How Both Readers and Writers Can Support Books

                                                                                                        

Here’s How to Keep  Bookstores and Books Alive

 

 

Here’s LA’s “New” Way Anyone Can Support Books

 

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, writer of fiction, poetry, and

the HowToDoItFrugally Series of How-To Books for Writers 

 

This article comes to you along with a thanks to the LA Times for a wonderful article titled “Bookworms, this one is for you” that appeared at a time when there is so much bad news surrounding the publishing industry, journalism, and retailing in general. The article was about an “inaugural LA Book Crawl.” 

Let’s pay attention to that word, inaugural. I mean, really? We who live in Los Angeles  had to wait until 2026 for one of these fun ways to support books, publishing, and readers and for a book-friendly newspaper to cover it and pass along how it’s something any organization—indeed anyone—can do to help keep beloved bookstores and real paper books alive.

 

Yes, readers and writers alike! We need everyone and there is a way for anyone to borrow “Los Angeles’ new/old idea” of live bookcrawls.

 

Yep, we (again, anyone) can coordinate a book crawl and persuade  bookstores to support our effort with something that is sure to introduce them to new customers, up their profit for the day and beyond, and, in the long run, make a difference in our community. Further they could be tailored to special interests of the reading and writing crowd…everything from specific genres to the kinds of bookstores like little free libraries sprouting up in communities throughout the country, stores that sell used books, to stores that specialize in children’s literature. And you can use the above point to convince retailers (bookstores?) to participate!

 

As long as we’re at it, let’s expand our efforts to support our city and college libraries. A “crawl” can include all library venues or all bookstore retailer venues or a combination of bookstores no matter what their specialty. You might come up with other categories to make you crawl a hit! Let’s volunteer! Here are some starter ideas:

§  LA’s bookcrawl included only retail bookstores but it was even more narrowly focused than that! It specialized in indie bookstores. And it helped make a point: LA is not lacking in erudite efforts beyond Hollywood. And they managed to do that looking squarely at the temporary closure of West Hollywood’s iconic Book Soup. And they used a successful crawl in San Diego (and sought advice from its planners) which has been celebrating book in this way for nine years now! 

§  Their crawl included a “passport system;” it’s kin to loyalty programs where attendees got to include getting a stamp on the crawl passport for every $10 they spent on books. Those stamps were good for prizes featured at participating bookshops like merchandise from their gift departments or even  audio books!  (That’s a grand opportunity for a writer to be featured at celebrations like this along with the address of their websites  like the one for this inaugural, LAIndieBookcrawl.com.) Jump on the volunteer bandwagon to get other ideas for your book cover image and link to be featured on all the promotional materials!

§  The owners of passports were entered in a raffle for a $325.00 gift card.

§  Extend your crawl to the length of time needed to accommodate exposure to widespread bookstores in large cities or even more rural regions.

§  Expand your crawl to a variety of activities to emphasize that bookstores are community jewels where people in all walks of life can be comfortable together sharing their own books as well as their favorites.

§  What about the aforementioned library crawl? Sure, why not, but there are other ways to support them Including. 

a.     Offer to read to children one afternoon a week or during summer vacation—and then make sure the library does their job by marketing it. They probably distribute a newsletter for their own library fans—paper or e-mail—anyway. Making a fuss over a crawl or a volunteer event will not be taxing for them!  Ditto for fliers they distribute at their checkout desk for those who borrow books often. Both are usually free and the librarian-editor in charge of these things needs fresh news frequently. 

b.     If you have a creative urge, offer to do a display of books for them—using a title or titles you  authored or any favorite you love recommending to the world. 

c.      If they have a display window, offer do it up with holiday themed books and decorations that you bring and set up for them; let your hometown newspaper know about that, too. 

d.     Authors can offer to spearhead a critique group for blossoming authors in the community. They work especially well in branches to keep travel time at a minimum for writers  trying to carve out time to write. Do remember to urge the library to promote its existence.

e.     Suggest a tour of the library for members of an organization you belong, too.

f.      Suggest a panel of authors who can speak to an important subject like tolerance to your library’s events director. How could she/he resist! That list of three to five names will have done their work for them! It sure didn’t take any wheedling when I tested this idea for Glendale, CA. ‘s central Library. 

     WritersontheMove’s readers will want to  put the new bookstore contacts they make in an Excel file to use for book signings for the release of their own new releases or other promotions they are doing. Remember to mention that you have a list of xxx former visitors to your events and that combining your list with theirs can easily raise their usual day’s sales figures by 10% (and be prepared to mention a few you’ve done or give them the contact information they can use for recommendations—you know, sorta like people do with résumés. ) 

      Here is a bonus list of the Los Angeles indie bookstores who participated in its inaugural bookcrawl:

Richard Turner, owner of Diesel, Brentwood, CA. who organized the event with these indies in LA and surrounding suburb cities:

     Chevalier’s in Larchmont, an LA neighborhood.

Vroman’s in Pasadena, CA,

Once Upon a Time, Montrose, CAChildren’s Book World, Cheviot Hills, CA

Ripped Bodice (specializing in  romance books), Culver City, CA

Malik Books, Culver City, CA

Book Jewel, LA’s Westchester neighborhood,  and Manhattan Beach, CA

And keep your fingers crossed that Book Soup will be back in Hollywood soon! 

Triptych courtesy Amazon.com for their newly introduced

page exclusively for KDP-published series.

 

More About Your #WritersontheMove Contributor: 

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is now the author of a Modern History Press Series that began in 2004 with The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't. It’s now published in its 3^rd edition as a hardcover, paperback, and an e-book! One of the books in that series is even available as an Audio! Find them on Carolyn’s series page on Amazon’s new benefit created for series only at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTXQL27T. That Amazon feature is one of #TheFrugalBookPromoterTips she shares with writers so if (when?) they write a series, they’ll be aware that benefit is waiting for them to install at no cost  through AmazonCentral.com 

 

Carolyn has used most of the ideas featured in today’s column to promote her #HowToDoItFrugally Series as well as her fiction and poetry. Contrary to hearsay, many libraries have events directors who welcome help, ideas, and are grateful for community involvement. Ditto for bookstores.

 

Special thanks to Julius Miller who covered this story in my 2^nd Favorite newspaper of all time! The first is The Salt Lake Tribune, a Pulitzer Prize-Winning newspaper where a very special editor, Mary Chachas, helped me hone my own journalism skills in my first professional writing job.

 

The Story Behind My “The more you. Know…” Motto

Making Publishing Decisions the Frugal Way

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, novelist, poet, and
author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

 

The internet spreads a cruel notion among new authors. They are led to believe the well-respected publisher they are “sure” to acquire employs a magical entity who will apply literary voodoo to their manuscript and come up with the perfect book they dream of. The truth is authors might achieve that dream better by publishing their book themselves like Faulkner or Hemingway did or hire someone (or many someones) to achieve that goal. To carry that idea a little further, they might have to do much of what they think they’ll avoid with traditional publishers anyway. The stories we hear about the does, don’ts, and what ifs are often fairy tales borrowed from the centuries before this new millennium.

A more practical way to make publishing choices is to make a list weighing the suitability of the title of your WIP (Word in Progress), the author’s preferences, personality, and pocketbook and then break each of those categories into as many as an author can determine are applicable to their project. The graph you build will not make the decision for you—the idea that it’s always your choice is usually a bit of a fairytale, too. But it will give you a more realistic expectation for your WIP as well gaps in learning you still need to do. That process is never ending. 

 

Your list would look something like this. 

1.The title. 
    a. Some genres—even some writing styles—are simply

more difficult to get into print; that range of difficulty can

vary with the different aspects of publishing process from

covers to formatting, to interior design, to developing 

index that librarians expect in nonfiction books.

b. Some titles depend on publication within a current

timeframe that cannot wait for the traditional search for an

agent or publisher. Once a contract with a publisher is

signed, it can easily take a year to get a book to library and

bookstore shelves.

2. The author’s personality. 

a. How honest can the author be about their own strengths 

and weaknesses.

b. How willing is an author to learn what it takes to partner

with publishers or those they must hire.
3. The author’s preferences.

a. How flexible can the author be when they meet unexpected exigencies.

b. Can the author welcome input/demands regarding their creative work, or—minimally—be willing to ask or negotiate with a publisher’s team or those they must hire.

c. Some authors go in search of an agent before they are aware that most take about 15% of the royalty a publisher allots to what they think will be the author’s “share.”

4. The author’s pocketbook.

a. In any publishing scenario, there will be unexpected expenses—sometimes insurmountable. The most disappointing is ending up with a publisher who isn’t a true publisher, that is, it doesn’t cover important needs like marketing or charges hefty fees for what the author could better do themselves.

5. Time Considerations. That would be for the tune the author needs to invest to learn more about the different aspects or the process they believe is right for their situation as well how quickly the book must be available to the public to accommodate current or coming news cycles.

a. This list is long on possibilities and includes most

everything from marketing and PR skills like speaking,

making videos, etc. to the basics of writing a successful

query letter.

b. Most experts strongly suggest that the book cover not be

one of those you hope to do yourself, even if the author is

an artist. Book covers require a graphic artist with

marketing knowledge, knowledge of printing in color and

the delicate mathematics needed to make the cover fit

many elements of a book from book dimension to weight

of the paper to width of the spine.

 

You can see that both the success and joy of your publishing journey will depend on what you know. I borrowed the phrase “The more you know…” from the hours of TV I spent watching MSNBC on a cruise when their own ad campaign took place of paid ads to meet cruise system parameters. It started to make more sense when I finally turned my computer on to tackle the self-editing project I had planned for sea days. I had already spent a few years trying to sift through rumors at expensive writer’s conferences and critique groups populated by others as new to the publishing industry as I was. I could feel the truth to that MSNBC adage through to my bones.

 

The two best ways for authors to learn is to eschew how-to books written for everyone. To learn what I needed to know to avoid the publishing potholes I had been falling in. I now tell my clients to take specific classes in writing and other aspects of publishing at accredited universities which is also expensive, but their instructors and information are usually carefully vetted. I also tell them to read books—even used paperbacks from Amazon—written by those same instructors or experts—people with lots of experience learning the stuff our traditional industry expects of us! Eventually I became one of those instructors myself (at UCLA) and started to write texts for my classes and for everyone else including the emerging do-it-yourselfers. You know, not for everybody but books precisely for the needs of publishing authors.

 

Here is a list of those books and there are more recommendations in the appendixes of each one: 

 

The Frugal Book Promoter, The Frugal Editor, The Great First-Impression Book Proposal, Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers from Modern History Press as well as

How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically that was self-published and will soon be available in a second edition from Modern History Press. Hurry! Amazon was showing a 46% discount on the Book Proposal paperback! 

MORE ABOUT TODAY’S COLUMNIST

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor which won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethicallylaunched to rave reviews from Jim Cox, Editor-in-Chief of Midwest Book Reviews and others: 

 

“How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically [and other books in the series] could well serve as a textbook for a college Writing/Publishing curriculum.”

 

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts. 

                  

The author loves to travel. She has visited nearly 100 countries and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University, Prague. She admits to carrying a pen and journal wherever she goes. Learn more about her books for writers and her creative work in the media room on her website.