Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 3 Volume 9 | Page 16

W HY G ETTING G REAT R EVIEWS I S Y OUR J OB C AROLYN H OWARD -J OHNSON E XCERPTED FROM C AROLYN ’ S NEW H OW TO G ET G REAT B OOK R EVIEWS F RUGALLY AND E THICALLY : T HE INS AND OUTS OF USING FREE REVIEWS TO BUILD AND SUSTAIN A WRITING CAREER M ANY THANKS TO OUR FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR , FRUGAL MARKETING GURU C AROLYN H OWARD -J OHNSON WHO SAYS , “Y OU NEED THIS ARTICLE ! H ERE ’ S WHY :” I n spite of a contract or even an advance, your publisher may not be a true pub- lisher. True publishing includes the mar- keting of a book, Think big names like HarperCollins, Knopf, and Writers’ Digest, the publisher of Nina Amir’s Creative Visu- alization (http://bit.ly/NinasVisualization). They assign a marketing budget to your book and an actual marketing department complete with actual human-type market- F ALL 2019 ers who are trained in the specialized field of not just marketing, but marketing books. Except for those who write only for pleas- ure, there is no reason to publish a book that doesn’t get read. The sad part is: Even those big publish- ers need the authors’ help. There is no free lunch when it comes to the marketing of a book—including the getting of reviews. Some publishers—even traditional pub- P AGE 12 W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE