Use Independently Published Media to Promote Your Writing Career!

 

 

 

 

The Incredible Power of “Hidden Gems”

 

Ode to Small Magazines and Author-Published Promotions

and
A Free Model to Use for Your Own Independently Publishing
Marketing Purtsch

 

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, multi award-winning novelist, poet, and author

of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

 

Many of my readers have heard me talk about saving marketing time and budget dollars by using marketing campaigns aimed at related media to build networking opportunities and to query for reviews among a battery of other exposure opportunities that will nudge our book sales in other (preferred!) ways than saying “Buy my book.”

 

You even might have heard me tout “the free advertising/promotion opportunitities  made of real paper and get delivered directly to our mailboxes” as a good place for new writers on a strict budget to start that kind of campaign. You know, the kind of promotional material we have produced ourselves. The kind we can put in the hands of our readers free at our events and trade shows. 

 

Well, one such publishing effort with a twist just landed in my e-mail box in a media release. I finagled a free print copy to review so I could determine if it qualified for my top ten recommendations for a frugal but truly professional promotion. It gave me a few more ideas for using our own publishing skills to increase our exposure for whatever niche of the publishing industry our book, writing career, or even small business occupies including those of publishers, editors, writers of fiction or nonfiction in any genre, and even as projects for writers and other professional groups.

 

Don’t you dare go away. I’ll use bullets so you can see how you can use it as a model for your own project and tell you how to get a freebie so you can give yourself a break from chasing the brightest media stars that give you few results, anyway. And this one is literary so you’ll find darn good reading here which is likely to introduce you to part of our good old USA you know little or nothing about. 

 

UP Reader is named after a writer’s organization called UPPAA (Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association) in upper Michigan that happens to be a substantial literary journal like the ones so many authors submit their work to, often with few if any results. The issue I have is a concept that’s designed to: 

 

1. celebrate the 10^th Anniversary of the sponsoring writers’ group; in this case it’s the 10^th anniversary of the journal.

2. bring “Upper Michigan Literature to the World” with a “special edition honoring the Spirit of Mackinac Island.”

3.to expose more than seventy of their writers’ works to a wider audience including the extraordinary contributor/members. 

 

An anthology, UP READERS is published by Modern History Press and available as a paperback, hardcover, e-book, and audiobook. It takes only a first glance at the cover to see how to put this idea to work for your personal needs or for a literary/writing centered group you belong to.

 

Here are some of what this project achieves, but you might think of others. Each of their ten issued is different:

~It features the top 3 winning submissions to UPPAA’s Dandelion Short Story Contest that recognizes young writers from Upper Michigan area of the United States in grades 6 to 8 (Junior division) and 9 to 12 (Senior division).

~Royalties from the UP Reader supports UPPAA’s operating costs, and educational efforts like the UP Notable Books Club and Young Writers Storytelling Workshop that aim to showcase northern Michigan life from the Keweenaw to the Soo and from Menominee to Ironwood, but it could be adapted to support your career efforts no matter what they might be.

~Though it offers works and the voices of authors of this far-flung area, it is also mindful of the broad tastes for readers from speculative to historic fiction and poetry to nonfiction, thus making it great reading for naturally curious readers everywhere.

~It uses backmatter effectively including a “history” of the nine previous editions/issues of the Readers’ covers using glorious CineYooper Color. (What will you name you’re the color you use for the cover—inside, out, or both? 

~All ten can be ordered at upreader.org/comprehensive-index.

~Interested Reviewers are invited to spread the word about this anthology and the sponsoring group with its inclusive platform and open membership requirements. To receive a free paperback ARC of this newest edition contact Victor Volkman president@uppaa.org. If you haven’t time for a review, Victor also says, “…I would be happy to send a freebie of the e-book version of UP Reader Volume 1" to serve anyone anywhere!” 

§  Learn more about UPPAA and membership www.UPPAA.org. And experience a zoom keynote I did for this generous group on YouTube on great ways to avoid Imposter Syndrome and other debilitating fears like fear of marketing. (I first learned of Imposter Syndrome in Psychology Today when I was preparing a keynote sharing ways writers can avoid that condition as well as writers’ block and just plain moments of depression familiar to many who work with only a computer as a companion.) It’s one of those slick trade magazines with targeted distribution we authors love to query with our ideas for free ink mentioned in this article above!)

 

You will be adding UPR to my list "Top Ten Hidden Gems,” periodicals and others that are more accessible than the more competitive supermedia. If we never pitch our books for reviews or feature stories about ourselves as an author or some other related topic to more accessible publications, we might never get the recognition we need to succeed in our pursuits of those brighter stars and, sadly, never experience the opportunities they offer in the meantime. When we build our lists with readers and media in new regions (and among new demographics), we expand on the possibilities for own work. Sometimes we need to reread our own books in search for possible new audiences. Here are some already on my list to consider when the free copies get delivered to your USPS PO box just because you do business with them:

§  Westways, distributed free only to AAA members, lands in the mailboxes of over five million readers, far exceeding some of the more avidly pursued journals and trade magazines.

