Product Description: For a little over 2 cents a day, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER assures your book the best possible start in life. Full of nitty gritty how-to's for getting nearly free publicity, Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares her professional experience as well as practical tips gleaned from the successes of her own book campaigns. Carolyn Howard-Johnson is award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction and former publicist for a New York PR firm and a marketing instructor for UCLA's Writers' Program. THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER tells authors how to do what their publishers can't or won't and why authors can do their own promotion better than a PR professional.
Download Description: For a little over 2 cents a day, The Frugal Book Promoter assures your book the best possible start in life. Full of nitty gritty how-to's for getting nearly free publicity, Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares her professional experience as well as practical tips gleaned from the successes of her own book campaigns. Carolyn Howard-Johnson is award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction and former publicist for a New York PR firm and a marketing instructor for UCLA's Writers' Program. The Frugal Book Promoter tells authors how to do what their publishers can't or won't and why authors can do their own promotion better than a PR professional.
After Writing the Book You are Only Half Done Authors are increasingly coming to appreciate the fact that by the time their book is written, only half of the job is done. Promoting the book may take as much or more time than writing it. Unless authors are internationally famous or very lucky the proceeds from book sales may not allow for expensive promotion. The solution is to do it frugally. Carolyn Howard-Johnson's [[ASIN: 193299310X The Frugal Book Promoter]] helps authors to do just that. While the ways to promote a book are increasingly becoming known through books and online resources, everything cannot be in one book. I found many tips in The Frugal Book Promoter that I had not seen elsewhere. I recommend it to all authors.
Keep visitng this book As evident from its aggregate reviews, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER is a concise, well-organized, user-friendly, and practical guide. As a writer,The Passion of Maryam I also find it inspirational. Most of us writers, Carolyn Howard-Johnson accurately points out, want to hide from promoting our work. Her book encourages bite-size steps, aimed at accenting the marketplace communication skills each author has nascent within her/him--and which indeed are connected to the essentials of the writing skills. Hers is a guide one can visit and revisit at every stage of the publishing process and find something that further affirms a sense of "Wow, I'm out there." She helps turn the feared, the distained, yes, to some of us, the odious, into a process and set of goals that can not only be affirming of oneself as a real (read professional) writer, but which can actually be fun. Buy this book, go through it, keep picking it up and reconsulting it, and let it help you get out there--and keep you out there. Also visit her website. That she makes THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER work so well undoubtedly derives from her background in PR, but also, as a seasoned writer herself, she teaches and keeps company with writers. I look forward to her now-available THE FRUGAL EDITOR.
Don't understand the hype--an honst review I don't get the 5-star reviews on this book. This is an honest review from someone who was really excited when she bought the book, couldn't wait to dive right in, and within the first twenty or so pages was starting to wonder if I was duped. Yes, there are a lot of ideas in this book. And I guess if you are completely new to this, then this would be a good book. But also note, the ideas aren't that great, they're old ideas, and there are several other books on this topic that are much more worth the money and time.
A couple turnoffs were all those quotes--tons of quotes (I finally figured out the quotes were from the authors). Then all the 1995 links included, and by that I mean when she offers you a link to a resource, it goes to something like EarthLink or Tripod or some other general service used more for personal pages. The links and the pages you're taken to are like the ones you'd see back in the day when people were getting started with the Internet. I couldn't take much of it too seriously because if you're not sending me to a professional site with a professional domain, then how can I trust the information on that site.
I did go through the entire book, and to be honest, I did not come away with one single new idea. Not one! If you're really looking for a good book on PR, and want to read one with that's fresh and new, then check out The New Rules for Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott . Now there's a book you can trust. I really wanted to love this book, but I came away highly disappointed. I felt like I was reading a book dated back to 1995. Old ideas, old info, old links, etc. And the appearance of the book and the way it was organized was awful. Kudos to the author for trying. But I need something more in tune with today. Makes me wonder where the 5-star reviews came from. Scott's book is worth 5 stars, this book, seriously, is not.
The Frugal Book Promoter by Carolyn Howard-Johnson The Frugal Book Promoter is a must own bible for all independent writers, self-publishers and anyone who feels left out of the publishing world. Carolyn Howard-Johnson encourages the writer to empower themselves as long as they have the information necessary to take them to heights they never believed they could ever achieve. The information is substantial. The experience of doing this and actually collecting it so that others can benefit is such a positive vehicle for any writer whether they are first time writers or want to supplement their publisher's efforts. I found amazing resources in this book. If you don't have it with you when you are ready to promote your work, don't even think about it. Get it. It's money well spent...
Lots of Great Book Promotion and Publicity Stuff, but..... As a published author myself who has been left to do the vast majority of the legwork to promote my book, I speak with some authority as to the validity of the ideas outlined in the Frugal Book Promoter. The text is chock full of outstanding suggestions and recommendations for elements all along the book publishing/promotion timeline for both traditional and non-traditional publishing paths. I don't think there's a single page that doesn't offer something extremely useful, and oftentimes multiple nuggets of wisdom to get your book in the public eye. I've got several in mind to help expand my own efforts.
Here's my gripe, though. The formatting of the book is awful. It would have been so much more readable had the author or someone else taken the time to clean up the presentation. I can't help but conclude that the book was just a cut and paste job from a website or ebook. There are long, underlined URLs all over the place. The book employs a great deal of bullet lists, but the lists are crammed together. There are also all kinds of alternate formats used in a less than elegant fashion making for a very clunky looking work.
I give the content a 5, but the formatting a 1. That would average a 3 for a score, but since the material is so useful I'll weight that higher and give it a 4.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tony's Online Tips
Trevor
