Inspiration, References, How-To Books,
 and Other Helps for Writers!

The Best Places
To Learn About Craft
and Promotion Is Books.

Of Course!

Great Books for Writers
Nice Desk Companions for Any of the Frugal Series for Writers

The Frugal Book Promoter	The Frugal Editor	Booklet Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers	Booklet The Great First Impression Book Proposal

Carolyn's newest in the How To Do It Frugally Series of books for writers is multi award-winning The Frugal Editor designed to help authors hire better editors, better partner with their editors and self-edit when necessary.  The marketing plan for this book also won the Next Generation award.

The promotion campaign for The Frugal Editor won the Millennium Award for Marketing.

Sylvia McClain, editor of Scribal Calendar, talks about branding
and how reading business books targeted to other industries
can help writers on my Sharing with Writers blog.

Free Books
On Publishing and Writing

Trafford offers excellent materials to help you decide if they are the ones to publish your book. They do quality POD publishing.

Gorham Printing has a free e-book with some neat guidelines on publishing on their home page. Check it (and their services) out. 

Ger your Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips as an e-book with your subscription to my SharingwithWriters newsletter.

(For resources and links galore, grab yourself copies of the Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor.)

Click here for Carolyn's first person essay, "Beating Time at Its Own Game."

So, you're on the right track!  Find what you need for your writing and promotion efforts here!

Terry Whalin will help you get on the right track. He and I met while speaking at a writers' conference. I loved what he had to say, bought his book on writing proposals by for my husband and highly recommend his advice.  He says:

"'You should write a book.'    "'Some day I'm going to write a book.'

"Over 80% of people plan to write a book and more than six million of them have already written a manuscript. Admittedly there are dozens of companies who will take your money and publish your book. How do you get a book publisher to pay you for your book?

"Former book acquisitions editor Terry Whalin says editors and publishers don't read manuscripts. They read book proposals. In BOOK PROPOSALS THAT SELL, 21 SECRETS TO SPEED YOUR SUCCESS, you learn the inside scoop to achieve your dreams."

 ~~

Getting Control Over Your Own Writing Career

Write, Publish, Sell!: Quick, Easy, Inexpensive Ideas for the Marketing Challenged:
by Valerie Allen: People do business with people they know - which is why you must tell to sell. This book is your step-by-step guide for name recognition, networking, and creative marketing to increase book sales. With little or no promotional budget, you can do these painless activities for successful marketing and book sales.

Get Published Today! is a must-read if you have ever considered going it on your own. By marketing expert Penny Sansevieri.

If you aren’t a Webby nerd but would like to polish your online publicity efforts may I recommend Penny Sansevieri’s Red Hot Internet Publicity. She starts basic and stays practical. It isn’t specifically written for authors, which—in this case—may be a good thing.

Big Recommendation for Audio CD I Love

 

Terry Whalin and I often appear at writers' conferences together and I've read his books and recommend them. But I'd never attended one of his presentations because they conflicted with my own. At the last one we were at, Terry said he had repurposed one of his seminars to an audio CD and graciously presented me with one. I just listened to it as I drove the California freeways. It is Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and I love, love, love it! Terry comes at helping other authors through experience and he loads his talks with anecdotes that make his advice entertaining, understandable and memorable. Even though this is recorded live at a seminar, the recording is clear and professional. All I can say is "Wow!" I could tell you all the points he covers, but I won't. You might be tempted to think you know that stuff. But this audio is so much more than the sum of its parts.

 

If your publishing career is lagging or if you'd like to change that path you've been taking (or if you just need a review and a big shot in the arm of energy and ideas!), this is an audio workshop worth the money—even for frugal me. Find it at: http://bit.ly/RxJcfa. Think of it this way. The CD is maybe 1/8 the cost of a real live conference. And you can play it any old time you have the time.

 

The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write (ISBN: 978-0-9795475-5-3) by Mark David Gerson. Tools, Tips and Inspiration to Unleash the Power of Your Creative Potential.

 

 

 

 

"Building a character from the ground up is simple. Building a memorable, living, breathing human being is a most daunting and complicated task, until now. ...Billie A Williams...[gives] character-building tips, tricks, and tools you can master in one afternoon." ~ Beth Erickson, editor, publisher and freelance copywriter.

June Casagrande's Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies  (Penguin) is not only full of good stuff that will make a better editor of you, it's fun. It is a great companion to The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Find Meanies at Amazon.

PS: My award-winning novel This Is the Place and my book of creative nonfiction stories,Harkening, are examples of how your genealogy and your diaries might turn into different kinds of books. Find them both in Amazon's new and used feature, probably for the frugal price of under $1 .

Check out Peter Bowerman's Well-Fed Writer books.

Michelle Dunn's e-book report on a book marketing success system is excellent.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson's Sharing with Writers Newsletter
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Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers

Carolyn's Blogs

Carolyn's Awards

The New Book Review
Named to
Master's in English.org Online Universities'
101 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers

Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites
for Sharing with Writers blog.

Best Book Award for The Frugal Book Promoter (2004) and The Frugal Editor (2008) and the Second Edition of The Frugal Book Promoter (2011).

Reader Views Literary Award for The Frugal Editor

New Generation Award for Marketing and Finalist for The Frugal Editor

Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award

Military Writers Award of Excellence for
Tracings, A Chapbook of Poetry.

A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion wins author Military Writers Society of America's Author of the Month award for March, 2010

Gold Medal Award from Military Writers Society of America, 2010. MWSA also gave a nod to She Wore Emerald Then, a chapbook of poetry honoring mothers.

The Frugal Editor Named #! on Top Ten Editing Books list.

Finalist New Generation Book Awards 2012, The Frugal Book Promoter; Finalist 2010 The Frugal Editor;
Winner 2010 Marketing Campaign for the Frugal Editor

The Oxford Award
recognizes the alumna who exemplifies the Delta Gamma precept of service to her community and who, through the years, devotes her talents to improve the quality of life around her.

The Frugal Book Promoter is runner-up in the how-to category for the Los Angeles Book Festival 2012 awards.

Winner Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts
Glendale California's Arts and Culture Commission and the City of Glendale Library,
2013

And more than a dozen other awards for Carolyn's novel, short story collection and poetry. See the awards page on this site.

Published Works Almanac