BookTour.com to shut down

The web-based tools and service for authors wishing to promote their own books will close down Sept. 1. All author data will become unavailable. From tonight's email to authors:

Fewer author tours and changes in book marketing budgets have made our company financially unviable. And while we would like to continue providing the valuable service that is BookTour, everyone here has families to feed and bills to pay. As such, the founders are working on new and exciting ventures in publishing and software development.

We'd like to thank all the authors, publishers, venues and readers that have supported BookTour since its inception. In our absence, we recommend tools from Amazon Author Central, Google Calendar, Upcoming.org and Eventful.com as worthy replacements.

The company's chairman is Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of "The Long Tail" and "Free."