Book Marketing Your Way to Visibilty and Book Sales

 

I used to write a lot about book marketing and content marketing but a few years ago I gravitated more toward writing.

The thing is, while writing has a beginning, middle, and end, marketing and selling your book is never-ending … if you want to sell books.

This is why knowing about book marketing is crucial to every author.

When I read Neil Patel’s article on his content marketing formula, I knew I had to share it.

Before I dive in, let me explain these terms.

Book Marketing

This marketing strategy is ‘everything’ you do to bring visibility to your book and actually sell it.

While there are some authors who just want to have a book written and don’t really care about selling it, most authors want to sell their books.

This is especially true of authors who spend money to self-publish their books where costs can be from under $1000 to well over $1000.

A few of my clients have spent well over $10,000 for just ONE book.

Recouping the money invested in your book is a big deal to most.

And, it’s just as important if you’re traditionally published. Your publisher will definitely want you to help sell your book/s.

In fact, it you and another author both submitted great manuscripts to a publisher, a determining factor on who gets the contract could be who has a better book marketing platform.

So, here are a few elements to know about before and after your book is available for sale:

1. Create a book worthy of publishing and learn about pricing it effectively
2. Create and maintain an author website
3. Write articles and post them on your website’s blog
4. Be active on social media and share your blog posts and those of other users
5. Get an email list going and maintain it
6. Look into guest blogging and interviews
7. While doing all this and more, start on your next book

Once your book is available for sale, you’ll also need to get book reviews and create an Amazon Author Page.

Content Marketing

This strategy is about writing and sharing content to your specific target audience.

 According to Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

To clarify a bit, it’s about bringing visibility to you and your product/s through content (things you write and share, usually online). It’s about building a brand (what you want people to think of when they see your name or logo).

The marketing world is driven on content.

Below are a few strategies of content marketing:

1. Blogging
2. Video
3. Podcasts
4. Infographics
5. Sales pages on your website
6. Books

There are many other elements that go into these marketing strategies, but this should give you a basic understanding of both these terms.

And more importantly, it’s important to understand that pretty much everything you do to sell your book is a form of content marketing.

Now on to content marketing expert Neil Patel’s tips.

1. Optimize your headline.

Everything you write, whether a blog post or a description on social media, starts with a headline.

An example of this is the title of this article.

There are thousands and thousands of tidbits of information online, why would someone click on your bit of information?

The very first reason would be the headline. It’s what will initially grab the reader’s attention.

2. Add three internal links.

Internal links is when you link from one page on your website to another.

It allows you to bring the reader at your website to other of your website pages and/or blog posts through clickable links.

You can check out this article to learn more about internal or inbound links:


3. Share your content on social media.

Once you put up a blog post, use sharing tools, like Shareaholic and WP Social Sharing Plugins, and share it to your social networks.

4. Message everyone you link out to.

This tip pertains to external links also called outbound links. Links from your website (usually from your blog post) to other websites.


Patel recommends that you contact the site you’re linking out to and let them know that you’ve linked to their site from your blog post or webpage.

Ask the site to stop by and share the article.

5. Email blast your new blog posts.

Email your subscribers every time you post new content.

To learn the basics of email marketing, check out this article:
Email Marketing – 10 Top Reasons to BE Doing It

I know some of this may sound too complicated, but just knowing the basics will be of tremendous benefit to you.

So, give your book every chance at finding readers and making sales.

For a more in depth look at marketing your books, check out my WOW! Women on Writing eclass: Build Your Author-Writer Platform

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and successful children’s ghostwriter, rewriter, and coach. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move and as well as an author online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

You can follow Karen at:

LinkedIn  http://www.linkedin.com/in/karencioffiventrice
Twitter  http://twitter.com/KarenCV

Marketing Is Engaging With Readers, Be Findable

 

Promotion and Marketing is about the reader; it’s engagement. We aim to draw readers’ attention to our books and articles. How do we reach each other? It starts with a commitment to be findable. Writers must have a web presence. We must be searchable.

Further, when found, we must deliver consistent content.

Readers have little time for complicated searches, so stay findable with content value. Make good use of Keywords in your post and book titles. Be bookmarked, making it easy for readers to keep coming back.

Tips for search-ability:
1.    Optimize your use of Metadata, Keywords, & Descriptions for Search Engines
    a.    Metadata is information about your book, the title, sub-title, sales description, categories & author bio.
    b.    Keywords refer to a word or phrase that is associated with your book or your blog post. To develop a list of keywords, write a list of all the words and phrases that you consider associated with your post or book. Be as specific as possible. Your reader will appreciate this as they search the internet. (For social media, we can use hashtags # for more group visibility.)
    c.    Develop your keyword or phrase list by searching Amazon with your keyword ideas and note the results. This will help you target your best keywords.
    d.    Use your keywords in titles, too
    e.    Once you have selected your keywords, incorporate them into your Metadata information.

Tips to stay connected with your readership:
1.    Develop and maintain an author’s website
2.    Include a Blog on your website, post often—at least every 2 weeks
    a.    For additional traffic, would guest posting work for you? Maybe you could trade guest posts with a writing friend. Your byline will appear with a short bio and a link to your website/blog when you guest write for another’s blog.
    b.    Things to consider: Do the themes of the blogs enhance each other? Would your readership find value in both your blog and the guest’s? Don’t send your reader away: rather build-up both sites.
    c.    Start by noting the blogs you follow.
3.    Get involved with Social Media platforms that suit you and your themes and link back to your website URL each time you post
4.    Create a newsletter, send it to your email list and post a link on your social media pages
5.    Expand your book’s availability by including an audiobook
6.    Consider creating a Podcast series, start with the theme most meaningful to you
7.    Consider Books2Read https://books2read.com/  and Universal Book Links https://books2read.com/guide/ubl/  as a vehicle for readers to find your books. Universal Book Link (UBL) is a single URL that you can use to promote your books/eBooks.

Marketing is Engagement with Your Readers
Deliver Content

Book List:
* How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/

Deborah Lyn Stanley is an author of Creative Non-Fiction. She writes articles, essays and stories. She is passionate about caring for the mentally impaired through creative arts.
Visit her My Writer’s Life website at: https://deborahlynwriter.com/   
Visit her caregiver’s website: https://deborahlyncaregiver.com/
    Mom & Me: A Story of Dementia and the Power of God’s Love
https://www.amazon.com/Deborah-Lyn-Stanley/

Facebook: Deborah Lyn Stanley, Writer    https://www.facebook.com/deborahlynwriter/

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Marketing Tips for Writers

 

 

 

Marketing Tips for Writers, by Deborah Lyn Stanley

Promotion is sharing what we find important with people who appreciate hearing about it. Marketing is about the reader; who are they and what are they are looking for? The answers help develop your target market and competition awareness.  

It’s all about getting readers to find your writing.

This path helps guide to best planning. Whatever stage you’re in, it’s always a good time to outline and review our Marketing Plan. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, consider where readers would find books or articles like yours, and make sure they can find yours as well.

Ways to market & promote —
Make the task frequency doable, choose what works for you:
•    Create your web-presence, aka an author’s website—your platform
•    Blog actively & often
•    Collect the best keywords and category designations for search optimization—in bookstores, online searches, and for your web-presence
•    Social Media posting—choose the social media platform that works best for you.
       -LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
       -Post often using images and videos
       -Always link back to your website post/page
•    Create a newsletter and use email blasts each month or at least quarterly
•    Start a Podcast: see link below for details to get started.
•    Publish an audiobook
•    Some suggest blogging daily is the best. I suggest listening to your readership and follow their patterns. I become annoyed receiving daily posts overloading my email and unsubscribed when it occurs. Also, daily blogging doesn’t work with my schedule.

Critical Details for Reader Searching & Finding your book or article:
•    Genre, choose the most applicable genre listing—listen to your readers and where they search
•    Price to fit the market
•    Metadata is also a vehicle for promoting your work. Metadata is information about your book, the title, sub-title, sales description, categories and author bio. Optimize its use.

Find the perfect promo fit. Make marketing work for you consistently.

Book List & Podcast Link:
*Successful Self-Publishing & How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/

*The Frugal Book Promoter by Carolyn Howard-Johnson https://howtodoitfrugally.com/ 

*Starting a Podcast: https://www.thepodcasthost.com/planning/how-to-start-a-podcast/
 

 Deborah Lyn Stanley is an author of Creative Non-Fiction. She writes articles, essays and stories. She is passionate about caring for the mentally impaired through creative arts.
Visit her My Writer’s Life website at: https://deborahlynwriter.com/   
Visit her caregiver’s website: https://deborahlyncaregiver.com/
Available on Amazon --- Mom & Me: A Story of Dementia and the Power of God’s Love ||  www.amazon.com/Deborah-Lyn-Stanley/

Facebook: Deborah Lyn Stanley, Writer    https://www.facebook.com/deborahlynwriter/?modal=admin_todo_tour 

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Goodreads Participation Helps Amazon Best-Selling Authors

Contributed by Carolyn Wilhelm

 Dublin author Clare O'Beara writes award-winning mysteries, quarantine lit, science-fiction, multicultural children's novels, as well as horse books. O'Beara likes to share a slice of her life and inspirations with other writers. As a past show-jumping champion in Ireland, tree surgeon, member of MENSA, World-Con volunteer, and journalism student, she comes by her knowledge with a depth of experience. She is an example of leveraging Goodreads to a writer's advantage. She credits the platform with some of her book success. 

O'Beara suggests getting involved in Goodreads Groups, which should reflect an author's genuine interests, like horses in her case or green (environmental) matters. If an author joins Groups, which are about promoting books, he or she will come across as 'all about me.'

O'Beara also writes a monthly column on Goodreads, such as her post about Ireland's Octocon. First, an author page on Goodreads is required, which has to be completed by the author. So many authors have not completed their free Goodreads author pages. Writers must then select to enter their blog feeds or could write posts on the site. While the post text area is tiny, pulling the corner out will provide a larger space to allow a lengthy article.

Of course, blog posts alone are not enough; O'Beara advises authors to read books, rate, and review them on the site. Reviewing helps other authors as well as potential readers of those books, so the author comes across as the keen book lover they are, and not just about him or herself.

Goodreads offers book lists, as well. Lists may be reviewed by authors who might include one or more of their books. Goodreads won't let you add your own books to any lists, but it's always nice to find someone else has added them. For instance, YA New Releases for October 2020 might grab your attention. Goodreads offers some tips at the top of lists, such as to double-check the book's release dates make sure that they are classified as correctly. If you see a book that doesn't fit that description, you may comment. The Goodreads librarians will check comments from time to time. 

Be sure to check favorite genres from the pop-up menu under your photo to select which to follow. Goodreads will choose for a writer, otherwise, and it might not be correct. If a person has been on Goodreads for a while and not checked on genres, it is a good idea to edit those choices, perhaps. Shelving read books can be individualized by naming shelves according to what an author wants.

Authors without Goodreads author pages are advised to set one up. If you are wondering how here is the information. (https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/How-do-I-start-a-blog-on-my-author-profile-1553870941102) Authors who already have such pages are advised to make use of the opportunity.

Carolyn Wilhelm is the curriculum writer and sole owner of The Wise Owl Factory site and blog. She has an MS in Gifted Education and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction K-12. As a retired teacher of 28 years, she now makes mostly free educational resources for teachers and parents. Her course about Self-Publishing from the Very, Very Beginning is available on UDEMY.

 

MORE ON WRITING AND BOOK MARKETING

Is an Indie Kirkus Review Worth It?

Create Believable Characters and Conflict in Your Children's Story

Tips for a Better Zoom Experience

 

 

 

Making Your Book Into a Classic

 

 A Memoir—and Marketing Technique--to Be Pondered

            
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, multi award-winning author of fiction,
poetry, and the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers
 
Here is a book that neatly combines my love of memoir and marketing. The dust jacket of this beautifully designed book explains: When God Says No by Judith Briles was first published in 1990, republished in 1994 and again in 1997.  But wait! Here it is again published in 2019 when it “took on a life of its own.” As I read, it became clear that in spite of its many touching memoir moments, it was the journey this book took along with that of the author that caught my attention—something that would illustrate to my readers that a book needn’t die. It can grow. It can become a classic. And that reviews are one of the marketing tools that can best make that happen!
 
The thing is, it can only happen if the author (or publisher!) knows or has a sense that it can and also knows how to make something so miraculous transpire. In fact, it is the best example I have run across for the authors I have tried to convince about the value of reviews. It illustrates these steps:
 
1.    Know that these days books needn’t die as they once did when they were given ninety days before bookstores sent them back to publishers to be re-marketed on discount sale tables or shredded!
2.    The author and/or publisher must realize a potential for a new edition or the magic never happens.
3.    Such a realization is more likely to work well if the author has been keeping notes about new events, information, or ideas that affect the content—anything really, from a memoir to a how-to book.
4.    That authors and publishers who keep honing their marketing skills are most like to make this book successful—from the first edition to, well, whatever number the last might be.
Note: The author of this memoir has been sending me copies of her new books for several years, usually with a handwritten note—both a gesture of gratitude and a request for a review or blurb tucked inside the front cover. It’s part of her process and certainly one that should be added to the marketing repertoire of anyone who wants to make a career of writing books!
 
Those who know my HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers may have guessed that making a book into a classic by using repeated editions and putting reviews at the forefront of their marketing expertise is the reason I wrote How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career. One of my favorite sayings is MSNBC’s “The more you know…”  The future of one of your books may depend on just such a notion!
 
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel was set in Utah. This is the Place, has won eight awards and, though out of print, the paperback is still available in Amazon’s new and used feature—usually for less than a dollar. That’s another little tips for making a book into a classic. Letting Amazon keep it alive with their New and Used Book feature.  Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, is a collection of stories most of them set in Utah. Also, out of print, it is also still “alive” and has won three . Her practical and detailed how-to book on promotion, The Frugal Book Promoter is an example of using editions for the same purpose. Published by Modern History Press in its third edition, it was once dubbed a “classic” by Bookbaby.com. The flagship book in the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, it is available at http://bit.ly/FrugalBookPromoIII.
 

 

       More About When God Says No:

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Keeping Our Spirits Up for the Good of Our Writing Careers

The Best of Times, Not the Worst

Keeping Our Spirits Up 

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

I was excited to be given an honorary membership to a site designed to help writers keep their spirits up in spite of Murphy’s Law, Writer’s Block and all the other boogeymen we writers have convinced ourselves are out there. I know I wasn’t so chosen to go on the forum to complain about my down days, but the brilliant (truly!) site owner had no idea that “no moaning” is my modus operandi on the rare occasions I feel stuck.

