CAROLYN HOWARD-
JOHNSON AUTHOR , PROMOTER
TRUE PUBLISHING INCLUDES MARKETING OR HOW I DEVELOPED MY BOOK MARKETING WORLD VIEW
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I was moving from journalism and marketing to creative writing and writing
how-to books about the time digital printing was coming into being . I sadly became involved with a publisher who cloaked their " vanity " status after they bought the micro press I originally published with .
EARLY DIGITAL PRINTING
This organization published digitally — which seemed like a great idea to me ( and it was , but this was just long enough ago that a digitally printed book wore the Red A of Adultery on its chest as surely as Nathaniel Hawthorne ’ s heroine .) They did no marketing and didn ’ t suggest I do any . They required a seven-year contract so later when they realized how profitable marketing could be for their own bottom line , they bugged me to buy marketing packages — all of them useless — things like sending my book to Oprah at a price — and , one assumes , with 50 of their other poorly edited and formatted books . I was extremely disappointed with this publisher because of the lack of acceptance by bookstores and because of the quality of the book . Similar " publishers " still exist . I put the word in quotation marks because true publishing includes marketing and though you may be expected to participate , you shouldn ’ t have to pay them more for it .
TYPES OF SELF-PUBLISHING
Having said that , I ’ ve been traditionally published since then and I ' ve selfpublished which is often a misused term . True self-publishing means the author does it for him- or herself and has complete control . He or she may hire help with things they can ’ t do themselves or can ’ t yet do themselves — anything from cover design to formatting — but that ’ s different from handing everything over to the likes of Xlibris or Publish America because the author doesn ’ t yet know enough about the process or have enough contacts to figure it out . They , too , have their place , as long as the author chooses them knowing exactly what they are going to get which includes 1 . Ease of publishing 2 . A high price for the services they provide . 3 . No marketing included in their original fees . 4 . The low esteem the entire publishing industry holds for these companies .
There are also publishers who are kind of a mishmash of services , and I ’ ve tried SPRING 2018
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WRITERS ’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE