Perking Up the New Year for Authors

 

A Couple Bulleted Lists of Ideas that May Perk Up the New Year

 

         Tuning Up for 2025 with Ideas Old and New

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, poet, fiction writer, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of Books For Writers 

It’s the new year! You may have lots of ideas for writing waiting to come to fruition and you’re eager to get started, but if you enthusiasm for marketing has become a bit stale, the new year is a good time for that. With new experiences come new ideas, new contacts, new skills. You might even find a new enthusiasm…or, imagine this! A boost in book sales! So let’s get tuned up. It’s 2025!

Tada! Out jumps the idea of magazines. They need content and the authors of books can be ongoing resources for them! About 7,000 slick magazine titles—each with several editions per year—are published in the US each year. Some of them are trade magazines related to an industry featured in your book. Others are regional and their audience lives in the same area your book is set in—or the one you were raised in. Others have broader interests. And most of them don’t get bombarded with media releases like the mainstream media does. Others, like this list, might have something pertinent for yours.

§  Magazines are usually desperate for seasonal material that thrive on gift news including books as well as personal interest and inspirational stories. You may have one to offer them.

§  It’s that book of yours that makes you credible enough to be considered for feature stories or quoted. Include information about your book in your interviews or in articles you write for them yourself.

§  Find niche super resources—newspapers, dailies, weeklies, TV, and radio stations, and trade publications that lend themselves to your title or background story—from newsletters to nationally distributed newspapers like AARP (for seniors over fifty-five)—at Newslink.org. Many of them have huge readership because they don’t charge (extra) for subscriptions.

§  Once a long time ago almost all media featured books. It is more difficult now, though the recent support for the banning of books has increased some media interest. If your book is banned or falls into a category that has become a target of these groups, you might get the kind of coverage that makes it into a bestseller. This niche isn’t as new as it appears; unfortunately it may have a long life ahead, too. And for you, that can be good news.

§  Each time your book appears—no matter how it appears—in a big name magazine, that can be used in a query letter to help convince reviewers that yours is a book they want to read and review.

My favorite resource for finding appropriate media for whatever book or event I was doing in any given moment had been Bacon’s Directories since my long-ago days as a fashion publicist. They were a series of hefty volumes. Even then Bacon’s several huge reference books were too expensive for most authors or even small publishing companies to buy. Luckily Bacon’s is now Cision, an integrated internet platform. This online directory to TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, is more than welcome.

I especially like Cision for accessing regional publicity for an event when I am signing or presenting at out-of-town venues.

o You won’t at first know these out-of-town contacts—or some of your local ones for that matter. Do not assume that is a barrier to a broader relationship. They are people, after all. Find ways to keep in touch with them, beginning with logging them into your contact list. Here’s a few keep-in-touch ideas

o Write congratulatory notes when an editor you’ve become familiar with gets a promotion or award, when a reporter writes a story you found helpful, when an intern writes an article you find provocative, when the medium introduces a new section or new columnist.

o Write frequent Letters-to-the-Editor.

o Drop them a note recommending they review a book—any book—that connects with local interests. Or offer to review for it for them.

o Well, yeah! Send pertinent editors media releases.

Join a forum, list-serve, or social network group   where people interested in books gather. Yeah, it isn’t new but a lot of them got lost when Yahoo disappeared them! Choose groups of readers interested in your genre or groups of experts in specific aspects of publishing books like marketing. They gather to share, chat, get questions answered. Here’s a list to make list-serveswork for you: 

§    Spend some time contributing and getting acquainted after you’ve subscribed.

§    Pay attention to the posts of members with long experience/expertise to share.

§    Absorb what you can learn from them, especially the stuff you didn’t know you needed to know.

§    Most list-serves were once found on Yahoo, but most—if not all— now have addresses that look like this one:  podpublishing@groups.io. I have followed it since its Yahoo days.

§    Facebook offers a variety of groups, too; they tend to attract newer authors so you will more than likely use them to meet and attract readers. I use Valerie Allen’s AuthorsforAuthors group on Facebook a lot. Do read guidelines for these groups when you join.

Install automated icons that increase exposure for reviews of your books like the ones you see on this blog.You’ll find these little insignias (also called “buttons”) everywhere on the net—social media, websites, blogs. Find them in zillions of places online like newsletters, blog posts, and Mail Chimp-assisted mass e-mails. They usually look like a row of inconspicuous little squares, often near the bottom of the message. Visitors can choose one or more: Click, click, click, and voilá! Each click produces a pop-up of a pre-written post that includes a title and a permalink of the site they have been perusing. When we style them with say a blurb, an added motto, or hashtags, they become fast wonder workers for our campaigns and for encouraging followers. They work even better when we invite subscribers and visitors to use the ones we install on our own content as well as your promotional material like your website, blog newsletter. I mean, everyone is short on time; everyone is looking for shortcuts. And many are happy to help!

We who want to build exposure for our books as effectively and frugally of time as possible will intuit that the icon marked with an “F” is for Facebook; a “T” (most online entities haven’t changed the icon since Twitter changed its name). The one marked with a “P” pops up a post on Pinterest, and so on.

