On the Business of Writing

How to Write It

Second Edition

Subtitle: A complete guide to everything you’ll ever write

By Sandra E. Lamb
Ten Speed Press (2011)
ISBN: 9781607740322
Nonfiction/How-To (Writing)
Publisher's Site: www.tenspeed.com

The Business Part of Writing Any Genre

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This Is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracings, a chapbook of poetry and the How To Do It Frugally Series of book for authors

I wasn’t impressed by the title of How to Write It! It’s so general. And the subtitle? So all inclusive!  How could it be a guide to everything you’ll ever write?  And, truth be told, it isn’t. Not if you are a write of fiction. Or a poet. But even if you write those things, stop! Don’t go away. You’ll find in this book much that you need to know to build a successful writing career no matter what you write. And that was probably the intent of Author Sandra E. Lamb. She wants your writing career to soar. And this book will give you the tools to make sure it does.  At least the tools outside the box that might be labeled “craft.”

And here’s one more aspect of this very fat, very thorough volume. It has much in it that many books for writers don’t cover. I’m not sure why. Maybe “proposals and reports” and “orders, credit and collections” don’t have the sizzle that that creative hearts yearn for, but those hearts need to manage their careers, too.

So, don’t go off in a snit.  This book is an absolute must for freelance writers, but it is a darn good reference for writers of any ilk, especially those who don’t have a lot of business experience in those lives we often lead apart from our writing lives.  Hooray for Ten Speed Press for bringing this to our attention.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.
Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, won three. A UCLA Writers' Program
instructor, she also is the author of another book essential for writers,
USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't. (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo). The second in the HowToDoItFrugally series, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (www.budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor) covers writing successful query letters and includes helpful hints from twenty of the nation's top agents. Learn more about Howard-Johnson at her new site http://HowToDoItFrugally.com.


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Compulsive Reader Webmaster Recommends Expanded Edition of Book Promoter

Reviewed by Magdalena Ball

The Frugal Book PromoterHow to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering
Second Edition: with your publisher
by Carolyn Howard-Johnson
CreateSpace
Paperback: 416 pages, August 25, 2011, ISBN-13: 978-1463743291
Also available for Kindle

It doesn't matter how many books you've published. Self-published or traditionally published, gaining publicity is always tricky, always critical, and always a moving target. If your budget is limited, it's even harder, and perhaps, even more imperative. Enter Carolyn Howard-Johnson, the queen of frugal promotion. Her frugal books are pitched at the modern writer: time poor, financially parsimonious, and publicity hungry. The Frugal Book Promoter is the jewel in the crown. As with the first version, The Frugal Book Promoter is full of ideas, strategies, and tips for promoting your book cheaply, in innovative and effective ways, but it has been updated with a much greater focus on new technologies, the all-important social networks, and a range of strategies designed to help authors with less commercial offerings such as poetry and fiction.

Of course the book is rich with classic techniques too, such as media releases, query letters, and a whole fantastic chapter pulling together a media kit. There's information on using bylines, writing a biography, obtaining endorsements and blurbs, distribution of releases, obtaining reviews, tradeshows, book fairs, setting up a website, and many more 'must-do' items that have really become part and parcel of any author's promotional toolkit. Ignore this kind of stuff and unless you win some kind of book lotto, your book will almost certainly fall into the obscurity that is an ever-present risk of modern authordom. What I like best about Howard-Johnson's book is the simple, informal prose which is both warmly reassuring ('of course you can do this'), and deceptively intelligent. The reader is encouraged and reminded of his or her own innate capabilities even as they're goaded onto to raising the bar:
 

You’ve been practicing PR most of your life. Getting along with family. Impressing a new boss. You’ve been a customer and know why you like some products and businesses better than others. All it takes is some examination of the processes that influence you to get a grip on public relations—even on marketing as a whole.

The new version also contains a chapter on some of the most current topics, including information on blogging, working Amazon, using social networks, and even some common pitfalls to avoid in blogging and networking. Howard-Johnson totally practices what she preaches, so her advice comes directly from her many years of experience, and is rich with innovative ideas to minimise the time involved and maximise the input through such things as integration and cross-linking, clever use of soundbites and re-tweetable tweets, setting up a "Quotable Quotes” page on your Web site (I love that one), using RSS, and many other novel ideas. Throughout the book there are links, anecdotes, worked examples, and excellent templates including queries, a sample media release, blog entries, invitations, and even a tip sheet.
 

