R. Scot Johns - Author Guest Post

It is my great honor to welcome R. Scot Johns, author of The Saga of Beowulf, to Cafe of Dreams today! Thank you so much, Scot, for taking the time to visit and leave us with a wonderful guest post! Please be sure to pop back over on March 26th when I will again be hosting Mr. Johns and posting my review of his not so thin book!

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What the Heck is a Virtual Book Tour?

I started writing The Saga of Beowulf ten years ago. Back then I had these grand visions of going on a worldwide book tour when at last my debut novel rolled in thousands off the presses. There I would be, in Italy or France, surrounded by a mammoth stack of the masterpiece that I had worked so long and hard to pour my heart into, with lines of adoring fans waiting hours to get an autograph, or just to say hello.

I suppose that’s not an uncommon expectation for many first-time authors, and for most of us it will remain a dream forever unfulfilled. The long and hard part is true enough, but the lines of fans remain elusive.

Regardless of the quality of an author’s writing, or if it ever makes it into print, the completion of a debut novel is a mammoth undertaking, and I salute every writer who achieves that goal. Whatever happens afterwards, none can say the writer didn’t try. But the truth is that few among that class of authors who can claim the name of "novelist" will see their labors transferred into print, and fewer still will sell enough to justify a second book. This has as much to do with economics as it does with skill or craft.

The fact is that in this day and age of mass production it is prohibitively expensive to publish and market the vast majority of books, and a great many that are selected are doomed to meet an untimely and ignoble death in the remainder aisle and the recycled paper factory. There just isn’t enough money in the budget of the major trades to give each new title the promotion it deserves. On average, the top five percent of published titles receive ninety-five percent of the advertising budget in a given year. To send an author out to bookstores all around the world, or even in a single country, with travel costs and per diem, is strictly limited to those whose works are guaranteed to sell, and thus recoup what otherwise would be a major loss of needed revenue to print the books that just don’t sell.

Where does this leave the rest of us, the authors of genre works and quirky tales that fall outside the mainstream of commercial fiction, the niche subject specialist or independent writers telling stories of an esoteric bent? If we somehow do succeed in finding a small press to take us on, or even in convincing a major trade to throw a bone our way, it’s still left up to us to be the authors of not just our books, but of our careers and lives. We’re given a handful of promo copies and roll of posters if we’re lucky, and sent on our merry way. "Don’t come back until you’ve made a million!" they might say as we’re scooted through the door.

Short of filling up the trunk of your beat-up four-door and taking on the cost of touring from town to town on your own to peddle your wares like snake-oil salesmen, there is little in the way of promotional support for independents such as we. But this is where I have to say that it’s a wondrous thing to be living in the 21st century. Where the costs of almost everything – including book production – have risen to the point where only mass conglomerates seem capable of wielding the necessary monetary muscle, the internet has greatly leveled out the playing field with respect to marketing.

Marketing is simply a another word for networking, and networking – as all of you involved with social sites will know – is just another word for interacting. Marketing is really all about communicating with people, and who is better suited to communicate but writers and their readers? For we are people who already deal in words. And this is why the Virtual Book Tour was invented.

With so many book review websites and blogs – sites where fans can come together and share their love of stories from the comfort of their homes with people they might otherwise have never met – it seems only natural for authors to become involved. Instead of packing up the ol’ gas-hog and maxing out the credit card on cheap hotels and roadside diners, a writer can tour the virtual world just like their readers do, hopping from one great website to another, posting comments and sharing stories along the way.

This is a major boon to readers as well, who get a chance to interact with writers they might not have met before, in a way that standing in line for an autograph could never let them do. And it doesn’t cost you a dime.

To download free sample chapters of "The Saga of Beowulf" please visit

http://www.fantasycastlebooks.com/!

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A bit about R. Scot Johns:

R. Scot Johns is a life-long student of ancient and medieval literature, with an enduring fascination for Norse mythology and epic fantasy. He first came to Beowulf through his love of J. R. R. Tolkien, a leading scholar on the subject. As an Honors Medieval Literature major he has given lectures on such topics as the historical King Arthur and the construction of Stonehenge. He owns and operates http://www.fantasycastlebooks.com/ Adventures of an Independent Author, where you can follow his progress as he writes The Jester’s Quest, his second novel.

You can visit his website at http://www.fantasycastlebooks.com/

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A bit about The Saga of Beowulf:

The Saga of Beowulf is the first complete and accurate novelization of the epic Old English poem Beowulf, chronicling the tragic wars of the rising Nordic nations, the endless blood-feuds of their clans, battles with mythic creatures in an ancient heroic age, and the final, futile struggle of one man against the will of Fate that made of him a Legend.

The story follows the young Norse warrior Beowulf as he embarks upon a fateful quest for vengeance against the creature that slew his father, setting in motion a sequence of events that will bring about the downfall of a nation, all the while fleeing from the woman he has sworn to love. Based on extensive historical research and steeped in Nordic myth and lore, the saga unfolds across the frozen fields of Sweden and the fetid fens of Denmark, ranging from the rocky heights of Geatland to the sprawling battlefields of ancient France, as our hero battles men and demons in a quest to conquer his own fears.

"An epic adventure 1500 years in the making," this classic tale now comes to life once more in a bold new retelling for a modern audience.