Since publishers hate paying for hotel accommodations and many authors are too neurotic to wait in security lines these days, 2010 just might be the year of the virtual book tour. Instead of actually meeting people face to face, authors interact with readers via the feisty proxy that is the Internet, appearing on a number of sites over the course of several weeks as a guest blogger, reviewer or interview subject. No exception around these parts.

See, the first virtual book tour for The Last Track ended on July 31. I can see doing another one. Or more precisely, I bet I do another one. But first things first.

With a long weekend to reflect on the journey, a few rules of virtual touring actually wrote themselves–though usually the day after I needed them. Lessons for the next tour, I suppose.

Towards that end, here’s some tidbits that can help with future virtual tours. Or call it what I wished I knew about touring beforehand. First a little background about who hosts these tour stops.

There is an ever growing network of really dedicated book review sites emerging across the Internet. While the caliber of the reviews varies from site to site, as does the writing, generally readers become online reviewers because they love books. They read lots of books by choice, and enjoy writing about the ones they like. And these online reviewers operate at the cusp of an emerging trend in publishing, whereby readers learn about new authors not from a press release from the same six publishing houses or public relations firm, but from fellow readers. Power readers as it were, and many of them are authors by avocation as well. In years to come, publishers will court the most important of these sites like they do the brick and mortar review services.

Their growing influence being noted, you never really know who is reading a review site until the comments appear for your book entry. Therefore, it pays to revisit tour stops one, two, four and seven days after the entry first appears. The source and intent of the comments that appear after the fact can be surprising.

Second, have a very brief author bio handy. By brief bio, I mean between five to eight sentences. Frankly I think that’s a good length for author bios, brief and long version alike, but that’s just me. Like the internet in general, if people have to scroll to the end, they generally will not. Needless to say a very streamlined version of my bio developed for the virtual tour will appear in the FAQs soon. No scrolling necessary. I swear.

Last, once the virtual tour starts, be ready for anything. Like your phone dropping a call right as a live podcast begins. Or your cat getting a urinary tract infection. Or maybe even the day after the tour wraps, your site ( which worked without any mishap for seven years ) gets hacked.

Just saying. It could happen.