Promoting Your Book with Ideas from The Frugal Book Promoter

Promotion...promotion...promotion.  How to do it without a great deal of expense confronts most authors.  Generally the object is to sell your books and make money from them.  (Although there are a few authors write books for family use or as promotion pieces themselves.)

The Frugal Book Promoter, by Carolyn Howard-Johnson gives authors a multitude of methods for promoting their books the "frugal" way.  "How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher" is Carolyn's subtitle in this second edition, which she has updated and expanded by more than 100 pages.

In this electronic age, there are new methods of promotion continually available, and Carolyn, an award-winning author and marketer, is aware of them.  The book is only one in her "How to do it Frugally Series."

I'm also excited that I'm featured in this edition, with mention, on page 218, of my participation in a promotion technique. 

Have fun learning how YOU can promote your books without a great deal of expense.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson Wonders, "What Has Happened to Literary Fiction?"

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This is the Place, The Frugal Book Promoter, and The Frugal Editor, ponders why so much sci-fi, fantasy and romance is published, but less and less literary fiction? I think you'll enjoy her ideas. At least they will get you thinking.

For me the real topic is this: Why is it that literary fiction seems to be losing readers? The only reason my literary novel This Is the Place sold well in 2001 (at least for a first novel) is that I am also a marketer and took lots of time nurturing the sales and thinking of angles that would appeal to large segments of readers (yes, like the romantic aspect, that it is based on a true story, etc)

Here are some reasons I think literary work is not being read, in no particular order:

* Literary fiction (including poetry) isn't being published, at least not in the numbers it was published in the past.

*Publishers are assigning their marketing dollars to their top authors and stars and very nearly ignoring their midlist people. In fact, they aren't building midlists in any genre as they once did which doesn't bode well for publishing in general as the big names age and retire.

*Our education system isn't encouraging critical thinking or reading.

*Our education system is failing to teach reading/vocabulary building, etc. at a level required by many literary novels. So must we dumb-down our literary writing?

*Evidenced by the way our culture votes for their leaders, it doesn't much value anything intellectual. No matter what your politics I think we writers might agree that Obama's critical thinking, speaking and writing skills might be an encouraging sign for the future.

Please don't forget to discuss the sorry state of poetry. I read recently that even poets aren't buying books or chapbooks of poetry. Sorry, I can't find the article in my files.

Carolyn's web site: How To Do It Frugally.