What is OST?

Other Shelf Tours is a book tour site created by myself and two other amazing bloggers (Casey and Kim). Our goal is to spread the word about new and existing authors in the hopes of getting more publicity/exposure for authors and their books. This allows for a book to reach a larger amount of bloggers without an excessive amount of copies/ARCs being used.

How A Tour Works:
If an author/publisher is interested in having a tour, they will fill our Author Contact form or email us so that we can discuss starting a tour. A general tour will include one copy which will be sent from participant to participant, at the participant's expense. If the author/publisher is able, they may provide additional copies for the participants or for giveaways. Giveaways will either be featured on Other Shelf Tours or on an individual blogger's site.

Any blogger interested in participating in a tour should leave a comment within a tour posting, and have filled our Blogger Sign-Up form. Order of the tour will be determined by order of reply. Tours are currently open to US residents, unless the author/publisher is willing to send you a copy or you are able to obtain your own.

Prior to the tour beginning, the posting will be updated with all participants names, and everyone will have 48 hours to contact me in order to make any changes. After 48 hours, the participant list will be finalized and the tour will be begin. Please note that you are allowed to back out of a tour only if it is a valid reason such as obtaining the book elsewhere. In this instance, we hope that you will start participate in providing a review. Please be aware that continuously backing out of tours or not posting reviews is subject to probation from tours, and possibly being asked to leave OST.

A tour will begin either at an agreed upon start date or once the book has been sent to the first person on the tour list. There is no set time limit in which bloggers must have the book read; however, they are expected to have it read and reviewed in a timely manner. Once you are finished with the book, please contact us at othershelftours@gmail.com to receive the next participant's mailing address. We will then send an email to this blogger letting them know the book will be shipping soon. If they are no longer interested in this tour, then they will have 24 hours to reply letting us know of their change of plans. At the end of the tour, the tour book will be used as a giveaway for tour participants.

**Please note that by implementing this process, we are ensuring that the books are sent in the correct order, that we are aware of where the book is, and that blogger privacy is respected as much as possible. Your address will not be used for any other purpose. **

We Are Currently Looking For:
Books of all types. Please note that many of the bloggers are YA focused. However, we are open to accepting all titles. Some of our favorite genres include: paranormal, chick-lit, historical fiction, romance, fantasy, and literary fiction. If we are not sure if a book will suit Other Shelf Tours, then we will contact our members to see if any one is interested in hosting a tour. If more than 5 are interested, we will post a sign-up sheet. If not, then with blogger permission, we will send you their email address you may discuss the blogger reviewing your book. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at othershelftours@gmail.com.

We are currently not accepting books that are only in eBook format since not all participants are able to utilize this format.

For Authors/Publishers:
If you’re interested in us hosting a tour for you, fill out the Author Contact Form. Please note that this is a free service. We are here to help you spread the word about your novel.

Please note that due to the time it may take to reach each participant, if you are wanting many of the reviewers to be posted before the book's release date, the tour should begin a few months prior to the release date to ensure this is possible. Please also note that it may not be possible to get the book to all participants before its release date.

If you are interested in taking part in any interviews, guest blogs, contests, etc. please include this information with the form or contact me at othershelftours(at)gmail(dot)som, so that the pertinent information is included within the tour posting. It will then be up to the individual blogger and yourself to set up any additional details.

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If you are interested in being apart of OST or would like more information, please check out our blog at http://othershelftours.blogspot.com

This sounds great

I am not from the US and don't think I can provide my own copy for tours (since they are newly released books in the US it would probably take ages 'til they reach my part of the world). However I love the idea of book tours so I just had to ask this question: do you ever tour e-books (or at least have e-book copies of the books you tour)?

Either way, I wish you lots of luck with the site!

To be honest, I have not really given much thought to using e-books. I know that it would be a great way to include internationally bloggers. If you would be willing to help us get some e-books or e-ARC, I would be more than happy to start those kinds of tours. I do have a publishing company contact that uses a lot of e-books, so I may contact her to see if she willing to allow us to use those books. Let me know what you think.

I think we could always give it a try to see how (and whether) it works.

Just think about how much easier it would be to have a e-copy of a book to send around instead of a paper one. At least it would cut down on shipping time and costs. And we also help save the environment, what with the carbon print of postal shipping and so on

I am a wee bit worried about the quality of the books though (I have had some great e-books for review but also some incredibly bad ones); but I guess that's a risk with paper books too.

I definitely agree. There are so many perks for it. Check here to see if there are any books you would like to review:

www.bellebooks.com
www.bellbridgebooks.com

I know they have a lot of e-books that we could use. I would just need to email my contact to see if she will let me distribute them for tours. I do not think it would be a problem.

The Cart Before the Corpse may be interesting

Do you have any recommendations?

Kaysbookshelf wrote:Do you have any recommendations?

I got these from there:

Alice at Heart by Deborah Smith (ISBN: 0967303524)

Moonstone by Marilee Brothers (ISBN: 9780980245349)

And were they any good?

I just got them. But I have heard good reviews for Moonstone.

I'll be looking forward to your reviews then