 

Tip: These share buttons and the posts they create have value beyond letting you increase exposure for any of the marketing you are doing online. They work well to increase your own outreach of helpful, sharing posts that go to your followers as you browse the web. When your site visitors use them to share your invitations, articles, tips, they trigger its algorithms or stats. Using the icons you find on others’ sites or blogs is a gift to them and there is usually room to make them work harder for both of you by leaving a positive blurb or hashtag on the pop-up. If there is space available after that, tag someone else who likes to share. I’m @frugalbookpromo on X.

 

And one of my favorite tips worth reviving! It was recommended to me by the late, great Dan Poynter. Use it for special occasions “just to keep in touch with people who know the value of tuning-in and networking.” He called it a “Top 50 List.” It’s your list of people you love to work with. You might already have a “Top 50 People List;” You just haven’t coded them as such on your contact list and if you haven’t, your relationships aren’t working to their potential. Schedule a once-a-year (at least) communication to your Top 50 this year! 

MORE ABOUT TODAY’S CONTRIBUTOR 

 

 Howard-Johnson is the multi award-winning 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 her flagship book The Frugal Book Promoter(https://bit.ly/FrugalBookPromoIII), now offered in its third edition by Modern History Press and two booklets in their second editions,  Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers  and The Great First Impression Book Proposal, both career boosters in mini doses and that make ideal thank you gifts for authors. The one on writing book proposals is also available as an Audio Book. 

The Frugal Editor (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1615996001), now in its third edition, is the winningest book in the series. She is working on a second edition of her #HowToDoItFrugally How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically to be published in this new year.  Find the entire series as e-books on Amazon’s new page for series. 

 Carolyn also has three frugal books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it helps 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 (https://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 all things editing—grammar, formatting and more—at The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor (https://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com). Learn more and follow for news on her new releases direct from Amazon at https://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile.

 

Never Ignore Your Dream

Never Ignore Your Dream

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Author of the multi award-winning #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

I once read an article/editorial in the late, great Dan Poynter’s newsletter. It was by Jeff Rivers, an expert in writing query letters titled “What I Learned from Janet Evanovich: Write for your Audience.” It is hard to argue with experts like Jeff and Janet. But I do disagree-or at least mostly disagree.

Certainly authors like Evanovich and James Patterson have done very well for themselves and for their readers by “Writing for Your Audience.” And maybe they followed their hearts and gathered their audience along the way. When that’s the case, it is a risk to take a path going in a different direction from the one an audience expects. John Grisham did that with A Painted House and his courtroom drama readers weren’t much taken with it.

I was, though. Very taken.

I became a stronger fan of his work. And it’s my theory that Painted House was the novel that had been lying inside his little writers’ soul all the time. That it brought him pleasure to write it. Maybe that it kept his writing passion alive. Maybe that brought more readers into his circle of avid fans.

So, maybe sticking to your audience’s tastes too long is also a risk. Or maybe starting out with a project designed only to please others and not your creative self would doom you to be a short-lived author. Maybe an author needs to occasionally open new door and let the beam of passion light the work they are doing.

I do a bit of acting and learned from a dedicated actor who taught new actors that new actors to give to the director not what they think he or she wants, but to give of themselves—to give what they feel is best to give. But life has thrown me mixed messages. When I was a retailer, I certainly learned that one couldn’t “buy for oneself” when it came to selecting merchandise for my store. When I did, I very often brought whatever I bought home because my customers wouldn’t buy it.  See my books on retailing at http://howtodoitfrugally.com.

But back to writing!

That same balanced note is a good one for writers to follow, too. They must keep their audience in mind. As an example, they must trust their audience to be readers. They, after all, have been reading their whole lives. So we authors don’t want to insult them. And certainly authors should do the research necessary to avoid writing the same book someone else has written.

Still, there is another side of the coin and here it is:

When you write for yourself, your audience will follow. Do not mistake this for advice that writers go off willy-nilly with no training in craft, no awareness of rules (which we may then choose to break). But we must love what we do to be successful. Find your voice and your passion. Keep at it. Keep learning more about both writing and the publishing industry as a whole.  Market your work.  Do all that and an audience will find you. Your audience will find you.

You can do that once and you can do it all over again if you don’t mind risk. Risk of getting less income than you’re used to getting with whatever you wrote when you garnered that first audience. Risk of teeing off some of your original readers who came to you with preconceived expectations.

I’m an eternal optimist. I believe we can balance the two philosophies. But I also see some real danger for the author (or beginning writer who still feels uncomfortable calling herself an “author”) who denies his or her dream and considers only what she figures someone else wants of him or her or—worse—what she has been told will “sell.”

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an award-winning novelist, poet, and writer of short stories. A many-genered author, if you will. She is also the author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally series of book for writers including The Frugal Editor, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career and the much applauded The Frugal Book Promoter, now in its third edition and published by Modern History Press. Learn more about all of her work at http://howtodoitfrugally.com. and come tweet with her @frugalbookpromo. When you add that moniker to your book-related tweet, she will retweet it to her 39,000 plus followers, most all of them publishing industry people.