The Book As a Revolutionary Product

I couldn't resist letting you see this video. You will love it, even if you have you book available electronically. It takes only three minutes to watch through to understand the value of book marks and book stands, will improve your Spanish (if you are interested), and is subtitled (which, if you're not interested, makes it funnier). 

Aren't we just too lucky to have the wonder of book technology?

Alternatively you can also see this at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhcPX1wVp38

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Deadline for Indie Author Opportunity!

As subscribers to this blog (subscribe in the right column!) and frequent visitors know, I believe in contests. Winners (and runners up, too!) can make their books stand out. I like this contest.  The cash prize makes it a gamble at least as good as most gambles in Las Vegas and you know how much fun those can be! The Frugal Editor was a runner up and proudly carries the Indie label. The marketing campaign for that same book came in first--and yes, winning contests was part of the plan. So, we're coming up on the deadline. What do you think? Here is the letter from the folks at Next Generation Indie Book Awards: 


Only one week left to enter and send your books in for the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards




If you would like to receive greater recognition, monetary prizes, awards and exposure for your books, here is an opportunity not to miss. Enter the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards at www.IndieBookAwards.com.



Calling all indie book authors and publishers - including small presses, mid-size independent publishers, university presses, e-book publishers, and self-published authors who have a book written in English released in 2010 or 2011 or with a 2010 or 2011 copyright date to enter the most rewarding book awards program.



It offers 60 Categories - More than 60 Awards - with 67 monetary prizes totaling more than $10,000 in cash, including $1,500 cash prizes plus trophies for best fiction book and best non-fiction book, $750 cash prizes plus trophies for second best fiction book and non-fiction book and $500 cash prizes plus trophies for third best fiction book and non-fiction book!



Entry Deadline - March 2, 2011.



The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest NOT-FOR-PROFIT book Awards program for independent authors and publishers and the only book awards program of its kind offering more monetary prizes, more awards, recognition and exposure including exposure to a leading Literary Agent for possible representation in areas such as distribution, foreign rights, film rights, and other rights!



Presented by Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group (IBPPG) in conjunction with Marilyn Allen of Allen O'Shea Literary Agency, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards was established to recognize and honor the top independently published books of the year. IBPPG was formed to provide support and recognition for the independent book publishing profession and we encourage all independent authors and publishers to enter their books in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards so that they too can earn recognition and receive other benefits from having an award-winning book!



Awards given to the Finalists and Winners of the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards are:



- $1,500 cash prize and trophy awarded to the best Fiction Book

- $1,500 cash prize and trophy awarded to the best Non-Fiction Book

- $750 cash prize and trophy awarded to the second best Fiction Book

- $750 cash prize and trophy awarded to the second best Non-Fiction Book

- $500 cash prize and trophy awarded to the third best Fiction Book

- $500 cash prize and trophy awarded to the third best Non-Fiction Book

- $250 cash prize and trophy awarded to the Best Design Book entry

- $100 Cash Prize and a Gold Medal awarded to the winner of each of the 60 categories

- Finalist Medals will be awarded to three finalists in each of the 60 categories



Finalists and Winners will also receive:



- An invitation to the gala awards ceremony held at the world famous Plaza Hotel in New York City in May, 2011

- A listing in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Catalog which will be distributed to thousands of book buyers, media, and others!

- Exposure for a full year at www.IndieBookAwards.com as a Winner or Finalist.

- The opportunity to display Finalist or Winner gold award stickers on your book.

- Other benefits of an award-winning book (such as potential increased revenue).



PLUS, the top 60 books will be sent to be reviewed by New York literary agent Marilyn Allen of Allen O'Shea Literary Agency or one of Ms. Allen's co-agents for possible representation in areas that could generate even more revenue for your book (unless an entrant prefers not to have their book forwarded to the agent). Ms. Allen has over 25 years of sales and marketing experience, including serving as Senior Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Director of Marketing for Harper Collins and directing sales and marketing teams for Simon & Schuster, Penguin Books and Avon Books. Ms. Allen has had the pleasure of working with many best-selling authors including Stephen King, Ken Follett, Barbara Kingsolver, John Gray, Mary Higgins Clark, and many more.



"Independently-published books have become a major source for quality fiction and non-fiction, but often go unrecognized by the mainstream publishing industry," notes Marilyn Allen. "Finally, an award program has been created to recognize talented authors from this important segment of our industry. Our agency represents over 100 authors and we're always looking for new talent, so it is a great pleasure to be part of this program. We look forward to reviewing the works of the 60 best candidates and helping these authors gain the recognition they deserve."

All Finalists and Winners will be notified prior to May 20, 2011.


