Hey, fellow authors who have virtual book tours coming up. On IRL tours, you come up with a set patter, right?

Virtual tours, the same audience can follow you. Prep for needing to have a different event at each "stop" on your tour.

Or maybe that's just me.

But I'm seeing the same names in the audience, so am trying to present different experiences every time.

It's less travel, but more mental overhead.

Also, publicists, in this new model, I think you can work with multiple bookstores to pool their audiences. Each one can appeal to their local crowd and sell books/tickets to them, but then the audiences all arrive at the same online location.

With that, the author can come up with, say, five different models and platforms for events: Reading, Conversation, Panel, Q&A, and Wildcard.

Each one appeals to a different audience type and each bookstore partner can pick the one that matches their in-home crowd best.

I think there's still room for exclusive, tailored events, but they should actually be tailored to an audience.

Besides good lighting and sound, what other lessons learned are other virtual booktour authors finding?