§  Sierra Club and a variety of other charities distribute beautifully designed publications you will be proud to appear in.

§  AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) sends genuinely helpful periodicals to their members in huge quantities and yes, many are made of real paper, exude bragging rights, and provide moments that inspire. You could be one of their stars.

§  The periodicals that come to us from our alma maters work the same way. (And yearbooks across the nation cater to avid local readers; you might be impressed—and surprised!—with the literature assigned to their senior-year English classes!)

§  Don’t forget to offer your talents to the free newspapers (known as throwaways!) you find stacked in racks in front of bookstores, drugstores, and our favorite restaurants.

§  The organizations that you have touched as a writer probably have online newsletters, often chock full of writing tips and writing news and might be open to featuring you and your suitable idea for a regular column or occasional article.

§  Generally we writers are curious travelers and our experiences can often relate in some way to our last book…or our next.

§  Don’t neglect possible Opinion pieces (my Los Angeles Times calls them “Voices) on the Op-Ed page. These pieces always include a byline and usually a credit line with the title of your book linked to your website.

 

MORE ABOUT TODAY’S “WritersontheMove” CONTRIBUTOR

 

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a multi award-winning author of fiction and poetry but is best known for her how-to-books for writers. Find all of that series in one place on Amazon, but it’s her poetry that addresses the ills of cultures across the world. Imperfect Echoes is her Writers’ Digest honored book, self-published in the tradition of poets since the advent of the Gutenberg press, it defies #bookbigoty as well other biases we are experiencing after a period—decades—of progress on that front. Find a laudatory review by Jim Cox, editor-in-chief of The Midwest Book Review, and its Amazon buy page at  https://tinyurl.com/ImperfectEchoes.

The Joy of Writing or A Story About Ash McGrath and Writer's Digest

This is a story about what I might have missed without Writer’s Digest and the kind of authors it inspires.

It is a story that might have never been told—or at least a story I might never have heard. It is a story about the great feeling of winning. It is a story applauding the kind of loyalty Writer’s Digest inspires (including me for I have been reading it for decades!) But mostly it is a story of just one of those readers.

My memories of this event are a bit fuzzy. It happened at least a year after I had entered my latest book of poetry, Imperfect Echoes, in a Writer’s Digest contest and probably a month or two after the Writer's Digest issue announcing winners had disappeared from the newsstands. I had received a beautiful critique from one of the contest judges and after that...well, nothing. I have learned not to mourn losses but to look for the positives in them. So, I excerpted a lovely blurb from the critique and moved on.

Enter Ash McGrath. She is a friend I have seen only in online images. I think she knew me because I have displayed my how-to books for writers in a book fair sponsored by Valerie Allen's AuthorsforAuthors group for years. As an author of marketing books, I understand that frequency is important to any campaign; as a realist, I know that one can't expect marketing for a series of nonfiction books for writers to cross genres for a book in another genre. So when I received a tag on Facebook from Ash that offered me her copy of the issue that announced winners of the contest I had entered my book in...well, I was puzzled. And thrilled. And appreciative.  I gave her my address but didn’t dare to expect to see it in my mailbox any time soon. These are busy times. Online friendships are often fleeting. Ash's writers group is mostly made up of writers who live 3,000 (at least!) miles from me. I had never presented at their writers' conferences--or even attended.

Shame on me! I underestimated the generosity of authors. I underestimated not the reach of Writer’s Digest but the loyalty of its readers. I underestimated the connection we writers often have with one another based the simple fact that we write. When I asked Valerie Allen, the director of several book fairs and conferences in Florida I mentioned before she said, “We call Ash our ‘Conference Ambassador’ because she volunteers at all of our events.”

I call her my writing angel. Her copy of Writer’s Digest is now my copy of Writer’s Digest. It means more to me because the memories it holds are layered. It lives on a bookshelf in my office I keep for writing successes. It’s a little like a vision board. I sometimes peek at what I have stowed on that shelf to keep me moving forward during my most discouraging times.

Let me introduce you to Ash.
She signs her emails: “Ash” Ashley McGrath

And then—to make us all aware of one very important thing in her life, she adds:
“UnabASHed by Disability”

I shall never underestimate the ties that bind author-to-author again. Or to include those ties among the many joys of writing.

My best to all Writer’s Digest’s grateful authors out there, And special thanks to Ash McGrath.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor which won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award.  

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