ENTRY GUIDELINES AND CATEGORIES: For complete entry guidelines AND to see a list of the 60 categories you can enter go to http://www.indiebookawards.com/entryguidelines.php

ONLINE ENTRY FORM: To enter online now go to http://www.indiebookawards.com/onlineentryform.php




We wish you much success with your book!


S. Anderson
Awards Co-ordinator
Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group
www.IndieBookAwards.com


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Self-Publishing Coach Offers FREE Book Marketing Tools

We all love free stuff, but especially when it can save us time and boost our writing careers. My friend Shelley Hitz released a new e-booklet that she is offering to my blog visitors and subscribers. I love it. I've printed it out so I can read it at leisure, make notes, and begin to apply some of the ideas to my daily routine.  Here is her note to me:



Dear Carolyn:
I'm so excited to offer you my special report "200+ Free Book Marketing and Author Tools" for free!! I've been working diligently on this project for the past few weeks and it's finally finished and ready for you.
I truly believe many of these tools will help transform your book marketing and writing business and they are all free. There are some limitations on certain free versions of the tools, but I usually share those with you.
I know you'll want to dig into all these tools in my 36 page document right now, so here's the link. Make sure to save a copy to your computer to refer back to often.

200+ Free Book Marketing and Author Tools PDF Download:
http://www.self-publishing-coach.com/support-files/200-free-book-marketing-and-author-tools.pdf

(right click and choose save to computer)
This is my gift to you and to anyone else you think might benefit from it. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, with your friends and family.

I truly love helping others and so have had so much fun putting this report together knowing it will help many of you!

Enjoy!

Shelley Hitz , http://www.self-publishing-coach.com/

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Amazon's VERY Useful "Like" Button!

Sometimes an item in my SharingwithWriters newsletter bears repeating in my blog. Everyone loves my assortment of tips but this one is about a new and very useful feature from Amazon--one I don't want you to miss!

Tip:  Did you know Amazon now has “Like” buttons on your book’s sales page? They are similar to Facebook’s like buttons. To learn how they work, check my Father's Day chapbook (www.budurl.com/Imagining ) . Click on LIKE. You'll find it in the segment near the book title. Once you click on it, Twitter and Facebook buttons will show up, too!

BTW, when you use tweet and retweet buttons, adjust the wording on the tweets to appeal to your audience.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Amazon Kindle Lets Book Buyers Lend Books!

Based on past experience, I can hear some of my  blog subscribers and visitors virtually groaning about Amazon letting people lend out the Kindle books they have purchased. Many will see this as a way to sidestep an author's chance to collect more royalties!

Stop it! Right now!  Yes, I'm stamping my not-so-little foot!

This is a program designed to help you sell more books, not fewer! Amazon is letting your readers recommend your book—easily! By keeping the loan period short, Amazon has actually rigged the program for authors so that many who get a book loaned to them will go back and buy it for themselves . I mean, Kindle editions aren’t expensive, right? So rather than miss out, why not have one's own copy!  And we all know that word-of-mouth sells books. Now, if a reader of your Kindle edition lends your book, you’ll have two mouths out there working for you.
If you want to read the announcement directly from Amazon and get the link to Amazon’s FAQs on this program go to http://sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-kindle-lets-book-buyers-lend.html

And, if you want to know more about marketing books read  The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't  and maybe 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, Sixth Edition (1001 Ways to Market Your Books: For Authors and Publishers) from John Kremer. One book on promoting your baby is never enough!



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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Free Newsletter, Free E-Bribe (-:

Dear Subscribers:

I know I recently ran a newsletter promotion, but I just met a talented, smart, and giving woman on Twitter who has a Web site with lots of good stuff for writers on it (Isn’t networking wonderful?).

Shelley Hitz has a neat (short!) e-white paper called

“Get Published With No Upfront Costs!
7 Things Publishing Companies Don’t Want You to Know About Self Publishing.”

She’s letting me offer it to you if you recommend my Sharing with Writers newsletter to one of your fellow writers and they give you permission to subscribe them. You know the drill from last time:

1. Rave about Sharing with Writers newsletter to your friends.
2. If they bite, send their e-mail address to me at HoJoNews@aol.com. Put SUBSCRIBE:  FREE SEVEN THINGS WHITE PAPER in the subject line.
3. Paste their e-mail address in the body of the e-mail and send it to HoJoNews (at) AOL (dot) com.
4. I’ll subscribe them and send you both The Self-Publishing Coach’s white papers.

Alternately, you can have them subscribe to this blog and then let me know about it. Yeah, it's the honor system.

Then, if you’re at all interested in self publishing anything—from your next novel to a promotional e-book—you’ll go to Shelley's site and poke around a bit. Maybe sign up for her newsletter, too.

I hope this doesn’t seem too repetitious to you. It is a new opportunity, after all. It is the New Year and a great time to get enthusiastic. And, one must take advantage of these opportunites as they arise.

I hope to hear from you!

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog: