Do Blog Tours Live Up To the Hype?

Daughter Am I, my latest novel, will soon to be released by Second Wind Pubishing, so I have to start planning a blog tour if I’m going to do one. I hear so much about how great they are — mostly from the major publishers who don’t want to spend the money to send their authors on an unvirtual tour — that I wonder if blog tours do anything for an unknown author. I know the most popular book blogs do help get the word out, but if one can’t get a guest spot on those blogs, is it still worth doing a tour? And is there any real difference between doing a formal tour and doing guest spots on a few blogs?

In case I decide that a blog tour is worth all the work, would you be willing to be a host?

Daughter Am I is a young woman/old gangsters coming of age tale that is being sold as mainstream, though it could just as easily be classified as a mystery.

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents—grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born—she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead. Along the way she accumulates a crew of feisty octogenarians—former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. She meets and falls in love Tim Olson, whose grandfather shared a deadly secret with her great-grandfather. Now Mary and Tim need to stay one step ahead of the killer who is desperate to dig up that secret.