Free Writers' School--Kid You Not!

Dear Sharing with Writers and Visitors:

 I’m joining well-known book marketer Trissa Tismal in a summer school opportunity and wanted you to have the information in time to take advantage of this f r ^ ^ opportunity.

 The program shares everything you need to know—and what you can do--to write, publish, and sell millions of books in a special "Author Summer School." Only THIS summer school is taught by experts who will cover only what authors and aspiring authors need to know and leave out the fluff.

That’s right! School is in for summer. And the good news is that tuition is free!

 I'm one of the experts Trissa is bringing together. Trissa's calling me "Professor Howard-Johnson" (and that sounds even more like a hotel!). I'm inviting you to enroll in Trissa’s Author Summer School as my guest--for free .

 Each of the Summer School experts has practical, grounded information to help you get into gear this summer so you can go into full swing for autumn.

 Which is why I am sending this out early, so you can enroll today and reserve the August 7^th morning. I did say for FR ^ ^ did I not?

 Here's the link to get on board:

http://authorbestseller.com/dap/a/?a=28

 Curriculum covers…

· How to make your manuscript speak to a publisher who receives 10,000 of them a year.

· How you get your book onto the shelves of libraries and bookstores.

· With millions of books published each year, how do you stand out?

· How to write your e-book in 72 hours or less

· How do you leverage your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts to promote your book?

· What are media outlets looking for and how do you get free publicity?

· How you can sell millions of books

· And MORE!

Click here now to claim your full scholarship and enroll for, yep, free!

 Hope to see you at school!

 Happy Promoting and Editing,

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

P.S. No, I don't wear one of those wacky mortar board hats, but as one of the professors in Trissa’s Author Summer School, you can ask me anything—well most anything!—and I’ll answer it.

So let's get you enrolled, OK?  I mean, you cannot get more frugal than this.

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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:

Goodreads Free Promotion Gets Reviews for You

Thought Sharing with Writers visitors and subscribers would like to see this promotion and review-getting idea offered by GoodReads. My poetry partner Maggie Ball remembered this one. Be sure to click through and see how many entries we received for a free copy in just a few hours! If we can do it with poetry, you can do it with a so-called easier-to-promote genre! Thought you'd also like a sample of Maggie's poetry.

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Deeper Into the Pond

by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Released July 12 2011

Giveaway ends in 3 days (July 31, 2011)
1 copy available, 146 people requesting
giveaway details »

Enter to win

Jupiter’s Moons

If I pushed through this mortal cage
flew out past the atmosphere
to find you
my chalky friend
would you reach through the icy crust
of Europa
wet from your briny ocean
your extremophile heart
growing larger from the contamination
of an all too early touch.

Would it be enough
in the transitory evolution of your life
to link up
our temporarily compatible minds
dancing through the lava flows of Io.

Could you teach me
to breathe
thin oxygen
Jupiter's magnetic field
raining onto the surface of Ganymede.

When we part ways
kissing goodbye on Callisto
would you cry Gallilean tears
against my endless female needs
for atmospheres, oceans
amino acids

 

(Copyright: Magdalena Ball, 2011)

See the other chapbooks in our Celebration Series at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/poetry_books.htm .

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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:

Making Marketing Lemonade Out of Controversy

In The Frugal Book Promoter I talk about making good lemonade out of a very sour fruit and here is a way to do that. It seemed easier to just include the entire release that explains a copycat of Maggie Ball's and my series.--intentional "borrowing" or not.  This way we all get some publicity for it.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Magdalena Ball

maggieball@compulsivereader.com
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
HoJonews@aol.com

Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

Poets Take Borrowing in Stride If It Increases Poetry Readership

July 22, 2011: It was only a matter of time before someone stole the idea that Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball first meted when they created Cherished Pulse, the inaugural book in their poetry based Celebration Series.

Of course the idea of using poetry as a form of gift or greeting card isn't new. People have been using poetry to celebrate big events like marriage, wedding anniversaries, and milestones since Homer's day, but nowadays most of the expensive greeting cards in shops are so rife with platitudes that they've ceased to have any meaning at all and can hardly be called poetry. What was new was making chapbooks into a kind of carriage trade greeting card with real poetry grouped around holiday themes. They are genuine messages that mean something. Make the books as inexpensive as a card, and as beautiful as a gift book, and you've got a gift that provides sentiment that won't be thrown out with the wrapping paper.

That has always been the rationale behind Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball's Celebration series, which includes a range of chapbooks clustered around themes like Valentine's Day: Cherished Pulse (www.budurl.com/CherishedPulse ), Father's Day: Imagining the Future (www.budurl.com/Imagining ), Mother's Day: She Wore Emerald Then (www.budurl.com/MotherChapbook ), Christmas: Blooming Red (www.budurl.com/bloomingred), and the newly released feminist inspired Deeper into the Pond, suitable for any female birthday or celebration (www.budurl.com/DeeperPond ). All of the chapbooks are as inexpensive as a high end card, attractive, featuring real art, and perfect for gift giving.

So it's no surprise that others are copying the idea.

This is what happened. Three years after the release of the Celebration Series. Relationships Australia, Australian Poetry Ltd, and artists/designers Gracia and Louise have just released their own father-themed book titled Dear Dad, promoted specifically as a great Father's Day greeting card/gift. It's a little dearer than the Celebration Series offered by Ball and Howard-Johnson, but it's a great idea featuring some excellent Australian poets, and probably the tip of the iceberg when it comes to real poetry as greetings. Why not? Poetry is always a good gift.

Learn more about Ball and Howard-Johnson's work at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/poetry_books.htm .

For more about Dear Dad, visit: http://www.australianpoetry.org/blog/2011/07/19/dear-dad-2nd-edition-pre-sales.

For more information on Ball and Howard-Johnson’s Celebration series and their Father’s Day entry, visit www.howtodoitfrugally.com/more_on-Imaginings.htm.

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Images and media kits available on request: HoJoNews@aol.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:

Cracking the QR Code for iPhones

So these things you've been seeing around are square and sometimes look like flowers. Sometimes more like puzzles. Sometimes more like computer chips. What the heck are they?

Even if you know what they are, you may not have figured how you can use them in your promotion. So here’s the scoop:

They’re called quick response codes or QRs, for short. They are a kind of barcode, but they impart tons of information. They’ll take you to a Web page, play a video, make a call—it’s the author’s (or retailers’) choice. The first time I saw one was in a restaurant. The tent card on our table offered a discount to anyone who signed up for their club right then and there using their quick response code, which, by the way, looked more like a Rorschach test. I wrinkled my nose and shoved my palms in the air. My daughter laughed, pulled out her iPhone, waved the camera part over the code like a wand (you need to have one of these gadgets to make a QR work!). And hocus pocus! A coupon. The next time we eat at Fratelli’s we get $10 off of our meal. Easy.

Well, you know me. I’m thinking Book Fairs. I’m thinking Trade Shows (Like Book Expo America). I’m thinking Book Signings. I’m also thinking paperless (because I’m green) and Web site traffic (because I market)!

You can put QRs anywhere, from your business cards to your ads to the poster you use at book fairs. I'll even be putting one on the cover of my next how-to book for authors.

The LA Times reports that some folks have them tattooed on their bodies. Really avid authors could do that alongside their book cover image. Ahem!

QRs can lead your reader (or prospective reader) to how-to videos that also entice them to read your book. Or lead your seminar students to recommended reading lists. Retailers everywhere are using them. Macy’s. Starbucks. Even ReMax. Best Buy is plastering them on the cases and boxes of the electronics they sell.

QRs aren’t all that new. They were invented in the 1990s, but their use has doubled in the last year, probably because they are so accessible to smart phones now.

Now, if we could just pass our little phone wand over them and get someone to transfer our data from our old computers to our new ones at no charge and fast. That would be magic!

It would also be magic if you e-mailed me (HoJoNews@aol.com) with ideas you have for using QRs in book marketing. C’mon. Be a sport. Share!

The leading maker of codes is Scanbury. Related to them is a program called Scanlife ™ (http://scanbuy.com/web/handset-manufacturers) . You can read even more about them at Tony Eldridge’s marketing tips, http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com/2011/04/resource-of-week-qr-code-generator.html . And you can get free codes made at http://qrcode.kaywa.com/. 

Unfortunately, Blogger won't accept my new code (it isn't jpg, etc. ), but if you'd like to see how it leads you to my writers' resources pages at www.howtodoitfrugally.com, e-mail me at HoJoNews@aol.com with QR code in the subject line.  I'll send the cute little thing back to you. You'll see what it looks like, learn about the process, and--at the end--find the most amazing collections of writers' aids you've seen in a long time. (-:

 

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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:

KFC Slam Dunks an Old Marketing Technique Writers Can Use

 Holy moly. Talk about a smart marketing move!

In The Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo), I advocated watching current events and hooking them to anything in one’s book that might relate to one of them. Kentucky Fried Chicken just showed us how to do that! Big time!

