VBT Author Reviews Expanded Edition of Frugal Book Promoter

Reviewed by Magdalena Ball

The Frugal Book Promoter: Second Edition: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher
by Carolyn Howard-Johnson
CreateSpace
Paperback: 416 pages, August 25, 2011ISBN-13: 978-1463743291
Also available for Kindle

It doesn't matter how many books you've published. Self-published or traditionally published, gaining publicity is always tricky, always critical, and always a moving target. If your budget is limited, it's even harder, and perhaps, even more imperative. Enter Carolyn Howard-Johnson, the queen of frugal promotion. Her frugal books are pitched at the modern writer: time poor, financially parsimonious, and publicity hungry. The Frugal Book Promoter is the jewel in the crown. As with the first version, The Frugal Book Promoter is full of ideas, strategies, and tips for promoting your book cheaply, in innovative and effective ways, but it has been updated with a much greater focus on new technologies, the all-important social networks, and a range of strategies designed to help authors with less commercial offerings such as poetry and fiction.

Of course the book is rich with classic techniques too, such as media releases, query letters, and a whole fantastic chapter pulling together a media kit. There's information on using bylines, writing a biography, obtaining endorsements and blurbs, distribution of releases, obtaining reviews, tradeshows, book fairs, setting up a website, and many more 'must-do' items that have really become part and parcel of any author's promotional toolkit. Ignore this kind of stuff and unless you win some kind of book lotto, your book will almost certainly fall into the obscurity that is an ever-present risk of modern authordom. What I like best about Howard-Johnson's book is the simple, informal prose which is both warmly reassuring ('of course you can do this'), and deceptively intelligent. The reader is encouraged and reminded of his or her own innate capabilities even as they're goaded onto to raising the bar:
 

You’ve been practicing PR most of your life. Getting along with family. Impressing a new boss. You’ve been a customer and know why you like some products and businesses better than others. All it takes is some examination of the processes that influence you to get a grip on public relations—even on marketing as a whole.

The new version also contains a chapter on some of the most current topics, including information on blogging, working Amazon, using social networks, and even some common pitfalls to avoid in blogging and networking. Howard-Johnson totally practices what she preaches, so her advice comes directly from her many years of experience, and is rich with innovative ideas to minimise the time involved and maximise the input through such things as integration and cross-linking, clever use of soundbites and re-tweetable tweets, setting up a "Quotable Quotes” page on your Web site (I love that one), using RSS, and many other novel ideas. Throughout the book there are links, anecdotes, worked examples, and excellent templates including queries, a sample media release, blog entries, invitations, and even a tip sheet.
 

No, you don't really need a copy of The Frugal Book Promoter. You could hire a publicist for $100 an hour, or organise a retainer for anywhere from $1,500 to $20,000. But if you're looking to do your own publicity, or to augment your publishers and don't have the kind of budget that can support a publicist, or you simply want to do the legwork, connect with your reading public, and do your best to ensure that your wonderful work of art reaches a maximum audience, then this book is really the self-promoter's bible. You don't have to read it cover to cover, although it's certainly accessible and enjoyable enough to do so. The book is well-referenced and perfectly designed to enable the frugal author to dip in once a week and pull out a new publicity idea to try, or to use as a reference when it's time to pull together a marketing plan for your book, or at that moment when you need to write a press-release and want a template and guide, when you're looking for ideas to maximise your book signing. Whatever kind of promotions you want to do for your book, you're sure to find it in The Frugal Book Promoter. Howard-Johnson makes it all sound simple, and provides such easy instructions, that you'll want to go out straightaway and get to it. Put simply, The Frugal Book Promoter is the best guide around for create interesting, fresh, inexpensive, and relatively easy promotion for your book, whatever the genre.
 

~Magdalena Ball runs the popular review site Compulsive Reader and is an award-winning author and poet in her own right.

BSP - Finally Home cover available

Thanks to Heather Paye, illustrator, book layouter and cover designer extraordinaire, I have a cover for my YA paranormal mystery (front cover at least), Finally Home. Check out my blog for the cover and leave a comment to let Heather know what you think of it.

BOOK DETAILS:

Back blurb: It isn't just history against progress - it's daughter against father, or is it? Find out what secrets Kelly learns as she works to preserve an historic house in a small town that will help her bring her father Finally Home.

Final book should be between 200 and 250 pages. It will be self-published using createspace as well as in all ebook formats (kindle, nook and smashwords). Release date is tentatively around the 25th or so of October.

Elysabeth's bio: Ms. Eldering is the award winning author of the Junior Geography Detective Squad (JGDS), 50-state, mystery, trivia series. Her stories "Train of Clues" (to be re-released in the near future), "The Proposal" (no longer available in print), "Tulip Kiss" (no longer available in print), and "Butterfly Halves" (no longer available in print) all placed first, second, or runner up in various contests to include two for Armchair Interviews and two for Echelon Press (Fast and .... themed type contests). Her story "Bride-and-Seek" (also no longer available in print) was selected for the South Carolina Writers' Workshop (SCWW) anthology, the Petigru Review. Ms. Eldering makes her home in upper state South Carolina and loves to travel, cross stitch and crochet. When she's not busy with teenaged children still at home, she can be found at various homeschool or book events promoting her state series and soon to be YA paranormal mystery. For more information about the JGDS series, please visit the JGDS blog or the JGDS website. For more information about Elysabeth's other writings, please visit her general writing and family blog or her website.

Writing for Children: Submissions to Contract to Book Promotion to Career Part 2

Welcome back! Yesterday was Part 1 of "Writing for Children: Submissions to Contract to Book Promotion to Career" and today we have the rest of the article, numbers two to four.

So, without further ado here are the next three tips.

*****

2. The Contract 

If you do your homework, your manuscript will eventually find a home. Don’t let initial rejections, if you receive them, deter you. A published writer may not be the best writer, but she is definitely a writer who perseveres.

Read your contract carefully, if you don’t understand something, ask for an explanation.

After you sign a contract, you’ll be ‘put in queue’ and at some point begin editing with the publisher’s editor. From start to actual release, the publishing process can take one to two years.

3. Book Promotion

A couple of months prior to your book’s release, you should begin promotion to help with book sales. This will involve creating an author website and platform - your will need to create visibility for you and your book.

After your book’s release, you will want to take part in virtual book tours, do blogtalk radio guest spots, school visits, and all the other standard book promotion strategies. You can take this on yourself, or you can hire a book promotion service or publicist.

You can check out these articles for book promotion tips:

Book Promotion: The Foundation

Book Promotion: Creating an Informational Funnel

Book Promotion: 20 Strategies that will Broaden Your Reach – Part 1

Book Promotion: 20 Strategies that will Broaden Your Reach – Part 2

4. A Writing Career

Now, you’ve got your book and you’re promoting it like crazy (this is an ongoing process). The next and final step is to repeat the process. You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder, so hopefully you’ve been writing other stories. If not, get started now. On average, an author writes a book every one to two years. 

Along with keeping up with writing your books, having published books opens other writing opportunities, such as speaking engagements, conducting workshops and/or teleseminars, and coaching. There are a number of marketers who say your ‘book’ is your business card or your calling card; it conveys what you’re capable of and establishes you as an expert in your field or niche. Take advantage of these additional avenues of visibility and income.

To read Part 1, go to:
Writing for Children: Submission to Contract to Book Promotion to Career Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Until next time,
Karen Cioffi
Author, Ghostwriter, Freelance writer, and
Editor for 4RV Publishing

Member of the Professional Writers Alliance, the International Association of Professional Ghostwriters, and the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors.

http://KarenCioffi.com
http://DKVWriting4U.com
Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karencioffiventrice
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KarenCV
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Karen-Cioffi-Ventrice/157731977630305?sk=wall

Walking Through Walls 

Unlock Your Creative Spirit: Play With Playdough

When was the last time you set aside a portion of your day to be creative?

No, I don’t mean being creative to brainstorm ideas for a work meeting. Nor am I talking about using creative thinking to come up with the perfect gift for your significant other’s birthday. And no, I don’t mean being creative in thinking of new ways to motivate your kids to eat their vegetables or study for the SATs.

What I mean is, when was the last time you set aside time to be creative ... just for the sake of being creative? Simply for yourself and your spirit?

Remember when you were a kid and you could spend hours absorbed with a wad of brightly colored playdough? In playdough world, your imagination takes you to a place where an orange snowman is commonplace and a three-horned fire-spouting monster takes shape before your very eyes.

If you feel like your writing life is stuck in a rut, I have a solution that won’t cost much money or take much time: go back to playdough world.

Grab a wad of playdough and roll it into a ball. Feel its texture between your fingers. Don’t think; don’t worry; don’t question yourself. Enjoy the moment. Just see what shapes and figures emerge from your imagination.

This can help your creativity in multiple ways. You might find yourself making sculptures that relate to your life – maybe you’ll make figurines of your family and friends, or create a visual 3-D diagram of a problem you’re facing. Perhaps you’re feeling frustrated and rolling the clay into a ball, then pounding it flat, will feel like a release.

Visualize your negative energy trailing out of your body through your fingertips into the playdough. Then, pound it away. Do this multiple times until you feel rejuvenated.

Even if you don’t sculpt objects that relate to your life, you’re still allowing your mind to roam free and explore various ideas and possibilities. Just see where your thoughts take you!

A good exercise when you are done sculpting with playdough is to spend five minutes writing stream-of-consciousness style in a journal. Don’t censor yourself; don’t edit; don’t even think too much – just write, for five minutes, without letting your pen leave the paper. You might be surprised what thoughts, emotions, and new ideas turn up!

At-home recipe for playdough:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups four
• 1/3 cup salt
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• 7 drops food coloring.

Mix dry ingredients with oil. Add food coloring to water and mix together. Add water to flour/salt/oil mixture slowly – about 1/4 cup at a time – and mix together with a spoon. Once you’ve added all the water, knead the dough with your hands until texture is smooth. Enjoy!

Bio: Dallas Woodburn is the author of two award-winning collections of short stories and the editor of Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today's best youth writing. She has written more than 80 articles for national publications including Family Circle, Writer’s Digest, CO-ED, Justine, and The Los Angeles Times and her plays have been produced in Los Angeles and Ventura, California. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Dzanc Books "Best of the Web" anthology and has appeared in a variety of literary journals including Monkeybicycle, Arcadia and flashquake. Dallas is the founder of the nonprofit organization “Write On! For Literacy” that has donated nearly 12,000 new books to disadvantaged children. She hosts frequent writing contests, teaches writing camps for kids, and is Assistant Fiction Editor of Sycamore Review while pursuing her MFA in Fiction at Purdue University. Contact her at her website www.writeonbooks.org or blog http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com.

Writers Helping Writers: On the Value of Literary Friendships

As the Editor-in-Chief for the website The Compulsive Reader, I get about a hundred review requests a week.  Of these, maybe one will be accepted.  Not because ninety nine of those aren’t good books, but because we simply don’t have the people power to read and review everything out there.  And there is so much out there.  How do we filter?

For me, I try to filter on quality.  If a book strikes me as being, in some way, extraordinary, I’ll try to take it on, even if I’m already overloaded (and I am; I am).  All writers are my ‘fellow writers’.  We are all plying our trade, and most of us doing it in conjunction with a day job, families, and a ton of other commitments.

 I want to help everyone.  But I can’t.  Every now and then, someone I “bump into” online will strike a personal chord with me.  We’ll ‘bond’ in a virtual sense, and keep up the conversation, continuing to support each other’s work, and communicate our triumphs and losses.  I think you could call it friendship, though perhaps not quite in the conventional sense.

When the time comes when one of my friends needs a review, back cover quote, some advice, or help with promotion, I’ll be there.  Why?  Isn’t this a kind of literary favouritism?  Does it really help?  I believe it does.  Here’s why:

•  A healthy concern for those who have similar talents, ethics or who are members of our family/social circle is part of what it means to be a human.  We can’t help everyone.  But we can, and should, help those that we care about.  It’s the bedrock of our social existence. Some might call it nepotism, especially if family is involved (and I have a rather artistic family – we all support one another), but I agree with author Adam Bellow (In Praise of Nepotism, Doubleday, 2003) that nepotism, when combined with meritocratic principles, can be a positive force.  

• According to Bowker, over one million (1,052,803) books were published in the U.S. in 2009.  Of these books, a large number of titles won’t sell more than 100 copies.  There are many more books on the market than book buyers.  Most book buyers will purchase books based on familiar names.  Emerging authors need all the help they can get to simply get their titles noticed amongst the hype and names that dwarf them, but few of us can afford the publicity powerhouse that big names get as part of their publishing packages.  Supporting one another is one way to help redress the already negatively skewed balance.

• As professional writers, we treat what we review professionally, regardless of whether it was written by someone we know or a stranger.  So when I review a book by a friend, I review it in the same objective (as objective as any book review can be – we always bring in our tastes, biases, and perspectives) way that I would review any book.  I don’t always give my friends glowing reviews.  It isn’t easy, but I have occasionally had to refuse a review, or have had to publish a review which is negative.  That happens.  Friendship doesn’t mean I compromise my integrity, otherwise my review or support would have no value.  What it does mean is that I’m willing to give your book some priority in my crowded stack. 
• Writing can be a solitary occupation, but promoting a book isn’t.  Being in a position to help someone whose work is superb is inherently gratifying.  We are all disciples at the altar of the well written word, and promoting excellence wherever you find it is a privilege.  That said, the production of my first novel, Sleep Before Evening, found me in a position where lots of people were needed to help me get the word out.  I got a tremendous amount of support, and in this dog-eat-dog world where money and celebrity often rules over quality, that support helped me as much emotionally as it did in terms of my book’s success. 

