Publisher Shares a Don’t Miss Opportunity

I am publishing a note I received in its entirety because of the resources it offers, but also because it leads with a personal note—something I have long recommended but seldom see. What else is here that practically assures it will be remembered if not used by the recipient? Here it is: 

“There's a no-cost webinar coming up for those who would like contribute articles to the Historical Society of Michigan publications.  This includes Michigan History Magazine (now in its 103rd year of publication) as well as Chronicle (for HSM's 5000  members only). 

Seminar to be held on June 18th at 10:00am.  Registration at no cost here http://hsmichigan.org/programs/michigan-history-alliance

“If you've never been published, magazine writing is a great way to build your connections and visibility.

“If you have already published a book, magazine bylines are a great way to keep promoting.  I know Carolyn Howard-Johnson would agree with me on this.

“Regards

Victor (Publisher, Modern History Press)”

Join us for a special Michigan History Alliance® Virtual Meeting, Thursday, June 18, at 10 a.m. All History Is Local…And Should Be Told: How to Submit Content for HSM Magazines Added HSM Programs for Your Organization's Members Open to Both Members and Nonmembers The COVID-19 coronavirus is impacting all organizations, museums, and historical societies. Although we cannot hold our usual in-person Michigan History Alliance meetings right now, we are offering special Virtual Meetings. Our next Virtual Meeting will be on Thursday, June 18, at 10 a.m. Easily register on our website! Attendance at this special Michigan History Alliance Virtual Meeting is FREE of charge. Alliance members and nonmembers alike from anywhere in the state are welcome to join us to share concerns and suggestions about coping with the impact of COVID-19 on their organizations. Bring your questions, concerns, and suggestions on how to function under the current conditions. Bob Myers, HSM’s director of education, will provide updates on the programs that HSM has added to assist our member organizations during the coronavirus outbreak. In addition, Nancy Feldbush, HSM’s director of communications and editor in chief of HSM Magazines, will present: All History Is Local…And Should Be Told: How to Submit Content for HSM Magazines Do you feel as if getting a story about your local history published in Michigan History or Chronicle is out of reach? It’s not. Join us for a discussion about HSM’s two magazines and all the different sections to which you could contribute, including news blurbs, one- and two-page special sections, and feature articles. Learn more on our website or by calling (800) 692-1828. The Michigan History Alliance® is a regionalized program of the Historical Society of Michigan that helps our member organizations preserve and promote history by providing training for their staff and volunteers, fostering collaboration, and sharing information and best practices. Each Michigan History Alliance® meeting is FREE for HSM member organizations and takes place in the morning from 9 a.m. to noon. The meeting consists of a featured speaker, who offers insights on a topic of concern or opportunity, and a networking and collaboration session, which allows for conversations among a region’s historical organizations. Representatives of both member and nonmember organizations are welcome to attend our special Virtual Meetings.

-- 
Regards,

Victor R. Volkman, President
L H Press Inc.
www.LHPress.com

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER

 Howard-Johnson is the multi award-wining author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers including the multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter , now offered by Modern History Press in its third edition. Carolyn's latest is in the #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers is How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Learn more on her Amazon profile page (http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile). Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers (http://bit.ly/Last-MinuteEditing) is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving--and, another booklet, The Great First Impression Book Proposal (http://bit.ly/BookProposalsII) helps writers who want to be traditionally published. The Frugal Editor (http://bit.ly/FrugalEditor), now in its second edition, is the winningest book in the series. Carolyn also has three frugal books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it will help them convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is 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 (http://bit.ly/RetailersGuide). In addition to this blog, Carolyn helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs at all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor (http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com)

Occasionally it dawns on me that writers have other jobs and/or are searching for other jobs. I thought this was important enought for enoug writers to put it into my SharingwithWriters (www.howtodoitfrugally.com) newsletter. (-:

The LA Times reports that people looking for jobs (that includes writers looking for work) should prepare two categories of resumes, “one for humans and one of computers.” That’s because only 10-10% of resumes—those with lots of matches for the very specific skills they are looking for—will ever be seen by a human. Example: a algorithm will recognize work-experience words like the names of specific skills a writer has and programs a writer is familiar with.  A person’s interest might be piqued by words like “career successes” and “accomplishments,” which are far more general. Having said that, I think humans would also appreciate some gritty detail! (-: That’s what we writers are good at doing.  

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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 . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

An Important Book for Freelancers (and Other Writers Too!) in This Recession

I usually post book reviews at The New Book Review but this one! Well this one is such an important book. In this economy it may even be important to writers of fiction because it will help them make a living by writing! A caveat here. The author, Peter Bowerman, has been a friend of mine for some years--since I met him when we both spoke at a Small Publishers of North America College back in about 2001. But I became a fan because of his expertise and I wouldn't tell you this is an important book if it weren't. So, here is The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Commercial Freelancer in Six Months or Less!


PREMISE:

In the course of communicating with customers and employees, companies of all sizes generate an enormous volume of writing. Yet, in today’s downsized business world, outsourcing is king. Many companies are asking: “Why pay salaries and benefits when freelancers – offering a wide range of talent and fresh “outsider” perspectives – give us only what we need, and only when we need it?”

BACKGROUND:

In 1993, in less than four months, Peter Bowerman built a lucrative “paying-all-the-bills” commercial writing practice: writing for businesses, large and small and for hourly rates of $50-125+ (and did so with NO industry contacts, previous paid writing experience or writing training).

In 2000, he released The Well-Fed Writer, a detailed blueprint to help others do the same. The book became an award-winning Book-of-the-Month Club selection. In 2004, he released a companion volume (95% new content), TWFW: Back For Seconds (triple-award finalist), to fill in the gaps left by the original title.

The new title includes the heavily updated content of BOTH original titles.

EXPLODING MYTHS:

In its 368 pages, this new edition demolishes the stereotype of the “starving writer,” and with the same level of exhaustive how-to detail that earned the original titles high marks from readers. Indeed, the book assumes nothing on the part of readers other than decent writing ability and a desire to turn it into a handsome living.

Drawing from the author’s own experiences and those of dozens of commercial writers worldwide, TWFW shows why it’s a promising field for good writers, what qualities you need to succeed, where the projects are, how to land them, what to charge, how to get paid, and how to get hired again and again – even with less-than-brilliant writing ability.

EASING FEARS:

While marketing strategies fill the book, TWFW acknowledges the deathly fear of Sales and Marketing harbored by most “creatives,” and devotes an entire early chapter to demystifying the “Panic Pair” and helping readers develop a “marketing mindset” – minus the pulse-pounding anxiety.

In addition, the book speaks to writers with unusual writing niches as well as those building the business part-time or in smaller markets. Marketing by phone, email, direct mail, web sites and networking are all covered.

AUDIENCES:

While the WFW titles have always appealed to writers (seasoned and aspiring), at-home Moms, ex-journalists and PR people, home-based business-seekers, 55+ career-changers, and others, the economic times have made the book attractive to another group: the many long-unemployed job seekers seeking to leverage past career experience into a flexible lucrative profession offering strong income potential along with enviable quality of life. All will find TWFW a useful tool to start, build and manage an unusually profitable writing business.

Please take a minute to let Peter and me know what you think of exploding that myth that the adjective "starving" must accompany the noun "writer." The comment link is sort of orangish. Find it below. (-:

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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 for writers, 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. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is 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. 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.

Q&A a la Ann Landers: On Multiple Submissions

Question:

I have contacted you before and think [The Frugal Book Promoter] is great. I may have missed this in your book, but I wanted to know if you send articles to magazines, is there anything wrong with sending the same one's to different magazines at the same time?

Thank you so much,
Diana Dodson

Answer:

There isn't anything ethically wrong with sending the same article to several different magazines at once as long as you let the magazines you are contacting know when one of the others accepts your idea. The same is true for sending queries to literary agents and book publishers. In fact many who ask for exclusive submissions are aware that the practice is patently unfair to the author and rigged in favor of the convenience of the publisher or agent. One can hardly blame them for trying to make their jobs easier.

One of the reasons that some publishing entities object to the practice is that when writers do submit many at a time they sometimes forget to tailor each of the query letters for the publisher they are approaching.

Looking at it this way, these editors have good reason to expect exclusive submissions. Each magazine, newspaper, blog, or Web site will have a different style and will have published different articles in the past (maybe one similar to your idea), etc. So, unless you've done the research, the scatter-gun query technique usually doesn't work very well. Further, your query letter will have a better chance at success if the editor can tell that it is to directed solely to her and her magazine. But if authors and freelance writers tailor their letters as if they are exclusives but still send several at once, well--that seems to be a fair balance to me.

The query letter approach is the accepted one in the freelance world. The idea is to ascertain if the magazine has an interest in your story idea rather than writing your whole article first. You might want to write a couple lead paragraphs so that an editor can get a feel for your voice, but beyond that, you'll save yourself lots of time by waiting to do the rest. When an editor accepts, she may even suggest you take a whole new tack to the one you suggested.

As you know, you'll find a general template or two for query letters in The Frugal Editor along with information on how to avoid certain query letter booboos. You'll also find query letter samples and media release samples in The Frugal Book Promoter.

Hope that helps, Diana
CHJ

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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 for writers, 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. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is 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. 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.

Six Things I Learned from SouthWest Airlines's Magazine Editor

This post is a related slightly to the one that came before on junk mail. But it has a few reminders that one didn't. It will be republished in next week's Sharing with Writers newsletter.



It seems Jay Heinrichs, editorial director of SouthWest Airlines' inflight magazine, Spirit, is especially interested in writing--more than one might expect from his position with the magazine. The recent issue was replete with articles on writing so presumably he believes that will interest his flying public. Even his editorial is aimed at writing--books in particular. He says, that it is a long-held belief in the publishing world that if a book is about Lincoln, doctors or dogs, it will fly off book shelves. He came up with a tongue in cheek title of his own, Lincoln's Dog-Training Secrets that sports a big "Doctor Approved" shout insignia on the cover. Kind of a cute cover, too, which as we all know, helps books fly off of bookstore shelves.

So what did I learn from this issue of Spirit?

#1 If you have a good article on any of Heinrichs's three preferred subjects, send him a proposal. He is--obviously--already presold on the idea! With his interest in writing, he may also be interested in articles on writing that would appeal to his audience.

#2 Heinrichs recently self-published his own book, Sniff it First and 15 Other Things I learned From my Cat (also a pretty darn good title, even lacking doctors, Lincoln and dogs!). This tells me that Heinrichs has the experience and savvy not to judge a book by the press it is printed on. He says self-publishing "gives a voice to brilliant people who otherwise couldn't publish, while allowing a guy like me, unfortunately, to do a cat book." So, he might not easily dismiss your feature story idea or your title as a gift suggestion.

#3 The value of humor. You know I believe in it or I wouldn't use Anne Louise's "Humor Hints" in most issues of this newsletter. It is apparent from the title (though I haven't read Heinrichs's book yet!) that he used humor. He, obviously is using self-effacing humor to promote it as well.

#4 That cat books may sell darn nearly as well as dog or doctor or Lincoln books.

#5 That having a platform from which to dive will surely help sell your book. (Heinrichs's is his visibility as an editor of Spirit!) And that when you have an excellent platform, that may be the time not to give all the book's profits to a big publisher anyway. (Your platform could be your former writing, your Rolodex full of clients or whatever.)

#6 That reading when you fly can be beneficial to your writing career. That goes for this newsletter, Sharing with Writers, too. Don't skim, read! (-:

To research departments and content of Spirit go to http://www.spiritmag.com/contact.php.

To subscribe to Sharing with Writers send an e-mail with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line to HoJoNews@aol.com or go to www.howtodoitfrugally.com for an auto subscribe box.


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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 and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.