BookPleasures Reviewer Calls Book for Writers "Must-Have"

Title: The Frugal Book Promoter

Author: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Publisher: HowToDoItFrugally Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-146374329
USA Book News Best Book and Irwin Award

Reviewed by Conny Crisalli originally for BookPleasures.com

“Knowing the rules of promotion is like knowing the rules for writing. When you have mastered them, you have the confidence to break them when you need to,” Carolyn Howard-Johnson states in the introduction to her book, The Frugal Book Promoter – How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher.

This four hundred and sixteen page paperback book is authored by an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction, former publicist and marketing instructor whose valuable years of experience and in-depth knowledge saves the new author time and money when promoting and publicizing his or her work. In addition to free or inexpensive ways to stimulate awareness and support of a book, she gives details of websites, email addresses and contacts related to marketing and promotion along with a twenty-seven page appendix of samples and a fourteen page comprehensive index to aid and assist in the process.

Howard-Johnson walks one through the complicated, sometimes confusing and daunting environment of publicity and promotion by first subduing the fears and fine lines of plagiarism, lawsuits and self-doubt writers feel. She concentrates on three “Ps” of marketing: platform, publicity and public relations, correlating them to a train with platform chugging along as the caboose. She provides eighteen helpful publicity commandments and explains the value of branding and pitching.

There are step-by step instructions how to put together a successful media kit, down to what font and point to use and proper formatting it on a page. The meat of the book is its many resources to publicize printed materials that include standard channels such as speaking engagements, contests, conferences, trade shows/booths, book signings, radio/television, websites, blogging and social networking along with the more unused avenues of reading groups, catalogs and corporate sales.

The author tries to touch each facet of not only publicizing but gives details assembling folders for the media kit, how to use an ARC (advance reading copy) advantageously, what to take to a trade show and warns of some of the pitfalls of online promotion. With the plentiful references of emails and websites for further study, this book contains a multitude of useful information for the first time writer as well as the seasoned one who wants to expand their public presence further.

With no promotion stone unturned, this is a must-have book for the shelf of any writer, experienced or not. Like the author states, once you know the rules to promotion real well, you can break a few while climbing the marketing ladder even further.

~Conny Crisalli loves to read and review the books she reads. Find her reviews on her blog http://connywithay.wordpress.com, BookPleasures.com, and Amazon.com.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :