Publishing on Amazon: File Size vs Pricing

When publishing e-books on Amazon, file size is an important consideration.

Why?

First of all, Amazon charges delivery fees for any books priced $2.99-$9.99 if you've chosen the 70% royalty rate (and even with delivery costs, you generally want to choose the 70% rate).  They calculate your royalty and then subtract the delivery cost, so a big delivery cost can really eat into your profit margin.

Delivery cost depends on file size.  If you're publishing novels or narrative non-fiction without fancy graphics, it's probably not a big problem.  My books of this type have delivery costs of 3-6 cents.  If you're publishing something with photos, illustrations, charts, etc, then you have more to worry about.  My book, Cruising Alaska on a Budget, could easily have had delivery costs above 70 cents, even without putting in all the photos I wanted.  I got it down to 22 cents through photo editing and somewhat complicated computer gymnastics.  I'll detail my process in another post, but that scaling down left me a lot higher percentage of profit.

Even if you choose the 35% royalty rate (or take the mandatory 35% rate for books $0.99-$2.99), you still have to think about file size.

If you want to price your book at 99 cents, your converted file size must be under 3 MB.  My current book, Hiking Alaska from Cruise Ports, is a relatively short book, and it's only 99 cents for its launch.  The file I'd prepared, however, full of pictures of the beautiful trails and stunning views, was bigger than 3 MB.  Despite my publishing experience with KDP, I'd never run into this problem before, and it took me some Googling to figure out why I couldn't price it at 99 cents, so I thought I'd share it with you all.

For more detail, you can read my post on Have Book, Will Travel.

Keep an eye out for my personal file-scaling-down method next time.

Melinda Brasher's fiction appears most recently in Leading Edge (Volume 73) and Deep Magic (Spring 2019).  Her newest non-fiction book, Hiking Alaska from Cruise Ports is available for pre-order on Amazon.    

She loves hiking and taking photographs of nature's small miracles.  

Visit her online at http://www.melindabrasher.com

Help Finance Your Book (Without Guilt!)

Run Ads to Help Finance Your Electronic or Self-Published Books
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By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

I hate the word “monetize.”

I especially don’t like it when this word (it’s really ugly, isn’t it?) is mentioned in the same breath with books. But I’m going to talk about it anyway because, if authors do it right, using ads in their books or other promotional materials can subsidize the cost of publishing a book, costs like great editing, great cover design and great indexing they often scrimp on.

Most every author is self publishing something these days. If not their books, then e-books or white papers that help them promote their work. Many of these books are perfect for paid ads and ads in barter. Think about trading an ad for another service you need like a blog tour, bookcover art, or printing.

Ads like these are becoming more accepted if they are focused on the book’s target audience. The LA Times reports Amazon will put ads in some Kindle readers and that they then sell those readers at 18% less than the ad-free same device without ads that retails for about $114.00. 

Ads in disguise have been used in literary journals and other books for years. They usually come as an order page or a list (subtle or not-so-subtle) of related books that might interest a reader.  Some of the ads Amazon is using will not only give you a discounted Kindle, they may give you other money-saving resources.  So, if you decide to put ads into your books, how would you do it?

~Put the ads in the backmatter of your book.
~Accept only professionally produced ads.
~Accept only ads that would interest your target audience. Be prepared to refuse some with the “not quite right” phrase that literary journals use to pass on submissions.
~Limit the number of adds to just a few.
~Encourage ads that give discounts or freebies so that the ads are seen as an added value by your readers.

When you use ads this way, your reader benefits. They learn about new resources and special discounts and the discounts they get may even help pay for the book (yours!) that your reader just bought.

If you are uncomfortable with this idea, start small. Start with your promotional e-books. Then move on. Eventually your readers may benefit from ads in your full-fledged, honest-to-goodness paperback or hardcover book!

