Free Christmas Promotion Idea for About Anything Christmasy!

If you have a Christmas product (book), story, poem, cookbook, or artwork, you're going to love ChristmasDaddy.com. This tip will go in the December 18 issue of my SharingwithWriters newsletter, but I didn't want to make my blog subscribers and visitors wait.  What a way to drive traffic to your Web site.

PS: You just knew I couldn't send out a newsletter without a marketing tip in it, right? This is an example of how you can use a free service from ChristmasDaddy.com: http://www.christmasdaddy.com/christmas-news/north-pole-press/Poetry_for_Christmas.shtml. It's an example of how my poetry partner Magdalena Ball and I used it to promote our Christmas chapbook Blooming Red (http://amzn.to/BloomingRedKind ).

 

Christmas Daddy says: "Advertise for FREE! Submit an article for either Christmas Stories, Christmas Recipes, Christmas Decorating, or Christmas Event Ideas and we will place your article with links back to your site or charity site you designate. You can even submit a banner ad to be placed with your article. Click here to get the details. http://www.christmasdaddy.com/christmas-article-submission.html ."

BTW, if you'd like to subscribe to my free SharingwithWriters newsletter, put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of an e-mail and send it to HoJoNews (at) AOL (dot) com.  I'll subscribe for 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 award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; 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 .

Poetic, Green Promotion

Yvonne Perry is the owner of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services. She and her company produces Writers in the Sky Newsletter (http://www.writersinthesky.com/writing-newsletter.html) a free monthly publication filled with articles, announcements, and information about the craft and business of writing, publishing, and book marketing. Yvonne came up with the clever idea to promote her newsletter by creating a community chapbook compiled of poems submitted by anyone who wished to contribute.

The chapbook was distributed to everyone in her network on Friday, the thirteenth. She took a day that many people see as ominous and made it into a day that poetry lovers everywhere would appreciate. She saw substantial increase in the number of subscribers added to her newsletter list as a result of this effort, and everyone in the community benefitted.

This promotion also encouraged communication among her contacts. I thought it a wonderful way to both promote and help other writers (in this case, poets). Thus I wanted to share the idea with you.

The poetry chapbook can be downloaded at http://writersinthesky.com/WITSChapbook09.html You may want to use it as a template for your own green, poetic promotion!

Oh, by the way. It's green, because the project is paperless. Just want to be clear here. Ha!

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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 two how to books, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". 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 blog.

Think Valentine's Day a Bit Early

My frequent poetry coauthor and I are thinking about not neglecting our Valentines this year. And we don't want you to neglect yours. Either your love or your associates or your customers.

Editor of CompulsiveReader.com Magdalena Ball is my poetry partner and, this Valentine’s, my poetry love. She set up the poetry chapbook we collaborated on last year at Valentine’s so it could be a free gift to Sharing with Writers subscribers (both the newsletter and this blog). Cherished Pulse is a beautiful e-chapbook, in no small part because of the artwork by Vicki Thomas and Maggie’s formatting skills. You could print it out on fine linen paper, staple it together, add a beautiful violet bookmark ribbon and have a very inexpensive valentine for someone on your list.

Or, you could just send the people you love the link and so they could enjoy it online. The link for the .pdf file is http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/images/Cherished Pulse.pdf. (Note: it is only available at no cost until February 18.)

You could add the link to your blog or your newsletters as a gift from you to your subscribers and readers, too. We won’t mind. For we hope that people like our poetry enough to then--perhaps!--buy the new chapbook we collaborated on for one of the mothers on your list for Mother’s Day. Illustrated with May Lattanzio’s beautiful photographs, it is She Wore Emerald Then: Reflections on Motherhood now available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/She-Wore-Emerald-Then-Reflections/dp/1438263791/ .

Originally Maggie and I collaborated because we recognized that often Hallmark cards don’t quite say what we would have them say. A little too rhymey and too syrupy. Poetry (as opposed to verse), can be read by someone with a little more detachment yet still feel the love.

We hope you will take advantage of our free offer for Valentine’s and, if you think Maggie’s science-inspired or my nostalgic poetry will be appreciated by your audience or by someone on your personal Mother’s day list, you’ll support that chapbook, too.

Happy Writing, Promoting and Editing, too!
Carolyn Howard-Johnson

PS: If you want to sweeten your poetry gift up, you could include a virtual bon-bon or the real thing--perhaps Lady Godiva.

PSS: My chapbook Tracings (Finishing Line Press) is also still available on Amazon and comes with the satin bookmark ribbon so you can have it shipped directly as a gift and have something that feels--well...artsy--arrive in someone's mailbox. http://www.amazon.com/Tracings-Carolyn-Howard-Johnson/dp/1599240173/

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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 two how to books, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". 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 blog.