CAROLYN HOWARD-
JOHNSON AUTHOR, PROMOTER
TRUE PUBLISHING INCLUDES MARKETING OR HOW I DEVELOPED MY BOOK MARKETING WORLD VIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
PAGE 18
WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE