Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Is Your Book Getting Enough Attention?, September 15, 2004
I love authors who practice what they preach. Author and former publicist Carolyn Howard-Johnson has been one of my role models when it comes to book promotion, so I was elated to find that she now has a book on the topic. And a goldmine of a book it is.
This book is jam-packed with resources (many of them online), publicity protocol advice that'll make you feel like an instant insider, and creative techniques to publicize your work.
"Don't do what every other author does," she advises on page 35, and goes on to give us great examples of unusual strategies some authors have used to get attention for their books.
She tells us how to evaluate how well our efforts are paying off in a quantifiable manner, something I've never done before. She teaches us about branding, and why it's more important for an author to have a "brand" than to publicize one book at a time.
If you need to know what belongs in a media kit, where to submit articles for promotion, what to bring to a writers' conference, how to use promotional gifts and where to get them on the cheap, how to build mailing lists, where reviewers hang out, how to do a TV interview, even how to make your own ARCs... it's all here.
Book publicity is an enormous topic, and one of the things I liked so much about this book is that it's not overwhelming. It doesn't attempt to give you every detail of every technique you might ever use. Instead, it gives overviews and examples, always in a straightforward, no-fluff-added way. By the end, you'll have a good sense of the possibilities that exist and can investigate further any ones that interest you in particular.
This book earns my highest approval and I believe it will be of great help to authors, whether self-published or traditionally-published.
--Jenna Glatzer
Author of MAKE A REAL LIVING AS A FREELANCE WRITER
and editor-in-chief of AbsoluteWrite.com
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book filled with useful Information, January 15, 2005
Humans are social animals. We like to associate with others to share our thoughts, blessings, and woes. But above all this, we love to express our opinions and demonstrate our knowledge about matters both mundane and extraordinary. Over the eons our penchant for giving advice has led to a phenomenon called the how to book. There are how to books on subjects ranging from the simplest household tasks to how to be a good parent or an amazing lover.
Authors are no exception to the rule, and are very eager to give advice to each other from how to write and publish your first novel to publicizing that novel and promoting yourself. Being an author, I know how important publicizing ones work is and how necessary it is to promote oneself. Because other writers know how eager their colleagues are to place themselves in the public eye, there are many books in the market place that offer publicity and promotion tips. More often than not, these suggestions require great expenditure and that is something most underpaid writers can't afford.
However, "The Frugal Book Promoter" by Carolyn Howard -Johnson offers solutions that cost more in time than money, and time is something any committed writer must be prepared to spend. The author admits at the start of the book that some of her advice is based on her opinion, but this is an opinion garnered from years of being in public relations and from successfully promoting and publicizing her first two books.
The book starts off with some simple and helpful hints. The author speaks about branding yourself instead of publicizing yourself. Later she goes on to explain this more fully. Every time an author writes an article, short story, or book review and publishes it in a magazine, newspaper, ezine or website, he or she should end with their tagline. A tagline can be the author's name and works, for example, Gloria Fox author of One Missing Shoe along with email and website address.
In the first chapters, Howard-Johnson addresses normal author concerns such as plagiarism: how often it is really done and how to guard against it by copyrighting. She also discusses P.R or how to publicize your book through media releases, publishing excerpts from your book, and author interviews among other things.
"The Frugal Book Promoter" is so filled with information that it would take several pages to describe. Howard-Johnson spends time elaborating on the things to do before the book comes out, building a Media Kit, entering contests, making contacts by attending conferences and how to decide which ones to attend and what to do while there. She discusses the importance of having your own website and how to have one built for a reasonable fee. She gives you a list of websites to go to that will teach you how to build one or help you get ones for free. She also explains the necessity of making a personal mailing list of family, friends, co-workers, your church group and so on.
The author takes you through the process of what to do when you get a publisher's contract, the questions to ask and the pitfalls to avoid. She also gives advice on what to do after the book is published, how to get reviews, the importance of book signings and book fares, how to use the media including internet radio and public announcements in local papers. Her section on Amazon.Com is excellent. She explains how to establish a free account and how to use tools such as Listamania, book reviews, and the All About Me section.
One of the aspects of this book that I thought most valuable was the list of websites included in every chapter. They ranged from websites that help you with the mechanics of writing to review sites, and sites that help you sell and promote the book. There is also an appendix filled with wonderful things, like sample query letters.
As a writer, I found this book a very useful tool. Even if you don't agree with some of the author's opinions, the share amount of research that went into this book will awe you. One of the results of this extensive research though, is that the book can seem overwhelming. The solution to this is to treat it as a toolbox. When you need a tool, open the box and take it out, or study the specific chapter or chapters in this case. Beginning authors will find this an enlightening how to book and even old veterans might learn some things they never knew. I did.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Gift for Writers, August 12, 2004
Where does a new author go for help on promoting her book? Sure, there's the usual word of mouth, advise from fellow writers, reliance on agents, publishers and publicists. But if you really want to understand the process, and make educated decisions about promotion - read The Frugal Promoter. Howard-Johnson's fertile brain has delivered for us a book that manages to surprise in all its specificity and breadth of information. She's translated her hard-earned experiences, the ups and downs of promotion, into a highly readable how-to, a master blueprint for novices and veterans of the PR wars alike. Don't be fooled by the word "frugal" in the title. It belies a generous spirit. This is a colleague who truly wants others to succeed.
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