They paid attention to one of Wade Dwyane’s tweets asking if anyone was hiring after the NBA lockout. Dwyane used to work for KFC, so they offered him his old job back. If he’d lead a team filling KFC buckets fast (instead of NBA baskets), they’d donate $250,000 to charity. Geesh! That is cheap advertising when they figure how much publicity they’ll get with this master stroke of publicity-getting! Here is the link to read more: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nba/story/2011-07-11/kfc-offers-dwyane-wade-a-job-during-lockout?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl10%7Csec1_lnk3%7C218968 .

So you don’t have $250,000 to do something similar? You don’t need to. You just need to keep your marketing bonnet on so that when the opportunity arises, you will be there. Maybe it will cost you $5. Maybe it will be free. But when it comes, you don’t want to miss it!

Writers who would like more tips like this may want to subscribe to my Sharing with Writers newsletter. Just  send a SUBSCRIBE message to HoJoNews@aol.com and I'll do it for you! (-: Or subscribe to this blog. Actually do both so you don't miss even one tip on book promotion, craft, or publishing news.

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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:

Poets Come Up with Great Promo Idea for Hard-To-Market Genres

I thought I'd tell you about a promotion idea using e-books, paperback books, and Smashwords coupons--all at once. It is the brainchild of my poetry partner Magdalena Ball and I and I thought those of you who write in the so-called hard-to-promote genres could adapt it. Of course, we also hope you'll consider using our poetry for your Christmas greetings. Here it is!

 

 

 

My writing partner Magdalena Ball and I figure nothing is more meaningful at any holiday than a poem—a real poem, not sing-song impersonal verse from the shelves of card shops (I've always disliked that kind of card exept for the way they sometimes use glitter, which is kind of hard to do with a chapbook!).

 

We've also noticed that many people order imprinted holiday greetings (very expensive ones!) in July. With that in mind we're offering a great Christmas-in-July incentive to those early birds who want to gift a chapbook Blooming Red: Christmas Poetry for the Rational to cherished friends. .

But how would poetry lovers, literature lovers and those who just like something different and beautiful to use as mini gifts or greetings know if this little booklet is for them?

We've arranged to get the e-book version for 50% off until August 6. That means your sample comes to you for a mere $1.98 using the special coupon code ZZ47S when you go to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/45393

Then, when you fall in love with the exquisite poetry and the beautiful artwork by award-winning California watercolorist Vicki Thomas, you can order 25 full paperback booklets for only $3.00 each. This is a substantial discount from Amazon’s price of $6.95 each. They become your card and gift in one and orders of 12 or more come autographed by Carolyn. That’s got to be more personal than an imprint.

You just send your shipping address with your check or money order to:

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

PO Box 1101
LaCanada-Flintridge, CA 91012-1101

Include $6. Ship charges for the continental US and $12 worldwide, any quantity. Please order before August 15^th.

Blooming Red includes Maggie's science-inspired and my nostalgic poetry. It also includes some humorous poems for fair measure.

For more information on any of the chapbooks in this poetry series, contact either Carolyn or me, or visit media rooms at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com or http://www.magdalenaball.com. To learn more about artist Vicki Thomas and to see her selections of her work, go to http://www.vickithomasartist.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:

In the News: E-book Sales Outstrip Books in Print at Amazon

News Release from Amazon: A few weeks ago Amazon announced that Kindle books were outselling hardcovers on Amazon and many authors misread that to mean they were outselling all books on Amazon. I corrected that misconception in my Sharing with Writers newsletter, but now I need to retract because now the “mistake” came true. Here is Amazon’s announcement. Just out!

Amazon Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Print Books

Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later in November 2007, Amazon introduced the revolutionary Kindle and began selling Kindle books. By July 2010, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and six months later, Kindle books overtook paperback books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books - hardcover and paperback - combined.

"Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly - we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years," said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com. Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

PS: Those who would like to received my Sharing with Writers newsletter with all of its tips on editing, craft, and promotion need only go to www.howtodoitfrugally.com to sign up. See the right column and ask for your freebie when you do!  

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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:

Fave Book Marketing Technique

LA Times reports that Nora Roberts’ foundation has funded what may be a first-ever writing program at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. The college will offer an academic minor in romance literature.  Her foundation contributed $100,000, but small community colleges will usually work with authors to sponsor something like a scholarship in writing at a much smaller figures for scholarships and other support.

I've long recommended making your own news as part of your marketing campaign. In fact, it's a favorite because often it involves doing something great for someone else. Roberts' new venture sure is a good example of how well this idea can work. 

Read about how to make something like this work for you (some much more frugally!) in The Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo).

By the way, Roberts will hold an international conference on romance novels in November.

----- 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: