Writers Tricks of the Trade ISSUE 1, VOLUME 9 | Page 21

  know what’s working and what isn’t. E VALUATE : One year after your first release, add up the column inches. Measure the number of inches any paper gave you free including headlines and pictures. If the piece is three col- umns wide and each column of your story is six inches long, that is eight- een column inches. How much does that newspaper charge per inch for their ads? Multiply the column inch- es by that rate to know what the piece is worth in advertising dollars. Now add 20% for the additional trust the reader puts in editorial material. Now compare the stories   that you pitched that got published vs. the ideas you pitched that didn’t and figure out how to make that work better for you in the coming year. S ET GOALS : You now have a total of what your year’s efforts have reaped. New publicists should set a goal to increase that amount by 100% in the next year. If you al- ready have a track record, aim for 20%. O BSERVE PROGRESS : Publicity is like planting bulbs. It proliferates even when you aren’t trying very hard. By watching for unintended results, you learn how to make them happen in the future. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. All her books for writers are multi award winners including both the first and second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and her multi award-winning The Frugal Editor won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. Her newest book in the series is How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career. Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts. Her first novel mentioned in this article is out of print but is still available using Amazon’s New and Used feature (http://bit.ly/ThisIsthePlace) and her agent is shopping her second, This Land Divided, already a prize winner in WriterAdvice.com’s Scintillating Starts contest. W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE P AGE 16 S PRING 2019