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ARTICLES:
ENDORPHINS:
E-books by
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Articles and Books
Tips on Writing and Publishing Articles on this Page include:
How to Write...Query/Cover Letters
Secrets of...Publishing Your Own Books
Is There a Book in You? Tracking Your Poetry Submissions Publish a Chap Book of Your Poetry
How
to Write Selling Query/Cover Letters for Books A query letter is the first contact an agent or
editor (whom you’ve never spoken with) has with you and your
work. It’s designed to motivate them to request that you send a
sample of your writing (i.e., the book or article you’re
pitching). To grab their interest, a query must be concise,
relevant, and convey your own personal flair. A cover letter
must do the same and is equally important as a query because it
introduces a requested submission, setting the whole tone for
what follows (and sometimes even determining whether your
submission will be read). For this reason, it’s vital that you
spend the time to fashion your query and cover letters in a way
that will rivet the reader. [1] For example, for romance writers, it’s useful to know what the current most popular subgenres are and to emphasize this if your book is in one of them. Also, it’s good to know that the top traits (in this order) romance readers enjoy in heroines are intelligence, strength of character, and attractiveness, while the top traits in heroes are muscularity, handsomeness, kindness, and intelligence. Sometimes it can be helpful to emphasize how your characters are like this in your short summary of your story as well as how/why your characters are unique, standing out above the rest.
[2] An excellent resource with more information is
Lisa Collier Cool’s How To Write Irresistible Query
Letters (Writer’s Digest Books, 1987), which applies to
articles as well as books. (Trisha Howell has published five books in just over a year and teaches seminars at conferences, libraries, schools, and bookstores. Previously she taught at Montessori schools, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California. Her current animal-related titles include The Princess and the Pekinese and The Pekinese Who Saved Civilization. Trisha started adopting injured wild birds at an early age and has been rescuing and caring for dogs and cats for over 30 years. She is presently the Rescue Chairman of the Evergreen State Pekingese Club. For more information or to purchase autographed copies of Trisha’s highly acclaimed children’s books, including The Princess and the Pekinese and The Adventures of Melon and Turnip, as well as her all-age titles (The Pekinese Who Saved Civilization, Living In A Glowing World, and The Journeying Workbook: Adventuring to Unleash Your Inner Power), please call (360) 563-0865 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (360) 563-0865 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, (888) 252-0411 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (888) 252-0411 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, or email info@HowellCanyonPress.com You may also see our books and free bonus gifts as well as order online at http://www.howellcanyonpress.com/ and http://www.addisonthedog.com/ or order from your favorite book store. Also please see http://www.trishahowell.com/ for more information about Trisha.)
The Secrets of
Successfully Publishing Your Own Books What’s really involved in publishing your own book Publishing your own book is a very exciting yet amazingly complex process. Be prepared to put in more time and energy than you have ever imagined. For nearly two years it took virtually all my time to create and market the first five books I’d already written, with no time left to write more books. This is not to discourage you—on the contrary! Be patient with yourself and realize you’re doing a good job even if the task stretches out as you find more and more problems to solve and ever increasing details to take care of. Fundamentals of book creation: ideas, writing, editing, illustration, page design, printing Taking the books you publish from initial idea to final book is a long and involved process that I cover in another presentation and handout called “The Secrets of Creating Your Own Books.” Once you have your complete and professionally edited manuscript, count on up to a year or even more of part-time work before your book comes off the press, especially if your book includes illus-trations you must hire others to create. How marketing starts at the very beginning when creating a book During the year when you’re putting the finishing touches on your manuscript while getting it ready for press, you must already be thinking in terms of marketing. In fact, it’s best to consider your market from the very beginning. Who is your audience and what information or story do they most desperately want and need? Where do they shop in person and online? Choose five target markets for your book and start researching how you can reach them. Once your manuscript has been professionally edited, find educated people in your target market to give honest feedback on how you can improve it further. If your manuscript is polished enough, these readers may even give you endorsements. J A good list of publishing and marketing resources is available at http://www.midwestbookreview.com/. Also, the following books have been very helpful to me. The two by Fern Reiss are required reading before you commit to publishing because they give you an overview of what’s really involved. The others are also very important if you self-publish: The Publishing Game: Publish a Book in 30 Days and The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days by Fern Reiss, The Complete Guide To Self-Publishing by Tom & Marilyn Ross, The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter, Make Money Self-Publishing by Suzanne P. Thomas, Publicize Your Book!: An Insider’s Guide to Getting Your Book the Attention It Deserves by Jacqueline Deval, Guerrilla Marketing For Writers: 100 Weapons for Selling Your Work by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman & Michael Larsen, Guerrilla P.R.: How You Can Wage An Effective Publicity Campaign Without Going Broke and Guerrilla P.R. Wired: Waging a Successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline, and Everywhere In Between by Michael Levine, How To Publish and Promote Online by M.J. Rose and Angela Adair-Hoy, and Promote Like a Pro: Small Budget, Big Show by Linda F. Radke. Also consider attending PMA’s Publishing University, which is held each year in conjunction with Book Expo America (see http://www.pma-online.org/). How to get book endorsements and book reviews You need industry reviews for your books. This is free publicity which can greatly affect how many libraries and bookstores buy your books. As soon as you receive your galleys (early copies of your book: be sure to request these as some review sources will not review finished books), which should be four months before your publication date, you must submit them with a press kit to top review sources. Submit to at least 20 reviewers,
