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Showing posts with label How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Show all posts
Friday, January 5, 2018
Help for Second Edition Blues
I sometimes run Q and A a la Ann Landers columns in my SharingwithWriters newsletter using questions that my clients ask me or that subscribers send to me. This is one of my favorites because involves two subjects that seem to interest authors most--Amazon sales and getting reviews.
QUESTION:
Do you lose your Amazon reviews when you publish a second edition of your book?
ANSWER:
You can get Amazon to post reviews from the first edition to the second through Author Connect. And you can get Amazon to put a referral widget from the first edition to the second. They tend to move this widget around, but it's always been near the top of the first edition buy page (though not as prominent as I'd like to see it!).
Please note: Amazon will not remove the first edition from their site.
But please don't buy the first edition! The second edition is expanded by at least 100 pages, updated, and, if I do say so, lots prettier! (-:
Do know that when Amazon does this they transfer all of the reviews from old edition to New; you can't pick and choose. So if something in the first edition has been criticized and you fixed it in the second edition, they won’t discard that earlier review. A recourse is to use the comment feature that is found at the end of each review to dispute the claim—maybe with a thank you to the reviewer for helping you correct that in the second edition. There are some other ways to help fix Review problems in the newest of the #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.
Just an extra here: If you just update your old edition rather than publish a new one, you may be losing more marketing opportunities than you ever dreamed of. Of course, a second edition should have something new about the cover like the words second edition or a whole new cover and at least 10% new content.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free
publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The multi award-winning second edition of The Frugal Editor; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews free. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . And, be sure to sign up for SharingwithWriters newsletter.
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
How to Handle Book Bigotry
An excerpt from Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and
Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a
writing career.
I
thought I would share an excerpt from the newest book in my multi award-winning
HowToDoItFrugally Series of books titled How
to Get Great Reviews Frugally and Ethically
with Writers-on-the-Move readers. It was launched in a special BookBaby.com
promotion and it is estimated that it was read by at least 20,000 authors,
which makes me practically ecstatic that I can help that many in the its first
months as an e-book. It is now available as a paperback,
too.
I
believe—know—that attitudes toward self- and indie-publishers have become more
accepted over the decades.
When my first novel was published, any book published by anything other than
university presses and New York’s Big Five were derisively
called “vanity
publishers.” Still, book bigotry or its near cousins hasn’t disappeared
entirely.
That sounds discouraging,
but it’s a reality. Some—including reviewers—find it convenient to let the name
of a press help vet their final choices among hundreds of thousands of books
available to them these days. Using the name of a respected press is an easy—though misguided—way to do that.
Brooke Warner, the author of Green
Light Your Books and board member of IBPA (Independent Book Publishers of
America) says, “I advise authors with [print-on-demand books] never to specify
how their books were printed [when they are] talking to book
buyers, event hosts, booksellers, conference organizers or librarians . . . .”
Notice that Warner is not
suggesting you fib about how the book
is published. It seems she is suggesting we just omit that piece of
information. But in some
cases you can bravely face down book bigotry. That means owning up to however
your book is published. My coauthor of the Celebration Series of Chapbooks Magdalena Ball and I list our poetry chapbooks
(booklets) in the series as “proudly self-published in the time-honored
tradition of poets since before Gutenberg invented the press.”
Honesty is essential. Reviewers and
other contacts are not naïve. They know a digitally printed book, micro press,
indie publisher or any number of entities now in the publishing business when
they see it. But, as writers, we know that words and the way we use them are
powerful and we should be willing to use the power to the best of our ability
within the boundaries required by ethics.
It is your job—no matter who printed
your books—to convince reviewers (and, yes, readers!) that your book is the one
they want to spend time with. That your book has value that particular reader
or reviewer can use, wants, or desperately needs. We do that:
- By publishing or having someone else publish a professional, well edited book. Read more on how to do that in my multi award-winning The Frugal Editor and find more books that will help you with the journey in the Index of that book.Know that the better editor you are, the better partner you make for any editor assigned to you or hired by you.
- By building—and continuing to build—a platform that is respected by others in the publishing industry. (Read more on that in The Frugal Book Promoter).
- By approaching reviewers (and other gatekeepers) with whom you have built a relationship and/or those you have researched so you are confident that they will have an interest in your genre. That requires lots of reading and research so you won’t waste sending a book to someone with no clout or who isn’t actually a reviewer. You’ll want to read How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career to learn more on getting and managing those reviews successfully.
Note: By being familiar with the reviewer
or other contact and the media she writes for, you limit the chances your book
or the content within will be misused. For more on that see the chapter on “Why
Book Reviews Aren’t What You Think They Are” in How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.
You, the author of your book, are the
one who is so passionate about it you will not be daunted by the
review-garnering task. Persistence is the key. But here’s The Secret to getting around this to-tell-or-not-to-tell conundrum:
Pretend you are a florist and must put
the best blooms in your book bouquet forward. You discard the wilted ones, or
at least place them behind the more exquisite blossoms in your inventory.
·
So,
you shout it out when it’s your advantage to tell and you do it with pride.
·
When
you think your bloom will appear slightly wilted to your contact, you disguise
it with the name of a professional publishing company you set up for your own
books.
·
And
when all else fails, you tactfully omit that information. You won’t fool anyone
who finds this information super important, but there is no rule that you must
flaunt it, either.
------
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. All her books for writers are multi award
winners including both the first and second editions of The Frugal
Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor which won
awards from USA Book News. Other awards include Readers’ Views Literary Award,
the top marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including
the coveted Irwin award. And now, ta da! The third: How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.
She
will appear at Bookbaby.com's first-ever #IndieAuthorsCon writers’ conference in
Philadelphia Nov. 3-5, 2107 and urges you to use her “Carolyn” code for an
additional discount from the already low price for the conference. If you come, please make a point of introducing yourself.
Saturday, August 5, 2017
The Fine art of Asking for Reviews
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Excerpted from the newest in Carolyn's multi award-winning
HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers.
To find even
more reviewers, you can put your reporter’s hat on and ask—tactfully—for what
you need. Make the point that a review is a gift to you, a gift that authors
treasure above all others—whether it comes from a reviewer or a reader. Try
some of these possibilities:
- Ask fellow attendees at writers’ conferences.
- Ask directors of writers’ conferences if they offer a review exchange or have other suggestions for you.
- Ask writing instructors if they have a list of reviewers or know where you can find one.
- When you’re on the Web, look at the resource pages of the Web sites owned by how-to authors of books for writers and of online book review sites.
- Think about classes you have taken. The instructors may have a policy against reviewing students’ work, but your fellow students may review yours. (I hope you would try to do the same for them!)
- Ask members of your critique group.
- Ask members of the organizations you belong to. Writing organizations come to mind, but members of other organizations may be even more open to your suggestion. It may be something they’ve never done, may never have thought about doing, and they may find it is lots of fun.
- When you read, make a note of reviews and the names of those who wrote them that you find in some issues of magazines like Time and newspapers around the world.
- Learn to write great query letters that won't tick off agents (or reviewers!) from my The Frugal Editor (http://bit.ly/FrugalEditor). I interviews dozens of agents to learn about their pet peeves and most of them didn't mention typos! You'll want to know what they did mention!

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