Virtual book tour transforming lives globally

Jennifer Richards Wilson, a Jamaican teacher living in China, is the conceptualiser of Activate Core’s Virtual Book Tour. The concept of the book tour emerged during the coronavirus pandemic, where authors who were unable to travel physically to promote and sell their books, took to the virtual spaces to share their work.

“I read about the concept of a book tour and decided to plan and execute my own tour. After publishing my second book, that was exactly what I did. I shared the idea with a few of my close friends and we launched our first virtual book tour in 2023 with 13 authors,” Richards Wilson said.

“It was an amazing experience listening to the stories that our authors had to share. Our tour began to transform lives on a global level, so we decided to make it an annual event,” she added.

Activate Core officially launched its annual virtual book tour on June 1 with 30 authors from different genres such as academic, romance, spiritual, inspirational, poetry, travel and adventure and children’s books. The authors are located in Jamaica, Australia, the United States, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, South Africa and China.

The theme for this year’s tour is ‘Sharing Stories To Impact our World’, with the objective of emphasising the power of story-telling as a medium for emotional, mental and social change.

Authors who applied to be on the tour had to meet certain criteria including having a copyrighted, published book. Their books have to be clean, no indecent language or scenes, no political affiliations or biases and no discrimination. In addition, the authors had to be available between June and August for pre-recorded or live interviews.

“The tour consists of networking with partners who had podcasts, weekly or monthly webinars, radio stations and e-magazines that would accommodate and host specific authors during specific periods. For example, the Higher Ground Gospel Radio Station in Canada partnered with us to host all our authors who had spiritual books, while the Global Love Podcast in China, chose those authors who had romance novels. Other partners selected a mixture of authors for their shows,” Richards Wilson said.

Schedules, she said, are created and meetings organised to either mentor or train authors on how to articulate their ideas and literary journeys. “The book tour includes podcasts, webinars and interviews showcased across geographical spaces sometimes simultaneously on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, WeChat, WhatsApp and other platforms,” she said.

“Family rooms with supporters, aspiring authors, partners and other stakeholders are created to facilitate easier communication among authors and other individuals. The tour will traverse several countries each week and we will publish these interviews on their social media platforms,” Richards Wilson added.

Activate Core’s Virtual Book tour can be viewed https://transformglobalservices.podia.com/blog/3c8aa91c-f9c1-4913-8ff9-8.... Persons can become a part of this tour by emailing activatecore7@gmail.com