No, you don't really need a copy of The Frugal Book Promoter. You could hire a publicist for $100 an hour, or organise a retainer for anywhere from $1,500 to $20,000. But if you're looking to do your own publicity, or to augment your publishers and don't have the kind of budget that can support a publicist, or you simply want to do the legwork, connect with your reading public, and do your best to ensure that your wonderful work of art reaches a maximum audience, then this book is really the self-promoter's bible. You don't have to read it cover to cover, although it's certainly accessible and enjoyable enough to do so. The book is well-referenced and perfectly designed to enable the frugal author to dip in once a week and pull out a new publicity idea to try, or to use as a reference when it's time to pull together a marketing plan for your book, or at that moment when you need to write a press-release and want a template and guide, when you're looking for ideas to maximise your book signing. Whatever kind of promotions you want to do for your book, you're sure to find it in The Frugal Book Promoter. Howard-Johnson makes it all sound simple, and provides such easy instructions, that you'll want to go out straightaway and get to it. Put simply, The Frugal Book Promoter is the best guide around for create interesting, fresh, inexpensive, and relatively easy promotion for your book, whatever the genre.
 

~Magdalena Ball runs the popular review site Compulsive Reader and is an award-winning author and poet in her own right.

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Joyce White Reviews Book for Father's Day

Here is a review of member Carolyn Howard-Johnson's chapbook of poetry. It is fitting because it's the Father's Day edition in the Celebration Series she wrote with Magdalena Ball.  Reviewer Joyce White also chose to highlight the military aspects of this book so, yay, MWSA!

( Hint: MWSA members will fin a wonderful new reviewer at the bottom of this post!)

Here is the review:

"Together they swam through a remembered past."

Imagining the Future: Ruminations on Fathers and Other Masculine Apparitions [Paperback]

Magdalena Ball & › Visit Amazon's Magdalena Ball Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and mor

Visit Amazon's Carolyn Howard-Johnson Page

Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball have woven their Imagining the Future: Ruminations on Fathers and Other Masculine Apparitions (Volume 1) on March 22, 2010, together like sisters of the same mind when it comes to the men in their lives. Carolyn begins her medley of childhood memories beginning with “All the sound in the world sucked to a waving wailing note as I perch on my father’s knee.” Later giftedly pondering, “The things I didn’t know about my father, his coming and goings, the fearing he would not return. One day, only a dawn or decade ago, he didn’t.”

“Then, then!” writes Carolyn, “Decades of dread (conflicts?) with names we remember and some we don't. Bosnia, Kosovo, First (!) Gulf War, Korean, Bay of Pigs, Rwanda,

Afghanistan, the Berlin Crisis for god's sake. More than 300 of them, words like the bass beat of drums. Vietnam when those troops who did come home couldn't walk or wouldn't talk. I tell my grandson, then only 12, how we who remember the grunt of that war see it differently from those who marched in the Double W Wars, wars when we wanted to be there.”

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's grandson served two tours in Iraq. Her husband is a retired Army officer who served in the 1960s Berlin call up. I can hear the sober sounds of the National Anthem in the background of all her poetry, with the throat voice of Uncle Sam warning, “I want him. He’s mine. You can’t have him!” All wives and little girls cry.

Magdalena pulls metaphors out of the air with, “You recede a little more. I reach for you over thought waves little girl’s hand hung in the air your absence, finally, matches reality to imagination trying to get truth from pretty metaphors that can’t touch your flesh still young somewhere while the precious science you drank like fine wine grinds your atoms to dust.”

Carolyn Howard Johnson and Magdalena Ball have written a wonderful little memoir celebrating Father’s Day and all their sacrifices as girls and women growing up in the 50’s and together they swam through a remembered past. I recommend this little gem and I give it Five Stars for Amazon. Happy Father’s Day to all…wives, children and our husbands who take care of our very basic needs while we write poetry.

By Joyce White

Sculpting the Heart Book Reviews

Joyce White
Author
Sculpting the Heart with Art Therapy
Read Now - http://bit.ly/d1jGLN
Twitter - @wjoycewhite

Joyce White
Author
Sculpting the Heart's Poetry, while Conversing with the Masters
Read Now - http://bit.ly/aSFpQB
Twitter - @wjoycewhite

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This Book May Become the Most Useful Book on Your Desk!

It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences

Subtitle: a writer’s guide to crafting killer sentences
By June Casagrande
Ten Speed Press (2010)
ISBN: 9781580087407
Nonfiction/How-To (Writing)
Buy Link: http://budurl.com/GrammarSnobs
Publisher's Site: http://www.tenspeed.com/

New Book May (Should!) Replace Your Stunk and White!