Writing novels is a mug’s game, at least in the beginning.  It can be immensely gratifying, but it is also painful, hard work. Helping one another is also part of the game. Without the support and community of like-minded authors, there’s simply no way to get one’s foot in that tiny crack of the promotional door.  The more we help others, the more we help ourselves.  Social networking is the hottest buzz around for writers, and the kinds of networks we develop, with people whose work we admire, helps define who we are.  

So why not offer your writerly support to someone today.  Offer to do a review, host their guest blog, go out and buy the book of someone whose writing you admire, or just mention their work in your blog.  It’s the kind of good deed

that will come back to you.  

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader.She isthe author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, 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 http://www.magdalenaball.com

Diagramming for Grammar

How many of you remember diagramming sentences in elementary school? Where you shuffled, with great trepidation, to the chalkboard to draw a straight line and bisect it to show the “subject” (noun) and “predicate” (verb). And then the diagonal line(s) underneath one or more of those words to show “modifiers.”

I have to make a confession—I liked diagramming. Although some have likened it to a mathematical equation, I see it more as putting pieces into a jigsaw puzzle (I’m not mathematically inclined, but I do like puzzles).

It is easy enough to figure out “The horse galloped” or “The cat hissed.” But what about “John’s horse galloped around the paddock and then ran into the woods.”

Oh my. Now you’re getting into lines underneath the lines beneath the subject/predicate line. And where does “around the paddock” go? OK, maybe that’s easy enough (under the verb galloped seems logical).

But where does the rest of it go? And why do we care? Do we need to know how an airplane is designed before we fly? Do we need to know the terms and parts of a sentence before we write?

Well, yes and no. You don’t need to know the terms “participle,” “gerund,” or “appositive” to write well. But sometimes you need to know the rules before you can venture into breaking them.

According to Kitty Burns Florey, author of Sister Bernadette’s Dog Barking, diagramming was introduced in 1877 in the textbook, Higher Lessons in English, by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg to “reform the cold-blooded murder of the English language.”

Florey writes, “By promoting the beautifully logical rules of syntax, diagramming would root out evils like ‘him and me went’ and ‘I ain’t got none,’ until everyone wrote like Ralph Waldo Emerson, or at least James Fenimore Cooper.”

Florey also asks a teacher who is presently teaching diagramming to her seventh graders, why?

“‘It just makes grammatical ideas clearer,’ she says. ‘It’s a tool for teaching them how to construct a sentence correctly.’”

“Does it make them better writers?”

“She dismissed the idea. ‘Maybe it will make them better editors, but it does not improve their writing.’”

Aha. Maybe that’s why I’ve ended up as an editor!

And as for making my writing better, maybe something subliminal in the back of my brain helps me draw upon my diagramming experience to decide questions like whether to use “he” or “him” as the object of “who.”

Who knows?

What are your experiences with diagramming and what did you learn from it?




A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

To Market To Market

We write because of our passion for words or maybe we want to educate others, motivate, or just entertain. Whatever the reason, we write because we love it. 

Some people may write for their own private enjoyment, but most of us want millions to enjoy our hard work. Unfortunately, that means we have to get out there and market our books and ourselves. It would be great if they all lined up around the block at our book signings or packed the house at one of our book readings. 

However, if you are just starting out there is a good chance that’s not going to happen. You are going to have to push up your sleeves and get busy.

I'm not on the New York Times bestseller list... just yet, but I have picked up a few tips along the way.

• Don’t think just bookstores for signings. Who are your characters? Do they like to cook? Have a book signing in a kitchen store or the grand opening of a new restaurant.

• I sell children’s books.  You’ll find me at children’s boutiques, festivals and grand openings of any type of company that caters to children’s activities.

• Are your books geared towards female readers? Pair up with women who do home shows. Think Pampered Chef, Mary Kay and so on. Around the holidays your books may be just the last minute gift they were looking for.

• How about a workshop? Have something you can teach your readers? My books are geared toward getting children to move during the story, to use their imagination and their bodies to bring the story to life. I give workshops on health, exercise and nutrition. I sell most of my books at these events. Even if you don’t feel like you could give a workshop; you could pair up with an expert. Romance novels your niche? Pair up with a marriage counselor for a free workshop on building a better marriage. Murder mysteries your passion? Pair up with a police officer or marital arts expert to give a free seminar on protecting yourself.  Maybe poems are your thing. Pair up with a chocolate shop and have a tasting and a reading around Valentines Day. 

• The only limitation is your imagination.

 “There is no use trying,” said Alice;  “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll

By: Martha Swirzinski, author, presenter and teacher

Movementplus     
WholeChildPublishing