepare and what to do during a tour. Today we’re going to talk about what to do if someone ends up not posting on the designated date.

1)      Time diference

First thing to do is take a deep breath. Keep in mind that bloggers are from all over the world, and sometimes there are time differences. Don’t freak out if first thing in the morning that you do is take a look at the website and nothing is up. Chances are high it’ll be up in an hour or two. But if it’s not up by the evening, then shoot the tour organizer an email and wait for a response.

Tour organizers will probably contact the tour host in question about the missing post. You have to keep in mind that, no matter how hard they try, tour organizers can’t force anyone to post on a given date. If things come up, or the blogger decide to stop blogging all of the sudden, then they’re pretty much helpless to do something against it.

2)      The tour organizer doesn’t respond

Wait to the next post, and see if it goes live on the designated date. If it does, send out another friendly reminder email about the last post that didn’t go up, and ask if they heard something from the author yet. If the next post doesn’t go live either, that’s a sign to start getting worried.

Don’t panic just yet, and wait for a response. If the tour organizer responds, chances are high that they’ll either continue to try and get in touch with the tour host, most times to no avail, or if you’re lucky, they’ll try to find another blogger to host your tour. If they decide on the latter, thank them for the extra trouble.

3)      Contact the tour host yourself

If you think the tour organizer is unusually silent, or as a last resort, you can try contacting the tour host yourself. This may be helpful, since you’ll be contacting them personally and they may be more inclined to post anyway. Also, maybe the not posting could have something to do with the tour organizer, who didn’t contact them when they should’ve, or who didn’t confirm their tour date, etc.

4)      When to ask for your money back

Don’t go asking for your money back when only one or two people end up not posting. Especially if it’s a larger tour. Take in mind the tour posts you did get. If the tour packages said 16-20 tour stops, for example, and with the non-posters out of the equation, you still have 16 tour stops, you’re in no position to ask your money back either.

When can you start to talk about getting your money back? When nobody posts, or nearly nobody. If you scheduled a 20 stop tour, and only 3 people end up posting, for example. However, there’s no guarantee you’ll get your money back. Most tour companies have policies in place that say they’re not to be held responsible if someone ends up not posting, and that the money charged is for setting up the tour. Take this into account before you schedule the tour: if they have a good track record, you probably won’t get screwed over like this.

Even if their policy says they don’t offer money back, if more than half of the tour hosts end up not posting, you can try to ask PayPal for the money back. It’s always worth a try to open a PayPal dispute. Even if it doesn’t help you, it may give them a scare so they don’t do this with other people.

In our next post we’re going to talk about the aftermath of a book tour and what you can do to make it as worthwhile as possible for everyone.