No, it’s my grandmother’s Wedgewood sugar bowl. On the rare occasions I begin to ruminate on the time I frittered away between the time I knew I wanted to write and the time I got busy focusing on it, I go to that sugar bowl where I’ll find dozens of scraps of paper. Some scraps are unreadable, but I’ll always find one or two that I scribbled on long ago that pull me out of my funk. They may include an image I didn’t want to forget or an improbably idea for a story or book. Sometimes I don’t find anything all that useful in the moment, but I always find myself smiling or laughing out loud at myself.  Once, I found enough images to write what poets called a “found poem; ” that poem eventually worked its way into a chapbook I published with another upper in my life who partnered with  me on the Celebration Series of poetry chapbooks. An Aussie (seems Aussie’s are always uppers!), Magdalena Ball runs a review site (http://CompulsiveWriter.com), and always seems ready to collaborate on some misery-fighting project. 

I have a ton of other such antidotes for any mood that aims to defeat me. I have never felt compelled to visit to a therapist or a psychiatrist, but I wouldn’t rule that out if necessary. I address some of those techniques in my first how-to book for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter. It includes sections on overcoming fear of marketing, fear of success, and fear of failure so I go back to my own book when I begin admonishing myself about what I might have achieved if I had started publishing earlier.

I bring a background as publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to my practice of staying pretty jolly and focused. Having other careers has helped. When we bring a whole slew of life's experiences to a new pursuit, we can feel secure much more quickly. That's something I keep reminding myself of, too. Years of retailing, as an example, helped me figure out how to market my first novel when my first small publisher failed miserably at that pursuit so it wasn’t the struggle to switch gears it might have been otherwise. 

My biggest hurdle was related to a recognized problem that psychologists sometimes call the “I’m-Not-Good-Enough” syndrome. With "only" a bachelor's degree and some study overseas, I did feel insecure about reaching out to the academic community. A man at a party encouraged me not to let that hold me back, assured me that UCLA would be interested in me as an instructor because they often take experience rather than solely academic credentials into consideration. That was how I started with my HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers which I needed to teach marketing to writers back in the early 2000s (most marketing books were written for businesses and marketers in those days!). Though I don't remember that mentor's name (maybe I never knew it?), I will be forever grateful to him. I am here today—and was maybe chosen to be part of this authors-aid site-- because I like the whole "pass it forward" idea--no matter the industry. And I firmly believe we are never so darn smart we can't learn from both newcomers and old-timers. 

So you want to know about this miracle site. Here’s the sad part: This site didn’t take off. Authors can’t use it to share and encourage one another. I hate the old saying, “There is more than one way to skin a cat!,” (disgusting, isn’t it?), but it is a truism. And sometimes a sad event leads to reexamining other possibilities, other opportunities and other says to look at downers.

So, yeah. I can take a minute to feel sad, but lots of social networks, writers’ associations, really texty—you know, dry and boring, based on principles and not real experience. And mostly not for writers. That wasn’t a downer. It was an opportunity.

and educational programs that might otherwise be thought of as support groups are out there. All are filled with people willing to share—rather like a therapy group. That’s sort of why I was determined to teach a class in marketing for writers back in the day, so determined I overcame my fear of academia with a little encouragement from the gentleman I met at that party. That lead me to writing a “text” for the first class. The texts on public relations and marketing I found were 

That experience turned into my multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. It includes both the first and second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter 
and The Frugal Editor and How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.  (I hate seeing authors spend money on stuff they can do better than anyone they hire!). In the case of the winningest book in the series, The Frugal Editor,I hate to see authors assume that an editor assigned to them from a big publisher is always in a better position to make choices than they are!

Most of all, I believe that the best way to keep our spirits up is reveling in the successes of others and learning from failures. We can be there for one another. This is not a competition but a sharing experience. Forget the negative words. There is a way to succeed in a notoriously difficult field. This is the best time for that. We can take control of our own futures better than ever before! 

Just know you are not alone. 

And make yourself an equivalent of my antique Wedgwood sugar bowl.

THIS WAS FIRST POSTED MAY 2019, BUT IT SO HITS THE MARK IN WHAT'S GOING ON NOW THAT WE REPRINTED IT!

Forget Book Sales: Think Career Building

 It Isn't About Book Sales: It's About Career Building

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Adapted from the multi award-winning flagship book in the HowToDoItFrugally Series of
books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter, Third Edition

In a writer's world sharing is sometimes as important as the creative aspect of building a book. The trouble is sharing—for many—translates into selling books. Of course, we all want to do that, but we tend to lose sight of the fact that we will eventually sell a whole lot more books and, in doing so, share with a whole lot more people, if we concentrate on building our careers. Indeed, for some authors with nonfiction books based on their businesses and professions, the whole purpose of the book is to increase credibility and exposure for themselves and careers. 

What many authors think of when they think of book sales is the kind of hardsell that most would rather eschew. When they decide to do it anyway because they know they should, they may skip learning something about marketing first and their efforts backfire on them. I have a motto: “Never say, buy my book.” Keep reading for better ways to market your book and yourself.

Here's the surprise. Marketing—marketing anything—isn't about selling. Marketing a book is about finding the people who will benefit and appreciate what the author has to share and then letting those people know how they will benefit (or avoid problems) by reading it.. And there is a lot of writing that goes along with it and that's what we do. And there is real pleasure in seeing our marketing efforts succeed and seeing our careers build as we do more of it and learn more about it. Here are some ideas of giving-sharing kinds of marketing from my Frugal Book Promoter. Each may be used as a part of a launch campaign or to nudge exposure for books that have been around a while.

§  Meet new readers by running a contest on your website, on Twitter, or in your newsletter. Use your books for prizes or get cross-promotion benefits by asking other authors to share their books; many will donate one to you in trade for the exposure. Watch the 99 Cent Stores for suitable favors to go with them.

Hint: Any promotion you do including a contest is more powerful when you call on your friends to tell their blog visitors or Facebook pals about it.

•    Barter your books or your services for exposure on other authors’ websites. Other authors tend to understand your need to build your career and to sell your books. You'll make long lasting friends doing it.

•   Offer classes in writing to your local high school, college, or library system. Students can become valued friends and fellow writers. Publicizing the classes is easy and free and helps build your author-name recognition. When appropriate, use your own book as suggested reading. Use your teaching experience in your media kit to show you have presentation skills.

 

•   Send notes to your friends and readers asking them to recommend your book to others. Or offer them a perk like free shipping, gift wrap, or small gift if they purchase your book for a friend. That’s an ideal way to use those contact lists—the ones I show you how to build in The Frugal Book Promoter—and to let personal friends share in your exciting publishing adventure.

•    Some of your reviews (both others’ reviews of your book and reviews you’ve written about others’ books) can be networking experiences. Read that word "networking" as "making friends who want to work with you." Check the guidelines for the free review service blog I started to help fellow authors extend the life of their favorite reviews. It's at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com.

 

•   Connect and reconnect. Subscribe to new blogs and newsletters to get new ideas, new opinions. Start reading the ones you once subscribed to again. Join a writers’ group or organization related to the subject of your book. Offer to help them with guest articles and blogs. Enter their contests. Communicate on their forums.

•    When you ship signed copies of your book, include a coupon for the purchase of another copy for a friend—signed and dedicated—or for one of your other books. Some distributors insert fliers or coupons into your books when they ship them for a small fee.

•   Adjust the idea above to a cross-promotional effort with a friend who writes in the same genre as you. She puts a coupon for your book in her shipments; you do the same for her in yours.

•    Be sure your Amazon buy pages amplify the effects of their logarithms and utilized the benefits they offer through AuthorCentral. 

•    Explore the opportunities for speaking on cruise ships. Many have cut back on the number of speakers they use, but your area of expertise may be perfect for one of them. I tried it, but found ship politics a drawback. Still many authors like Allyn Evans who holds top honors in Toastmasters and Erica Miner have used these venues successfully. Do know, however, that you need a knockout platform including speaking credits.

•    I call reviews forever-reviews because they hang around forever. And because they are forever useful even when a book that is aging. In fact, I think they are so important to your career that I wrote an entire book on how to get them, how to manage them on places like Amazon, and how to utilize them…well, forever. It is, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson has been promoting her own books and helping clients promote theirs for more than a decade. Her marketing plan for the second book in the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success won the Next Generation Millennium Award for Marketing. The just-released third edition of The Frugal Book Promoter, published by Modern History Press, is New! Expanded! Updated! Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction books have been honored by the likes of Writer’s Digest, USA Book News Award, the Irwin award, Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards and more. Learn more about Carolyn and her books of fiction and poetry. Each of them helped her learn more about maximizing marketing efforts for different writers, different titles. Learn more at www.howtodoitfrugally.com


  

Carol Smallwood Interviews Author, Marketer Carolyn Howard-Johnson

The Great First Impression Book Proposal: Everything You Need to Know to Sell Your Book in 30 Minutes or Less, second edition
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Modern History Press
97816159948, $8.95, Paperback, $2.99, Ebook, 54 pages


Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally books for writers including USA Book News' winner for The Frugal Book Promoter now in its third edition. An instructor for UCLA Extension's renowned Writers Program for nearly a decade, she believes in entering (and winning!) contests and anthologies as an excellent way to separate our writing from the hundreds of thousands of books that get published each year. Two of her awards are Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment given by members of the California Legislature and Women Who Make Life Happen, given by the Pasadena Weekly newspaper. She is also an award-winning poet and novelist who shared what she's learned.

Smallwood: I can see how you might be exhausted with two books released in a month, but I am hoping you'll share a little about the second one because it's brand new to me.

Howard-Johnson: I can see why you might be surprised because The Great First Impression Book Proposal now has "Second Edition" in it - even on Amazon. And it is really a booklet, closer to what we poets call a chapbook than a real book. So, most authors know me by the full book in my HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, not the booklets for I rarely promoted them. I was just too busy with the information most every author needs for their books to be successful. That brings me to the fact that book proposals are a tool that most writers assume are only needed by authors of nonfiction as part of the sales process to find a publisher for it or an agent to represent their book to publishers but things are different now.

Smallwood: Please tell how it is different:

Howard-Johnson: Well, I didn't know it myself until I got an agent to represent the rewrite of my first novel This Is the Place. It is out of print and is now called This Land Divided. It is already an award-winner. The first chapter won WriterAdvice.com's Scintillating Starts contest, so I figured it would be easy to get an agent. But my agent, Terrie Wolf at AKA Literary wanted a book proposal! So I was the one asking, "Really?" Now that even big publishers expect their authors of about any genre to market or help market their books, most agents ask for a book proposal. It is a time-consuming process and most authors hate it. Lots of my consulting clients would rather pay me to write proposals for them than to ead the big, long, fat and utterly boring tomes that are out there as guides for the process. The trouble is, most authors can do it for themselves lots better than anyone else could. The author is the one with the voice! The author is the one with the passion!

Smallwood: Is that what lead you to write The Great First Impression Book Promoter?

Howard-Johnson: Exactly. I took the material I had written just to get the information I need to write a proposal for one of my clients and turned it into this booklet. I figured every author who must write a book proposal would rather learn how to do it in thirty minutes or so rather than read 300 plus pages! So, voila! There it is. 54 pages. Fast. I suspect the publisher at Modern History Press figured he could supply a copy of this booklet to the authors he was considering to get them to do the book proposal he needed - and they needed.

Smallwood: You say "they needed?"

Howard-Johnson: Actually, book proposals are great organizational aids. They can be a little like a story board for a film. They require all kinds of things an author and her publisher are going to need. Like a synopsis. A pitch. Nonfiction authors need a projected outline of their chapters or contents. But mostly a book proposal gets all authors thinking about their platforms and how to use them to market their books. Too many authors still believe the publishing works as it did decades ago. But we only need to be around a little while before we figure out that an author with a platform has an edge over an equally talented author who doesn't do much other than play with their friends on Facebook.

Smallwood: You're saying book proposals - for all the aches and pains - do as much for the author as they do for agents and publishers?

Howard-Johnson: Exactly. In fact all the planning and thinking they require can save them tons of time in the actual writing of their book. I remember reorganizing and rewriting the first chapter of my novel…well, lots of time. If I had an outline or storyboard or book proposal, I might have spend that time fine tuning the conflict, arc, characterization or whatever. A book proposal helps with all of that.

Smallwood: I don't remember seeing this book on your website.

Howard-Johnson: That's because Modern History Press did so much with it including a brand new cover from Doug West that blended with the new cover of the third edition of The Frugal Book Promoter. I love the typewriter. It reminds me of the one I used when I started out in journalism, which I did mostly because all of the smartest, cutest boys were on the high school journalism staff. There. Now you don't have to ask what got me into writing!

Smallwood: So, how can readers get this inexpensive, easy-to-read and use little booklet?

Howard-Johnson: "My" small press is as aware as big publisher are that a book isn't truly published without marketing. So Victor Volkman came up with the idea of using this book much like I had. It is available on Amazon as a hard cover, paperback, or e-book like all his books. (It was only available in the last two iterations when I self-published it.) And he is eager to get authors reading it because he feels as strongly as I do that it can make a huge difference to writing careers so he's also using it as a promotion. So those who the new release of my The Frugal Book Promoter, now in its third edition, directly from him at http://www.modernhistorypress.com/frugal/ will received First Impression Book Proposal at no additional cost. We both figure that a great way to get an author off on the right foot or to give her a nudge in the right direction even if she has already made a few really big mistakes. (Use the code GO Frugal, to get this extra benefit.)

Smallwood: Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Howard-Johnson: You know I have three full books full of things your audience should know. But here is just a teaser. Most authors misuse or underuse (or don't use) their review and interviews like this one to their advantage. They need to know a whole lot more about managing everything from managing Amazon reviews to getting reviews from the big journals like Library Journal. So, I'm suggesting my How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: the ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career.

Carol Smallwood, reviewer, interviewer, and recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, received a MLS in librarianship from Western Michigan University, MA in teaching from Eastern Michigan University. She’s done several dozen anthologies for American Library Association, Rowman & Littlefield, McFarland, and others; has had over a dozen collections of poetry and essays published; hundreds of stories, essays, interviews, poems, reviews in RHINO, World Literature Today, and others. A multi-Pushcart nominee in Wikipedia, the Michigan resident has founded humane societies.



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How to Use Multimedia Fiction to Market Your Book

Contributed by Silvia Li Sam

Authors must adapt to new technologies and trends to reach their audiences in today's ever-changing world. With the internet, there are so many new and innovative ways to reach potential readers. One of the many new trends in storytelling has been multimedia fiction.

What is multimedia fiction? It's a visual short story that adds images, pictures, or even audio to the written word. Websites like Commaful that are dedicated specifically to multimedia fiction have become incredibly popular, and attract more readers every day.

Is it possible to use multimedia fiction to help market your book? 

Not only is it possible, but it might also even be the boost you need to actually reach the public you've been aiming for.

Extend your novel's universe

Short multimedia stories are ideal for today's fast-paced world. People tend to have a short attention span, and so offering them shorter options to sink their teeth into is a great way of catching their interest. This is especially true for young adult audiences.

Sharing short stories in a multimedia format can both attract new readers to your books and build excitement amongst existing fans. The wait between books can be a long one and short multimedia stories can be a huge boost in excitement and fan engagement.

This can be true even after a novel’s series is over. JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, for example, releases short stories occasionally on the site Pottermore. She has also released multimedia versions of the previous novels, filled with illustrations and interactive elements. 

Multimedia fiction can also help you expand your character's background stories or create new paths and possibilities. Perhaps it could open the chance to write a new book series, if the first one turns out to be a success, focusing on other characters or even new adventures or mysteries altogether. Disney has clearly done well with that with all the spinoff stories and movies they have.

Because many sites that offer micro-stories and multimedia stories are also hotbeds for fanfiction, this is also a great way to get fans to interact with your universe and build fandom around your books. For example, Commaful has a fanfiction page that is dedicated to all types of fanworks around books, movies, and more.

Don't be afraid of trying a new type of storytelling to expand your novel's universe.

Offer snippets from your books

You may also use the material you've already written to promote your books.

Offering potential readers and influencers a sample of your writing can boost your book's sales. This is especially true if you sell an online version since you can add a link directly to the website that offers the full text.

It's essential to select extracts that can immediately catch the audience's attention and make them wonder what will come next. Also, try and use all the multimedia format's benefits to your advantage.

Add eye-catching pictures or photographs, play with the formatting, and make it as attractive as possible. Offering portions of your book with new and engaging short stories can make the potential readers feel a connection to your characters and have them aching for more.

Think carefully about how to integrate multimedia

To really take advantage of the format, aim the pictures you select at the right target audience and genre.

If you write horror novels, then utilize bone-chilling photos and images, to keep the reader on edge.  If it's a romance book, then try and find pictures that will fit your character's appearances and the general tone of the story.

Multimedia fiction is more than just the text people read. It's also about visual and audio elements that make the story a whole new experience than traditional literature.
Examine the audience's reactions.

Don’t be afraid to experiment! If a particular attempt doesn't work out as you hoped, try new ideas and see what happens.

Sharing multimedia fiction is a great way to get quick feedback as the stories are short and fun to view. If you have some followers already, this is a really quick way to test out an idea. This will allow you to adapt and improve your style according to what your core audience enjoys the most.

It's free market research, and it will help you both improve your writing skills and discover what people enjoy and dislike about your style.

So, what are you waiting for? There are readers out there waiting! If you like trying new things, multimedia fiction might be precisely what your book needs to become a huge success.

About the Author

Silvia Li Sam is a storyteller, blogger, writer, and social media expert. You can connect with her on her LinkedIn.

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A Marketing Story to Inspire Authors to Renewed Efforts

A Marketing Story to Inspire You to Renewed Efforts

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

I don’t think any author—or anyone with a profession or career or business—needs to be reminded that marketing is important. I sense, though, that they need a little inspiration now and then to convince them to keep at it or to utilize its magic to make whatever they are passionate about work better. Maybe to make it more fun. So here is a little story that recently took my breath away, convinced me anew that the net works. That Twitter works. That reviews work. And that even when we don’t see their charms on a daily basis, they (and their marketing sisters) are out there doing what they are supposed to do and doing it without asking us to recognize them, praise them, or pat them on their backs!

You see, I recently found a review floating around the Twitter platform at least a decade after it had been written,  a review I never knew existed. It was written by Author Anthony James Barnett (twitter moniker @ajbarnett) who is a fellow tweeter. Years ago he found me there, read my multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter (then it its first edition!) and reviewed it on his blog (http://bit.ly/irpv3) --all unbeknownst to me. I found it more than a decade later and it has haunted me because it illustrates so concisely most everything I have been trying to help authors do with my consulting, coaching, teaching, and my series of books. It proves the value of reviews (and, coincidentally the need for the third book in my HowToDoItFrugally Series, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career  which—I suspect—Author Barnett may not even know exists in this new decade!)

Every author needs to plumb reviews to launch books and to give their older books a new life—maybe make them into classics! I love that Author Barnett is still out there helping me help authors do that! I relished it. Tweeted about it and then, gasp! …. ! I realized that my marketing and blogging benefactor may no longer be alive.

I left Barnett a comment on his blog and it is awaiting acceptance—with no luck.  I’ve surfed the web for his name and the title of his book a bit. Now it seems I need help finding him. That’s my first choice. But if that can’t be done, I can use the web and marketing tools to keep the beautiful little secret gift he gave me years ago alive. And maybe to inspire other authors!

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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 both the first and second editions of 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 Ethically launched 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.”

805 Writers Conference in November 2019

What's better than having a working vacation?

805 Writers Conference will be back on the beach at Mandalay Beach Resort in Oxnard Shores on November 2nd and 3rd.

There's only a few days left for early discount registration, so if you think you'd like to attend, sign up now!

With an overwhelmed market, authors need all the help they can get. This conference offers writing workshops, like "How to Reboot Your Book" with our own Carolyn Howard-Johnson, and "The Essentials of Characters" with Toni Lopopolo.

They'll also be lots on self-publishing and marketing books.

All the tools an author needs to write and sell books!

For more details and a registration link, visit:
https://sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com/2019/08/time-to-treat-yourself-to-this-perfect.html


PLEASE SHARE!

What To Do When a Book--Any Book--"Fails"

Determining What Went Wrong to Get Future Marketing Right

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Once upon a time, way back in the last decade, author and researcher Lisa Ann Hewlett's publicity predicament illustrated to the world of books what we authors suspected all along: Huge amounts of publicity surrounding a release don't necessarily translate into massive sales figures. I still remember it today and am haunted by it whenever a client tells me that her marketing isn’t working.

When a major publicity coup like Lisa’s turns out to be the most bitter dose of rejection we could expect to encounter, it’s an indicator that it could happen to anyone. That may happen even when the publicity is the stuff of which dreams—in Surround Sound and Technicolor—are made of.

It is reported (variably) that Hewlett’s Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children sold between 8,000 and 10,000 copies. Many authors would be ecstatic with sales figures that look like that, but everything is relative. It is believed that Miramax paid a six-figure advance for this title and projected sales in the 30,000 range for hardcover alone. Considering expectations for the book, the figures do appear dismal.

Therefore, smart people in the publishing industry searched for reasons for its less than stellar performance, especially with the kind of publicity this book received, and I mean biggies like Time Magazine (the cover, no less) and several "New York" magazines. TV shows like "60 Minutes," "The Today Show," "Good Morning America," and "NBC Nightly News" lined up behind this book, for heaven's sake. Even Oprah's magic book-sale-wand was not effective.

Hewlett’s book made great news! It warned young career women that they have been mislead by petri dish miracles reported in the press. She pointed out that women have come to believe that they can put conception after career and be reasonably sure they can have still have both. She attempts to exorcise that notion in Quest.

So, just what did go wrong?

Many groused that he title was not scintillating nor was the book’s cover. Those in the know wondered if that influenced book sales. But that’s a huge burden to put on professionally produced book cover or title choice in a book published by an experienced, savvy and BIG publisher. Something else was clearly wrong.

My thirty-seven-year-old-daughter who had just returned to college to embark on a career in anthropology suggested that women don't want to hear the dreadful news. She says, "I just flat out don't want to hear this bad news in the middle of something rewarding, exciting and new! Why would I slap down the price of a book to get depressed?" Another unmarried friend who is also caring for an aging mother said, “I wouldn’t buy it. What am I supposed to do with that kind of information once I have it?” For women like them, delaying childbearing isn’t a choice. It’s a necessity.

All this searching for answers may reap results, may help publicists and publishers and authors determine cause and effect so that this syndrome can be avoided in the future.

The problem lies in the fact that this soul-searching and hullabaloo was misdirected. Even Hewlett says, "I don't know what to make of this absence of huge sales." One can see her shaking her head in disbelief. If someone with her research skills can't figure it out, can anyone? It may be the economy, stupid. Or retailing. Or the book biz.

It's surely something completely out of the author's control unless someone had thought to run the idea by a focus group of career women the age of the book’s expected audience. In the publishing industry, the term “beta reader” is often associated with this kind of research, but it must be accompanied by hard questions posed to the readers and that seems to entail some notion of unforeseen exigencies.

That seems like a bit of a conundrum, don’t you think? To do that, a similar trial I might run for my The Frugal Book Promoter might miss the mark for brand new authors because a large percentage still might be operating on decades-old ideas of what big publishers will do in terms of marketing! If that hadn’t occurred to me or my publisher, we wouldn’t have asked the hard question!

But, I think the most valuable lesson that can be learned with the Quest kind of rejection—any kind, really—is that it is not personal, that it pay to search for the lesson even after the fact.

We must keep the faith, keep writing, and keep publicizing, because if we don't, we’ll never know if a book—or a career—was given the best possible chance at success.

Here’s what I know for sure. I now fear publishing less. If my faith should slip a tad, I know it need not be fatal. I know those things thanks to Sylvia Ann Hewlett.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an award-winning novelist, poet, and author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. She taught editing and marketing classes at UCLA Extension’s world-renowned Writers’ Program for nearly a decade and carefully chooses one novel she believes in a year to edit.

The Frugal Editor (bit.ly/FrugalEditor) award-winner as well as the winner of Reader View's Literary Award in the publishing category. She is the recipient of both the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award and the coveted Irwin award. She appears in commercials for the likes of Blue Shield, Disney Cruises (Japan), and Time-Life CDs and is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences.

Her website is https://howtodoitfrugally.com/