including Publishers Weekly How to create a media kit To even have the chance to get other top book reviews, you must have a professional-looking media kit. It’s very expensive to hire someone to create one so I created my own. You’ll need a cover letter, press release (be sure it has a topical hook; for a free template, see www.press-release-writing.com/content-basics.htm), a mock book review (a full page sample review from which busy editors can lift sections for their own reviews), real endorsements and reviews, an author biography, a sell sheet/order form, catalog/tip sheet, a mock article (covering some important topic related to your book), a real or mock interview, something excerpted from or based on your book that is immediately useful to readers, and at least one novelty item (postcard, book cover, bookmark, sample chapter, or table of contents). See http://www.howellcanyonpress.com/ for examples of these items. Better yet, buy Dawn Josephson’s excellent book Putting It On Paper: The Ground Rules for Creating Promotional Pieces that Sell Books at http://www.cameopublications.com/ or by calling (866) 372-2636 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (866) 372-2636 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Her advice has been enormously helpful to me. Besides sending your press kit to book, magazine, and newspaper reviewers, you also need to send your press release to thousands of newspaper editors. There are various services for doing this. I use a service at http://www.prweb.com/ that is excellent and very inexpensive. You can also get free weekly press releases with your subscription to http://www.expertclick.com/, but this is an expensive site to join (in return for which you are listed as an expert for media to contact for interviews). What organizations you need to belong to Literally hundreds of literary and
marketing organizations exist to help you write, print, and market
your book. You should at least belong to the national
organization(s) representing the genre(s) you write in. For me,
that’s Romance Writers of America (http://www.rwanational.org/),
The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (http://www.scbwi.com/),
and the Dog Writers Association of America (http://www.dwaa.org/index.html).
Do an internet search of organizations appropriate to your genre(s)
or go to
www.midwestbookreview.com/book How to market your book to distributors and wholesalers In order to ensure your book will be available nationally, you must sign up with the wholesalers most bookstores order from. The two largest are Ingram (http://www.ingrambookgroup.com/start/) and Baker & Taylor (http://www.btol.com/). Your books must be easy to order through these venues, or most bookstores won’t buy them. Other wholesalers I’ve found helpful are Quality Books (http://www.quality-books.com/), which sell to many libraries, and Partners West (http://www.partnersbook.com/), which is the largest wholesaler for the 11 most western U.S. states (the region where I live). Wholesalers typically want a 55% discount on the books they purchase from you (you get 45% of the cover price of your book) and take about 90 days to pay you. This may seem like a jip, but consider that bookstores buy from them at a 40% discount. That 15% you pay the wholesaler covers the cost of making your books available to all bookstores and for filling their orders. If you had to fill all your own orders, you’d spend too much time doing that and wouldn’t have time and energy left for creating and marketing your books, which is where your effort should be concentrated. At first I tried to get by with wholesalers only, but I ran into two problems: 1) If you’re a small press, Ingram won’t carry your titles unless you’re represented by one of their approved distributors. 2) Even doing fulfillment to the wholesalers and collecting from them takes time, and 3) Without a distributor, you have no one visiting lots of bookstores to encourage them to carry your titles. Consider getting a distributor: someone who’ll pitch your books to bookstores and manage all your wholesale accounts. I chose Biblio Distribution (www.bibliodistribution.com/distribution/index.shtml) because it specializes in representing publishers with fewer than ten titles. My experience so far (1 year) is Biblio responds quickly to emails but takes a long time correcting errors (such as your book cover missing from their website). And although their reps visit many bookstores, this doesn’t necessarily translate into sales. You make sales as a result of your own marketing efforts. The “disadvantage” of having distributors is you sign a contract giving them exclusive rights to sell to the “trade” (physical bookstores and major online bookstores). I cannot now sell my own books directly to any bookstore, but that’s fine: if I call or go in person to pitch my books or to ask for a reading/signing event, I simply direct the store to order the books through Biblio or their favorite wholesaler. How to market your book to bookstores, libraries, and specialty outlets: Do not rely on your wholesalers and
distributors to get your book into retail stores and libraries,
though your distributor will have a seasonal catalog that includes
your book and should have representatives meeting in person with the
top accounts (large chain bookstores) to announce all new titles.
You must do virtually all your marketing yourself. If you can afford
it, consider hiring someone to help you with marketing (to pitch
your books to both the book industry and to the public) or at least
with publicity (to pitch your books to the public through media like
radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.). Plan to pay $1,000 to
$5,000 a month for this service, however. You can learn how to do
most of it on your own by reading the books mentioned above, but
you’ll find that effective marketing is often more than a full-time
job. Here are the main ways in general in which you want to
booksellers and librarians: Through direct mail, advertising in
industry publications, contact advertising and making appearances at
book trade shows, and making personal appearances at stores and
libraries. Direct mail on your own (usually not very effective) to
bookstores and libraries is very expensive and can be tricky (you
need eye-catching and pithy material, a good mailing list, and you
should do test mailings first). I recommend that you do cooperative
advertising through places like PMA (http://www.pma-online.org/)
and your distributor. They have their own target mailings to
bookstores, libraries, and reviewers, and they get reduced rates for
advertising in top places like Publishers Weekly. Another reportedly
effective source for library mailings is Florida Academic Press (fapress@worldnet.att.net
(352) 332-5104
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (352)
332-5104 end_of_the_skype_highlighting),
though it’s significantly more expensive than PMA.Other catalogs to
consider are those put out seasonally by Bowker (http://bowkersupport.com/publishers/promotional.htm),
Ingram (www.ingrambook.com/programs/catalogs/trade.asp),
Baker & Taylor (www.btol.com/supplier_advertising.cfm),
and Foreword (http://www.forewordmagazine.com How to market your book on the internet You must have your own website, which is attractive, updated, simple to use, and geared to effectiveness for marketing books. This means you need a system set up for building your online customer database (including a prominent opt-in system on your website and a campaign for driving web traffic to your site), for keeping in touch with customers at least periodically, and for processing the resulting orders online. Auto-responders are an indispensable tool once your customer database grows. An excellent service that offers these features and many more is http://www.1shoppingcart.com/ Designers can be expensive, but unless you have a lot of expertise, don’t attempt to design your own sites. Your designer should have marketing knowledge so that s/he sets up your site in a way to generate maximal sales. You may also need expert help to drive good traffic to your sites. Consider creating a webpage or even separate website for each book you have and one for you as author as well as a general one for your publishing company. You’ll also want to advertise your books and offer them for sale on other websites (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, and many others) and may want to create an e-zine or other way to communicate with your customers regularly. See the books listed above for details. This is a vast and complex subject. I also recommend Best Seller Mentoring, an excellent teleconference book marketing course with Randy Gilbert and Peggy McColl that gives you an extensive, college-like education in online book marketing. They guarantee that if you go through the steps they suggest, your book will make the best seller list at Amazon, or you’ll get all your money back for the course. For more information, go to http://BestSellerMentoring.com/TrishaHowell How to get your book noticed through entering and winning contests: There are hundreds of contests you can enter. Entering gets your work seen and evaluated by many judges (enter those contests that promise judge feedback), and winning generates publicity for you as well as becoming a selling point for your book. The various writing and marketing organizations you belong to may sponsor contests, and you can find numerous contests online at http://www.literature-awards.com/. How to get your book noticed through bookstore, school, and library readings/signings: Doing bookstore appearances not only gives your book the visibility to sell copies before, during, and after your visit but also can be used to generate a lot of free publicity. Newspapers and radio may announce your visit (send them a press release), and your appearance makes bookstore staff aware of your books (so they can direct customers to them). School and library readings and signings not only generate sales but also pay you an appearance fee. (I know a man who makes a very good living just by giving presentations in schools a few times a week!) You’ll also want to investigate speaking at various conferences and other events that relate to your book topic. Always arrive well ahead of time for your events, be courteous and enthusiastic with everyone you meet, and write the appropriate organizers and staff a thank-you note afterwards. How to market your book directly to the book consumer: Hundreds of consumer magazines, newspapers, etc. offer advertising, but these ads are often very expensive. Here again is a place to get very creative (see above books) in how you reach the consumer through all possible media. It’s usually better (and certainly cheaper!) to submit informational articles to various publications that welcome topics in which you have expertise (which may or may not be related to your book) than to pay for an ad. At the end of each article you can have a byline that identifies you as the author of certain books and mentions your website address. This will give you free advertising and position you as an expert in your field. You can also get free advertising in newspapers (under current events) or on radio announcing your upcoming bookstore appearances. Keep creating fascinating articles and interview topics based on your book and get as much newspaper, magazine, radio (radio is surprisingly the most widely experienced media in America), and TV coverage as possible. Consider taking out an ad in Radio-TV Interview Report (http://www.rtir.com/) to obtain offers for radio and TV interviews, and get listed in the Yearbook of Experts (http://www.expertclick.com/). Better yet, get your own list of the top radio stations (see http://www.radiopublicity.com/com), and even better than that (if you can afford it), hire a good publicist, who’ll have the necessary contacts to place you on the shows that are most right for you. Don’t forget the vast online advertising opportunities (but be sure their website traffic is high enough to get sufficient exposure for the fee charged). Take advantage of opportunities to submit online informational articles to prominent (and even small) websites, and persuade large list owners to post either these articles or special offers you have for their subscribers. Advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing, or when to go with the big guys: If you self-publish, you get to control the whole creative process, and you guarantee that your book gets printed. If you market effectively, you can make a lot of money (you get more per book than you do just as an author). However, you will have an enormous amount of work and expense, and you are very unlikely to sell as many copies on your own as a major publisher could sell of your book. They can afford to print and to advertise on a large scale. However, there’s no guarantee a large publisher will do a lot of advertising—you may still have to expend time and money for advertising to get your book maximal visibility. You will certainly still have to do some marketing, including making bookstore appearances and hiring a publicist to handle your radio, TV, magazine, and newspaper interviews. Also, nonfiction titles can do very well self-published, but you can usually sell fiction better through a large publisher. If you want to have a lot of time to write books, do not self-publish. Publishing, including the endless marketing you must do if you are your own publisher, will take all your time. (Trisha Howell has written sixteen
books in four years (publishing five in the last year alone). Before
that, she had numerous articles, stories, and poems on a wide
variety of subjects published in newspapers, magazines, and
anthologies. She holds a BA and MA in Philosophy, an MA in
Humanities, and an MA in Critical Film Studies. She’s taught at
Montessori schools, Stanford University, and the University of
Southern California and frequently offers educational programs at
writing conferences, schools, libraries, bookstores, and other
organizations. For more information or to purchase autographed
copies of Trisha’s highly acclaimed books, including The Princess
and the Pekinese, The Pekinese Who Saved Civilization, Living In A
Glowing World, The Adventures of Melon and Turnip, and The
Journeying Workbook: A Shamanic Guide to Accessing Your Inner Power,
please call (360) 563-0865
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (360)
563-0865 end_of_the_skype_highlighting,
(888) 252-0411
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (888)
252-0411 end_of_the_skype_highlighting,
or email
info@HowellCanyonPress.com You may also see our books and free
bonus gifts as well as order online at
http://www.howellcanyonpress.com/ and
http://www.addisonthedog.com/ or order from your favorite book
store. Also please
Have you ever thought, as a kid, a
teenager, or as an adult, “I’d like to write a book.” Or after
reading a book, have you ever thought, “I could have written that,”
(or even something better)? You’re on your way…Trust the process,
and that you’ll be given everything you need once you Joanne Klassen is President of
Heartspace Writing School. Her latest book, Tools of
Transformation: Write your way to new world of possibility—in just 5
Minutes, is available at
http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/ or free at
(877) BUY BOOK
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (877)
BUY BOOK end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Article by Michelle Ailene True from
The Published Poet
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Question
for poets: What is a Chapbook?
