Off to a Great Book Marketing Start in 2017

Here is something directly from my #SharingwithWriters newsletter to get your book marketing year off to a great start. In that letter I include articles, letters-to-the-editor, Q&As a la Ann Landers, resources like opportunities and accessible contests and a whole lot more. It's also interactive--meaning subscribers can contribute and get credited with their author name, title, and links to their books. They help other writers and get a little exposure for doing so! Win, Win!  And it's free.

"Tip: When you mail a book —to editors, your readers, your reviewers—enclose a flier that give them more information on your other books or other services. This flier might include a request for a review or endorsement, a link to your Amazon profile page which showcases your all of your books, your blogs, your social networks. (If your profile page doesn’t do this, don’t lose a minute before you update it using Author Connect!) Not to worry! This idea is well rooted in publishing tradition. Big publishers do it with a flier commonly known as a sell sheet."

So, the next issue of SharingwithWriters will soon coming to an e-mail box--perhaps yours. If you aren't already subscribed, send me an e-mail with HoJoNews at AOL dot com and I'll do it for you or go to http://howtodoitfrugally.com.  There are subscription boxes in the top right corner of every page of the site. 

Back to shipping enclosures or sell sheets:  My New Year's gift to you will get you started using them in the New year. It is a copy of a professionally produced sell sheet for you to use as a guideline for your own sell sheet. Just e-mail me at HoJoNews at AOL dot com with SELL SHEET in the subject line and include your address. I'll send it to you in the mail. (I promise to delete and never use your address again!)  

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER

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 multi award-winning second edition of The Frugal Editor; and How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.  Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving. The Great First Impression Book Proposal, another booklet,  helps writers who want to be traditionally published.. 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 .

Book Marketing Case Study: The Gorgeous Books That Get Ignored

Case Study;

Getting Professionalism Wrong
or The Gorgeous Books That Get Ignored

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A long time ago, as time is measured in the publishing world, I received a beautiful hardcover book with a slick, arresting dust cover in the mail . Everything about it yelled “professionally published!” right down to the fact that it was written by the president of a well respected company. The trouble was, I hadn’t requested it, there was no personal note, and the letterhead on an enclosed sellsheet didn’t give me an e-mail address. I used the phone number supplied. A pleasant woman couldn’t answer my questions and took my number, but I never heard back from either her or the author. I promptly forgot about it. Then I received a note from one of my SharingwithWriters newsletter subscribers who edited the book asking if I had received it. I told her I hadn’t so she had the PR agency handling the book send me another.

Horrors. I now had two copies of the book. I wanted to bury my head in the sand but instead I thought I’d admit my mistake like any good professional and maybe help the author in the process. Here is my apology and the letter I hope gave her the information she needed to help the--obviously busy--author: 

Dear [Subscriber],

I apology for my part in a minor marketing fiasco. It is story we can learn from—a minor disaster that could be a major one if it is repeated many times. A minor disaster caused by an omission of contact information and a failure to followup on contacts. I hope we can both learn from this experience.

I received the second book you had your PR person send. When I saw it, I remembered that I did get the earlier copy. There was a letter in it both times, but it didn't mention you or our conversation we had. Nor did it include enough contact information to make it easy for recipients to gain access to the author or any other live person. Though it is a beautiful book, I get about two or three unrequested  and unexpected books a week and assumed it was one of those. Still, I take pains to try to contact people who send books to me as a matter of courtesy.  But there was no e-mail so I called. There was no personal contact on the phone, either. Just a person saying they would give the busy author a message. I received nothing back. So, I did a little more than usual. I went to the Website where there was also no personal contact information so I added the e-mail to my contact list, thinking that might work eventually. Apparently the author’s agency/handler did receive one of my e-mails and unsubscribed. So, I finally wrote off the whole experience as an impossible mess..

I don't know what contact/relationship you have with the company who promotes this book or with the author, but as professional as everything looks from the book to the letterhead, there are some gaps in this approach to marketing this book. I suspect the author cares enough about having his book read to pay a small fortune to get the word out there. I also suspect he is a busy businessman depending on other professionals to do what needs to be done to get it read.

And this is exactly why I wrote The Frugal Book Promoter. That is, I want authors to be very clear that no matter who publishers their books, does their publicity, their marketing...well, the more authors know and the more hands-on the process can be, the better it works. 

I hope you'll pass this long to that author if you are in a position to do so. The author is lucky to have you on his side. His book does seem to be full of information that will help many. It is a book that is professionally edited and produced and would therefore make a handsome gift.  Still, I can't help—make that don't have time to help--anyone who has chosen a publishing path so different from what works and that is to make it as easy as possible on the media and other gatekeepers to give them the exposure they need to sell books.. I only hope I am an isolated case.  For his sake and the sake of his prospective audience.

I hope you can see I wouldn't have taken the time to write you this treatise if I didn't care. I am certain you care!

Very best,

Carolyn

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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 multi award-winning second edition of The Frugal Editor; 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 .

Overcrowded Docs? Here's an Answer to the "Sell Sheet Dilemma"

Borrowing Green Formatting from the Greats . . .
 

Subscribers to this editing blog probably know how I feel about learning from the greats—in this case the Smithsonian magazine. You may also have figured out that I’m a greenie.

So, ta da! Introducing the paragraph icon. You know, the one that looks like a backward “P” with two heavy lines on the right. But instead of using it as an invisible formatting tool, Smithsonian can see its beauty and makes it a space-saving design element on the opening pages of their feature articles. That means the page has less white space (which costs money in print magazines), but it also may mean a little more space for nifty illustrations.

Smithsonian designers/formatters just stick one of these symbols into the copy anywhere there would normally be a new paragraph or the start of a new block of dialogue. That saves them lines between paragraphs and indent and end of paragraph space. 

 

 To make it ever-so-clear that this is intentional, they make the symbols a nice dark gray—a slight departure from the black used in their fonts. Here is information from Word how to make the paragraph symbol—one that can be seen—in your copy. http://www.ehow.com/how_6951039_insert-paragraph-sign-word-document.html.

 

I think this design element would be especially useful for authors’ sell sheets where every fraction of an inch counts. To make your paragraph icons gray, click on your Font Color icon in the ribbon in your Word program.

CHJ

 

PS: Subscribe to my free SharingwithWriters newsletter for more articles and tips like this and get a free e-copy of my Great Little Last-Minute Edits. Find subscription windows on the upper right corner of almost every page of my Web site http://howtodoitfrugally.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 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 .