PS: Anyone with a product (yes, books are products!) or a service that would appeal to readers of The Frugal Book Promoter may e-mail me (HoJoNews@aol.com) for details of how we might partner on something like this for one of my new releases. Spaces are limited.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a novelist, poet, and the author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers (http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com). That site includes a huge section of Resources for Writers. She also blogs writers’ resources at Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites pick www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com. Her newest book in the #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books is How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.

Conflating Promotion, Children's Lit and Promotion

Article Children’s Promo

Formula for a Long-Lasting Promotion

E-Book + E-Gift + Cross Promotion = Great FREE Promotion for Children’s Books

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson,
Author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers

The 4^th of July seems like a good time to talk about children’s books, to celebrate children's book, to give author of children's literature a little support. In a discussion I had with one of the longtime subscribers to my SharingwithWriters newsletter, Wanda Luthmam, author of The Lilac Princess, she said, “Of course the thing that is different for children's authors is that the product is for children yet the purchaser is an adult.”

Because Wanda is absolutely right, one of the best kinds of promotion is one where children’s authors cross promote.  That means partnering with other others, sharing lists. Forming groups where you cross-tweet one another’s tweets that point out benefits of each children’s book to the parents cause kids won’t be on Twitter, not yet at least.  

One of my favorite promotions—the one that lasted longer and was more “keepable” than any other I’ve done—utilized cross promotion. Here is a case study of that promotion straight from  my multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter. I have adapted it slightly to be more meaningful for children’s authors.

The anatomy of a free e-book might be just what you need to make one work for you. The free e-book I published as a cross promotion with other authors was one of best, most long-lasting promotions I’ve done. Let’s call it the new math for free publicity. It is: E-book + E-gift = Promotion. Oops. Error. Make the answer FREE promotion. However, it would be better if we slotted in another element: + Cross Promotion.

I met Kathleen Walls in an online group. She asked more than two dozen authors from several countries to contribute to an e-book that would be given away. Her idea, Cooking by the Book could be used as a gift of appreciation to the support teams it takes to edit and market a book and to the legions of readers who cook but had never read any of our other books. Children’s authors could use exactly the same idea (or adapt the basic steps to another theme). Here’s why. 

Authors who had at least one kitchen scene in their books (children’s authors might have a household cooking scene or just something foody going on in the plot like lollipops, ice cream cones—even apple trees!) were invited to contribute to Cooking. Each author’s segment begins with an excerpt from that scene. The recipe comes next, and then a short blurb about the author with links so the reader can learn more about the authors and their books. When children’s authors adapt the them, they might adapt the recipe segment to something else that would appeal to parents like the psychological benefit their child will get from reading the book. 

This e-tool was a cross-pollinator. Contributing authors publicized it any way they chose as long as they gave it away. Here are some of the ways we used to distribute Cooking by the Book: 

• Some offered a free e-book as part of a promotion and let people e-mail them for a copy. This is the least techy approach and it allows personal contact with readers. It also allowed us to collect and categorize our readers’ e-mails to use in later promotions.

• Some set up an autoresponder that sent our e-book directly to our readers’ e-mail boxes when they sent requests to an address we provided. This automated approach requires little but promotion from you after you’ve once set up the responder. I sent the first chapter of my novel using SendFree.com, but it could as easily been a full e-book.
• Some contributors sent readers to their Web sites where they found a link to download a .pdf file of our free e-book. E-books distributed like this are more effective if they include an offer or call-to-action—perhaps a discount on a series of your books—within its pages. If I did a promotion like this again, I’d include a contributor page in the backmatter that listed each contributor, her book’s title, and a direct link to an Amazon Kindle edition. The side-benefit for this is that traffic to your site soars and that helps your search engine optimization (SEO). 
• ome contributors let others distribute our e-book as a gift to their clients, subscribers, or Web site visitors—either with a purchase or as an outright gift. When you use this method, you get to set the guidelines for its distribution because you provide the free e-book.
• If we were doing this promotion today, we could offer our free e-book through Smashwords.com. To make free e-book editions work for you, your book must include ads, links in the text, or both to entice readers to your Web site or to buy your other books.
• You may find other ways to distribute your e-book or alter these processes to meet your needs. You could even give out business cards or bookmarks at children’s bookfairs that give the links to the free e-book you are offering.

Contributors to our Cooking by the Book benefited from their efforts and from contacts with other authors. It turned out that we had some superior promoters among us:

• Most of us set up a promotional page for the cookbook on our Web sites. 
• One promoted it in her newsletter. 
• Mary Emma Allen writes novels, but she also featured the cookbook in the columns she writes for New Hampshire dailies The Citizen and The Union Leader.
• David Leonhardt incorporated the cookbook into a Happiness Game Show speech he delivered over a dozen times.
• We all gave away coupons offering this gift at book signings. Because e-books cost nothing to produce, they can be given to everyone, not just those who purchase a book. Some made bookmarks featuring this offer.
• I put an “e-gift” offer for Cookbook on the back of my business cards.
• If we were doing this promotion today, we’d all blog about it and use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks.
• We treated the promotional book like a real book. We got blurbs and reviews. Reviewer JayCe Crawford said, “For a foodie-cum-fiction-freak like me, this cookbook is a dream come true.” That review popped up in places we didn’t know existed. 
• We used them as e-gifts to thank editors, producers, or others online.

Our most startling successes came from sources we had no connection to at all. The idea for using a promotional e-book like this was featured in Joan Stewart’s The Publicity Hound, in Writer’s Weekly, in the iUniverse newsletter and more. They probably found it especially newsworthy because it worked so well for writers of fiction. Your book themed for the parents of children might appeal to popular psychology Web sites or others—depending on the theme.

When I queried radio stations for interviews with angles related to this cookbook, I had the highest rate of response I’d ever had, and that was in competition with a pitch for my novel This Is the Place just before the Salt Lake City 2002 games and an intolerance angle on the same novel right after 9/11.

Each year Mother’s Day beckons us to repeat our publicity blitzes, because, if you haven’t noticed, mothers tend to do lots of cooking. Almost any e-book that appeals to mothers of young children could also benefit from Mother’s Day promotions.

Hint: I love services like Createspace.com and Bookbaby.com for publishing both e-books and paperbacks, whether or not they are to be used as promotions. You can probably do everything yourself and absolutely free except for the copies you buy and the extra services, if you prefer to have that help. I also like that you can put your own publishing company’s name on the book—in other words, develop your own imprint. There are even templates for covers there. If this feels kind of publishing feels scary at first, I can coach you through the first one and you’ll be set forever more. Contact me through the contact page on my Web site.

Special E-Book Offer: I offer a free e-book for subscribing to my Sharing with Writers newsletter. Find the offer on most pages of my HowToDoItFrugally Web site, upper right corner. Everyone is your cross-promotion pool could do the same thing.

Here’s another idea from Wanda. She says “At my events, I invite children to my table to make a free craft that is book-theme related. While they are working, I talk to the parent about the benefits of the book and reading.”

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Today's blogger, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, will soon have a children's picture book ready to submit to her agent. It's about the feisty squirrel who is bent stealing tangerines from her tree. 

Carolyn is not known for writing children's literature. She 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 her multi award-winning The Frugal Editor 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.

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 eighty-nine 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. Her Web site is www.howtodoitfrugally.com 

The Frugal Book Promoter Shares Back-of-Book Partnership Idea

I just couldn't resist sharing this--my fave new idea--for working with fellow authors to cross-promote!   

Publishing/Marketing Partnership Tip

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How can you sell more books—any book, fiction or nonfiction—without doing all the heavy lifting yourself? Partner with an author who writes in your genre or on your topic. Here’s how: Include the first one to three chapters of their book in the back of your book and they do the same for you. You’ve automatically reached your target audience, gotten what amounts to an endorsement from a fellow author. After you’ve done the original planning (finding a reliable partner and adding one another’s material to your self-published book), the rewards keep coming in effortlessly!

Here are suggestions for making this cross-promotion work well:

 

1. Choose an author who writes in your genre or on a similar nonfiction topic, though the topic could be broad like politics.

 

2. Choose an author whose work you admire and who admires your work as well.

 

3. Plan well ahead and agree on the parameters of the agreement. Will you include an introduction (a kind of recommendation) before the chapters? How will you do it? With just a title like “Recommended Reading for Those Who Love Horror,” or with a personal introduction about your partner and why you like his or her work. How many words or pages of your partner’s work will you include in your book? (Be careful not to let the number of your author’s pages push you into another level where your book will cost more to print!)

 

4. If the number of pages is problematic, do it only in the e-book version of your book.

 

5. As an alternative, partner on a promotional e-book that you promote and give away free. You could use many more than two authors for this idea and agree on how many e-books and how much marketing each author must contribute to be included. Call it a “Free Sampler for Future Reading on the State of American Politics” or something else that matches your needs. I did something like this years ago. It was a cookbook and that cookbook was not only a smashing success, but the authors continued to use it for holidays years after we published it. I did give readers of The Frugal Book Promoter a case study of the entire project--MBA style.   

If you choose to do this, let me know about it. Send me an e-copy at HoJoNews@aol.com. I’ll use your note and links to the free book in the Letters-to-the-Editor section of my SharingwithWriters newsletter. (You can subscribe to the newsletter at http://HowToDoItFrugally.com).

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s 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 classes she has taught for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter was named USA Book News’ “Best Professional Book” and won the coveted Irwin Award. Now in its second edition, it’s also a USA Book News award winner and received a nod from Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards. Her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success was also honored by USA Book News and won Readers’ Views Literary Award. Her marketing campaign for that book won the marketing award from New Generation Indie Book Awards. The second edition e-book was honored by Next Generation Indie Awards in the e-book category.

 

Three Reasons Why DRM is Your Enemy

There’s no avoiding the subject of Digital Rights Management (DRM).  If you’re an author who has a book being published by a traditional publisher you’ll often get told whether your e-book will have DRM.  You may be asked if you want your book to have it.  If you self-publish, you’ll have to decide at the front end whether you want it.  Kindle Direct Publishing asks you to make that choice as part of your set-up, as do many other platforms.  So what is DRM? DRM is a range of technologies that restrict what consumers can do with your electronic book (or product) once they buy it.  There are different types of DRM, the most common being restriction on copying, sharing, and printing purchased books.  This may involve encryption of the material, password protection, limits on format changes, and other ways to lock the data.  If you’re the author of copyrighted material, this may seem like a good idea – limiting illegal downloads and keeping your work secure.  However, at the end of the day, the real losers in DRM are the authors and readers. Here are three reasons why: 

1.      It’s not at all hard to break the DRM code, rendering your books unprotected.  There are a whole bunch of DRM codebreaking apps, tools, and scripts that can remove DRM. Of course your average honest reader isn’t going to bother with these tools – it’s just not worth the time when there are so many good books available that are DRM free.  But for those who really want to pirate your content, print and sell your book (good luck with that), or give a copy illegally to someone, DRM won’t make a bit of difference. 

2.       DRM is expensive. It costs more to produce an e-book with DRM. So royalties to authors from books with DRM are often lower. Costs to reader are often higher. Because DRM is complex to manage from the reader’s point of view, there are often much higher support costs as readers attempt to make books work on their readers.  All those costs become part of what it takes to get your book out. 

3.       DRM is a pain in the neck for legitimate readers. This is the biggest problem with DRM.  DRM is almost always specific to e-reader and format. A Kindle book with DRM can only be read on a Kindle.  If you buy a book for your Sony e-reader but get a Kindle for Christmas and want to read it on that, forget it.  If you’re a book reviewer like me and want to read a DRM book on your Kindle but refer to a copy in .pdf on your PC when you're writing the review, forget it.  Often a DRM book can’t be read on an upgraded e-reader of the same make. The different formats make moving from device to device difficult enough – you don’t want to make it any harder for readers to get at your wonderful words. Of course readers can crack the code if they want to (see point #1), but your average reader is not going to want to spend time cracking technological code (I know I don't) when they could be reading a DRM-free book.

I know that it’s a scary world out there and no one wants their content stolen, but as the great marketer Seth Godin famously said, the enemy is not piracy, but obscurity.  If you make it hard for readers to read your books on the variety of devices that we all like to use, you won’t minimise the risk of piracy, but you will certainly increase your chances of obscurity.  DRM counters sharing (the most important driver of fame), it impedes reading, and it limits the value of your ebooks.  In this flooded market where getting your book into readers’ hands is the name of the game, DRM is to be avoided at all costs. 

Magdalena Ball is the author of the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Sublime Planet, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena at www.magdalenaball.com.

Remember Ads in Yearbooks? Authors Can Do the Same!

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers including the expanded and updated editon of The Frugal Book Promoter

Many of our books—especially free  promotional booklets and e-books—are perfect for paid ads and ads in barter if they are focused on the book’s target audience. Now the LA Times reports Amazon will put ads in some Kindle readers and that they will then sell those Kindle units at 18% less than the ad-free device ($114.00). To make it even a better deal, some of those ads offer coupons and discounts to reads. That means ads will help Amazon’s profit margin and help subsidize the cost of the Kindle, too!

So, you’re not convinced this marketing/publishing scheme would work for you? Consider this. Very fine literary journals have been putting ads in the backmatter of their paperback journals for years. Some of them advertise back issues of their own journal but some advertise products that will interest their reads. Think about your high school yearbook. Remember that ads in those and how appreciative you were of those businesses who supported your school? What about the ads in theater programs or programs for charity events.

So, you’ve decided to put ads into your books, right? How would you do it? What are the guidelines.

~Though there is no rule that says you couldn’t drop ads into the body of your book, it seems more decorous to put them in the backmatter of your book.
~Accept only professionally produced ads.
~Accept only ads that would interest your target audience. Be prepared to refuse some with the “not quite right” phrase that literary journals use to pass on submissions.
~Limit the number of adds to just a few.
~Encourage ads that give discounts or freebies so that the ads are seen as an added value by your readers. When I offered ads for the second edition of the Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher, I offered only five and encouraged those who were interested by offering a discount on the ad if they offered a freebie or a discount to my readers.

When you use ads this way, your reader will benefit. They learn about new resources and special discounts may even help pay for the book  your reader just bought. That would be your book!

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. She shares knowledge and experience she has accrued in other industries (like journalism, retailing, and public relations) in her books and with her clients. Because she is also an award-winning novelist and poet she knows that—contrary to accepted wisdom—authors of literary work can promote their books very nearly as easily as those of nonfiction books can. Learn more about her at www.howtodoitfrugally.com and check out her the new updated and expanded second edition of her Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo).

How to Create and eBook – 5 Simple Steps

E-books are an amazing product that has multiple uses. And, it can be created for FREE, or for a very minimal amount. What else can you create that costs only your time and effort, and sells for whatever the market is willing to pay?

1. Create content

The first step is to create your content; this can be done as a simple word document. The content can be anything you think your readers or target market will want or need. In addition, it can be any length you decide upon. You can create a simple 10 page e-book, or a 100+ page e-book.

You can also create a compilation of articles you’ve already written on a particular topic and organize them into an easy to read product that includes a content page.

Note: It’s wise to include a disclaimer explaining that you, the author, strived for accuracy, but cannot guarantee it due to the ever-changing nature of the internet. And, it’s advisable to include an “All Rights Reserved” with a copyright reference.

TIP: If you’re offering the e-book as a freebie on your site you can allow others to pay-it-forward, emphasizing that all information must remain intact. This will help increase your visibility and lead readers back to your site/s.

2. Organize Your Content

Whether your product is a few pages or 100 pages, having it organized is important. The e-book needs to offer easy reading and clarity, along with value. If you are creating a longer product, divide the content or articles into sections or parts, and provide a Content Page.

Be sure to use a large and bold font for section headings and it’s advisable to include page breaks for each section.

Finally, be sure to add a brief bio including promotional material on an About the Author page.

TIP:  have plenty of white space. If you notice, this article has very short paragraphs, making it easy to read.

3. Include Images and Tweak Your Content

Once you have the content in place, add images. You can add an image at the beginning of each section, or where ever you see fit. This is another trick to make the e-book more interesting to read.


The images will help break up the monotony of straight content.

TIP: You will also want to include your own head shot on your About the Author page. Readers connect more with a face, rather than just a name.

TIP2: Be sure you are using royalty free images. You don't want to get caught infringing on someone's copyright.

4. Create a Cover

Every book needs a cover, so you will need to create one. Again, you can use clipart, or other source of free images. You can also use the Word Draw Toolbar. I’m not sure if all versions are the same, but mine is located at the bottom of my document.

TIP: After you create a cover, be sure to click on Page Break.

5. Turning Your Word Doc into a PDF

Okay, you’ve created a great word document, now it’s time to magically turn it into an e-book. There are a number of free PDF creator software applications to do this.

For those wondering, PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format. A PDF creator is an application that converts documents into PDFs by creating a virtual printer that prints to PDF files.
If you don’t already have a PDF converter, it’s time to do an online search for “free pdf creator.” Just be sure the one you choose is Adobe compatible.

My experience is with PDF995. You can check it out at: http://www.pdf995.com/

But you can just do a Google search for one you like.

The new versions of Microsoft Word has a PDF printer build in.

It’s that simple.

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

If you need help with your author platform, check out the e-classes she offers through WOW:
http://www.articlewritingdoctor.com/content-marketing-tools/

MORE ON WRITING AND BOOK MARKETING

Why Purchase Your Own ISBN?
Writing, Submissions, and Working with Editors
4 Realities New Writers Need to Face

Poetry and iPad? You Betcha!

Celebration Series of Poems iPad Bound

Technology is ever changing. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the latest news, gadgets, and trends, especially when it comes to e-books and reading habits.

Yet the least likely of tech-geeks, authors Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball, are always keen and to meet their readers’ needs, and when Smashwords.com announced its new deal with Apple to produce formats suitable for the iPad and Apple’s new iBookstore, the authors immediately agreed, and jumped into action, pulling together the appropriate formatting for all of their Celebration Series books and putting them forward for conversion.

The celebration series has been designed specifically to replace the trite, cliché sentiments of greeting cards, at prices that are little more than the cost of a high end card. Many of the books are beautifully illustrated with paintings or photographs, with poetry designed along themes that focus on mothers, fathers and other men

More books are in the works, including a Christmas chapbook. Hard copies of all the books are available at Amazon as giftable, low-priced paperbacks, or you can pick them up in whatever format suits, including the iPad, Kindle, Epub (Stanza reader),.pdf, LTF (for Sony reader), and more at Smashwords.com. Note: As this date Smashwords doesn’t accept coauthor listings. That these formats are evolving is evident!

So, though two authors are involved, this page lists only Ball who set the page up.

As far as Howard-Johnson and Ball are concerned, whatever format suits their reader suits them. It’s all good.

Magdalena Ball runs the highly respected compulsivereader.com review site. She is the author of the poetry book Repulsion Thrust, which was published in December 2009 to unanimous 5-star reviews. Her novel Sleep Before Evening, published in 2007, was a Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's poetry appears frequently in review journals. She is listed in Poets & Writers and her chapbook of poetry, Tracings (www.budurl.com/CarolynsTracings ), was given the Award of Excellence by the Military Writers Society of America. She is also an award-winning novelist and short story writer and instructor for UCLA Extension Writers' Program.

For more information on any of the chapbooks in this poetry series, contact either of the authors or visit media rooms at www.howtodoitfrugally.com or www.magdalenaball.com .
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Support material available electronically or by post on request.

Other headshots and book cover art is available.