Jozette's Desk

78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published

Subtitle: 14 Why It Just Might

Pat Walsh

Penguin, 2005

ISBN-10: 0143035657

ISBN-13: 978-0143035657

Nonfiction/Publishing/Writing

Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com

Prejudice is Showing

Three Reasons Why You Would Be Better Served To Choose Something More Up-To-Date

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This Is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracing, a chapbook of poetry, and the author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

Generally I review books that have been recently published because the review journals and sites I write for expect that. Sometimes that policy makes me grumpy because I love reviewing old books with stick-to-it-iveness to see what authors can learn from them that will make their own books hang around for longer than the traditional 90 day bookstore shelf life.

But I was exposed to 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published: 14 Why It Just Might at a recent critique group meeting and the saucy title intrigued me. I asked to borrow it. I’m glad I did because the contents remind me of why “recent” is a good policy to have, at least for most nonfiction books.

It was also a good thing because it helped me realize how far the publishing industry has come since 2005 when this book was published by Penguin. It’s not that I’m not aware that people (including agents and publishers) still judge a book by its cover and by the press it is printed on. They do and I don’t like it much because I am sensitive to intolerance. That includes labeling people by their color or religion, or weight or . . . well, you get the idea. Most of my creative writing addresses this particular theme in one way or another. So I’ve also been an advocate for selecting books by their content. You know, the stuff of which books are really made.

There are some gems out there that never get published. It’s hogwash when people say, “Write an excellent book and it will find its way to publishing sooner or later.” Sometimes that is true but many times it is not. And that is one reason subsidy and self publishing has become so popular. (There are others but that may be material for another day and another rant.)

Back to this 2005 book on publishing. It’s not that there isn’t some good stuff in it. It’s not that author Pat Walsh might not have moderated his opinions over the years. But his disdain for authors shines through in too many place to have much hope for that. He doesn’t much like the ones who want a hand in publicizing their own books, for instance. Nope. He admits he doesn’t do a whole lot of promotion for his own authors but he also doesn’t want their input or the elbow grease they might provide in do-it-yourself projects or in partnership with his company. Authors (at least in 2005) were to be good little writers, know their places, and damn well shut up.

Walsh’s narrow take is that there is only one way to do things is not really all bad. It is important for writers to know about some of the biases in the industry that existed back then (a long time ago in the electronic age) and now. In The Frugal Editor, I advocated using zero-tolerance editing because I know it still exists and as authors we need to deal with it if we want our books published traditionally or agented.

Here’s the thing: Though Walsh’s humor comes through in much of the book, I fear any emerging author who gets hold of it might take it verbatim. We already have too much discrimination floating around in this world. It’s time we got a grip and started judging people and books on their individual merit. Oh, yes. And give authors as a group some credit for having more than peas in their brains. At least until they prove otherwise.

Mr. Walsh, if you’ve changed some of your opinions, please update your book. I’d like to recommend it as an example of what an open-minded and caring publisher might do for a an author’s work. I’d like to encourage many authors--particularly those who write creatively--to try the traditional route first. Until then, I fear your book might discourage writers with talent from wanting anything to do with our industry.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.

Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, won three. A UCLA Writers' Program instructor, she also is the author of another book essential for writers, USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo). The second in the HowToDoItFrugally series, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (www.budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor) covers writing successful query letters and includes helpful hints from twenty of the nation's top agents. It, too, won USA Book News top award in its category and Reader Views Literary award. Learn more at her  site http://HowToDoItFrugally.com.

Get Noticed . . . Get Referrals

Subtitle: Build Your Client Base and Your Business by Making a Name for Yourself

By Jill Lublin with Mark Steisel 

McGraw Hill, 2008

ISBN 9780071508278

Nonfiction/Business/Promotion

Contact Reviewer: HoJoNews@aol.com

           Promotion, Publicity and How They Translate to Referrals

Jill Lublin Shares Expertise for Businesses: Books are Business, Too

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of three books of fiction and poetry and The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success

Advice.

Even good advice is often not believable. And writers are especially immune. Many of us tend not to believe in ourselves, anyway. As writers, we get more advice than we need—well intended perhaps— but mostly uninspired. When to write, how to write, how to query editors, how to punctuate.

The beauty of Jill Lublin's Get Noticed . . . Get Referrals  is that what she tells us about promotion and the business world (and, yes, it translates directly to the book biz) comes from her expertise. It also comes from her heart.

That kind of personal involvement is a motivator for anyone and is intended to be. There is way too much talk out there about "self-promotion," a term that reeks of misguided give me this and gimme that tactics. This book is about true public relations.

The word "relations" is the tipoff. Good promotion and the profession of PR is all about relationships and though most of us think we know how to form those, there is lots we may not know. Especially in the business world—whatever business we may be in. Good business relationships don't just happen, they need to be worked like a good marriage. (Come to think of it, some of Jill's approaches to getting noticed and getting referrals might help some marriages out there!)

Then there's the word "public." For those of us who write books, it is an essential word, the word that lets people know enough about us and our books so that we can share what we write with others. That's the whole idea, isn't it?

My favorite chapter is Number Ten (p. 128), "Build on Your Passions." Most writers are passionate about the business of writing—of telling a story or sharing expertise. Much of what is in this chapter is not new but it is reaffirming. Further, it may help writers understand that to be successful their passion must extend beyond the writing of something to the getting of that something into the public consciousness. One of the hints I liked was for people who are having trouble promoting. Lublin says, "Fake it . . . at least initially." Psychologists ascribe to the same theory. You simply "act as if" and you find your life (and your career and maybe even your book sales!) improving.

I am a person who thinks tips and anecdotes are among the best ways to reach people. They give people what they need or want in little easily-read and easily-related to pieces. Jill knows that, too. Her book is scatted with small shaded areas that clip the best and the most pithy stuff from her book and make it easy for you to internalize them in a few seconds.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers’ Program. She is the author of award-winning books, THIS IS THE PLACE and HARKENING. TRACINGS, an award-winning chapbook of poetry, is available at www.finishinglinepress.com. Her how-to book for writers, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON’T, is the winner of USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004 and the Irwin Award, and her new book THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS is also a USA Book News Best Book and a winner of Reader Views Literary Award.

Publishing Possibilities

Subtitle: Eight Steps to Understanding Your Options and Choosing the Best Path for Your Book

By Cheryl Pickett

Brighter Day Publishing, 2009

ISBN: 9780615260808

Nonfiction/Publishing/Wirting

Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com

Publisher's Site: www.publishinganswer.com

                            Getting Your Publishing Options Straight

Simplifying the Path to Publishing

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This Is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracing, a chapbook of poetry, and the author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

The days when authors were at the mercy of others is gone. Any writer in any genre now has choices; those who rely on the old, traditional mode of publishing may be doing themselves a disservice. Equally so of those who plunge headlong into the world of partner, subsidy and self publishing without considering what that will entail.

Publishing Possibilities, by Cheryl Picket gives a new author the essentials they need to choose a publishing process that is best for his or her books and experienced writers options they may never have considered.

Authors who have been around publishing for a while may have picked up shreds of publishing wisdom that are not rooted in fact, even terms that are misused. Picket clarifies. She also offers these more experienced authors new possibilities, especially if their work has taken a new direction. A publishing plan for one genre may work fine but not work as well for another.

I must insert a disclaimer here. After reading Publishing Possibilities, I asked Cheryl to contribute a column to my newsletter, Sharing with Writers. That does not diminish my belief that this book serves authors. In fact, it confirms that I found it a useful resource for writers.

Publishing Possibilities is short and clearly written so it does not soak up unnecessary valuable time an author could use doing other things to further their careers. It gives them the essential on publishing as well as resources for finding more information from seasoned and trusted publishers, writer’s Web sites and consultants.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This Is the Place, has won eight awards. Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, won three. A UCLA Writers' Program instructor, she also is the author of another book essential for writers, USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't. The second in the HowToDoItFrugally series is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success also a USA Book News pick and winner of Reader Views Literary Award and the New Generation Award for Marketing. Learn more at www.howtodoitfrugally.com

Slang

Subtitle: The People's Poetry

By Michael Adams

Oxford University Press

ISBN: 9780195314632, 2009

Nonfiction/ (WritingLanguage)

Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com

                                           Academia for the Masses

 Equal Mix of Academics, Humor, and Useful Stuff for Writers

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This Is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracing, a chapbook of poetry and the How To Do It Frugally Series of book for authors.

When I teach my writing students, I urge them to keep reading, keep writing, keep taking classes. Michael Adams has cobbled together a definitive book that appeals to every side of my book-loving nature. A work of nonfiction, it even appeals to my need for entertainment. It is Slang: The People's Poetry published by the Oxford Press.

Adams manages to give readers equal doses of fun and information—information that our formal education in languages (English in particular) may have neglected. As an example, he gives us a veritable list of words we use for getting plastered . . . er snockered. Then he shows us how these words may be onomatopoetic or related to the visual or how they reflect a cultural need to set ourselves apart. Those are hardly things Miss Jones would have discussed in our basic grammar class.

But for fun he'll say things like, "It's hard to decide whether visual hurl is more vivid than audible barf, as the words offend different senses." (Yes, you may be amused that your taste for dry humor develops as you read.)

He can buckle down to business, too. He warns us early on that we are to come away from this book with something more than a guffaw: " . . . it might be wise to distinguish slang even more precisely from jargon, argot, and colloquial use." And that's something, gratefully, he does frequently.

What I'm not crazy about is his tendency to fall back on snooze-producing syntax and Latinate words. He doesn't do it so frequently that casual readers won't enjoy what he has to say but they'll have a better chance of not relegating this book to their "maybe later" pile if they skip the introduction.

Writers, on the other hand, will want to buy and keep this book handy for research. It will be invaluable for producing accurate dialogue. In which decade, as an example, would one have been more likely to use gone Borneo for getting blasted? Writers who pick the wrong one may find their credibility trashed by those hip enough to know.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.

Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, won three. A UCLA Writers' Program

instructor, she also is the author of another book essential for writers,

USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't. The second in the HowToDoItFrugally series, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success covers writing successful query letters and includes helpful hints from twenty of the nation's top agents. It can be purchased at Amazon.  Learn more at her new site http://HowToDoItFrugally.com.