Grammar Guru Offers Advice

Like None You’ve Ever Seen—All in One Place!

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This Is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracings, a chapbook of poetry and the How To Do It Frugally Series of book for authors



Rules. Rules. Rules. I didn’t realize how tired I was of the same old writing advice until this little black book landed in my mailbox. I promised to review it fast, but this It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences book by June Casagrande isn’t a book a serious writer wants to flip through fast.

I could see from the subhead in the first chapter that this book would include something better than most. It read, “Thy Reader, Thy God.” What a concept that is! The Reader and not The Rule Book! Ahem! And it got better and better as Casagrande explored all the subjects I knew everything about. Or thought I did. She uses examples so a writer can see the differences between OK writing and acrylic-clear writing.

By the time I got to “Are Your Relatives Essential?” I was really sold. This is a Wow- Chapter, even for accomplished editors. The writing tips she gives in Chapter Twelve for using tenses effectively are just what I need to convince my students that I’m not the only editor/teacher in the world who believes that tenses needn’t match all the way through a story (or even a paragraph, for that matter!). That chapter is called “You Will Have Been Conjugating.”

I could go on and on, chapter by chapter. What isn’t new to a writer or what doesn’t elucidate will remind and amuse Casagrande’s God, The Reader. For those who know Casagrande’s work, this book isn’t as funny as her first one, Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies (www.budurl.com/GrammarSnobs ). Nevertheless, the reader will still occasionally get a good laugh. For chuckles read Chapter Nine, “Antique Desk Suitable for Lady with Thick Legs and Large Drawers.”

For Casagrande, the lesson is always that grammar needn’t be dreary. Why should it be when we love writing? How could it be when grammar is the nails and tacks, the color and structure of what we love? Writing.



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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.
Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, won three. A UCLA Writers' Program instructor, she also is the author of another book essential for writers,USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't.(www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo ). The second in the HowToDoItFrugally series, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (www.budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor ) covers writing successful query letters and includes helpful hints from twenty of the nation's top agents. Her book Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers: The Ultimate Frugal Booklet for Avoiding Word Trippers and Crafting Gatekeeper-Perfect Copy (www.budurl.com/WordTrippersPB ) will appeal to the same crowd that falls in love with Casagrande’s books. Learn more about Howard-Johnson at her new site http://howtodoitfrugally.com/ .

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Your First-Person Essay or Your New Memoir--Take Your Pick

Just dropping in to let you know about the new review I just posted at http://thenewbookreview.blogspot.com/2010/08/your-first-person-essay-or-memoir-your.html . Writers will want to know about this book, they should also know about The New Book Review. It's open to all books, all reviewers. Guidelines for submissions are in the left column.

Your MWSA sometime blogger,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson


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MWSA Book Review Workshop

Getting Your Publishing Options Straight

REVIEW

Publishing Possibilities
Subtitle: Eight Steps to Understanding Your Options and Choosing the Best Path for Your Book
By Cheryl Pickett
Brighter Day Publishing, 2009
ISBN: 9780615260808
Nonfiction/Publishing/Writing
Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com
Publisher's Site: www.publishinganswer.com



The days when authors were at the mercy of others is gone. Any writer in any genre now has choices; those who rely on the old, traditional mode of publishing may be doing themselves a disservice. Equally so of those who plunge headlong into the world of partner, subsidy and self publishing without considering what that will entail.

Publishing Possibilities, by Cheryl Picket gives a new author the essentials they need to choose a publishing process that is best for his or her books and experienced writers options they may never have considered.

Authors who have been around publishing for a while may have picked up shreds of publishing wisdom that are not rooted in fact, even terms that are misused. Picket clarifies. She also offers these more experienced authors new possibilities, especially if their work has taken a new direction. A publishing plan for one genre may work fine but not work as well for another.

I must insert a disclaimer here. After reading Publishing Possibilities, I asked Cheryl to contribute a column to my newsletter, Sharing with Writers. That does not diminish my belief that this book serves authors. In fact, it confirms that I found it a useful resource for writers.

Publishing Possibilities is short and clearly written so it does not soak up unnecessary valuable time an author could use doing other things to further their careers. It gives them the essential on publishing as well as resources for finding more information from seasoned and trusted publishers, writer’s Web sites and consultants.

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Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. Learn more about the reviewer's own how-to books for writers at www.howtodoitfrugally.com.