To Pay or Not to Pay For a Blog Book Tour

Would you pay good money for a blog book tour?

If you don't mind spending time to research popular blogs to make sure they get enough hits and are the right ones to promote your book, you don't mind contacting their owners and asking if they'll host you, you don't mind doing all the advertising yourself, have a very tight budget, then maybe a do-it-yourself blog tour is for you.

Then again, if you don't have the time or the patience to do the research, don't like making direct contact with hosts, don't believe your own advertising is enough, have enough money saved up for such a promotion, then maybe you'd prefer to leave it in the hands of a professional.

Either way you choose, you'll have lots of work ahead of you getting topics and blogs ready beforehand. During the tour, to make the most of your opportunity, you should be commenting on your hosts' blogs to establish your presence, plus tweeting and sending emails to Facebook and your egroups, and other spots.

With my recently completed Killer Career Blog Book Tour, I practiced a hands-on approach, but I had a great advantage. I not only belonged to the blogbooktour egroup run by Dani Greer, but also the pumpupyourblog egroup, run by Dorothy Thompson - The first being an immensely informative hands-on, do-it-yourself group, the other a group comprised mainly of hosts and guests of Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours. I've made wonderful friends in each group, love them both, and respect their methods. Although I didn't pay for my own tour and arranged it all myself, many times I've served as a host for Dorothy's tours and enjoy doing so.

What about you? Do you prefer to pay for a blog book tour and leave the driving to people like Dorothy at http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/? Or are you a do-it-yourselfer?

What are your reasons? Please share with us.