Wanda Luthman's Blog, page 51

#Dovechocolate #Message

Look what was in my Dove Chocolate wrapper? I think I will! Who will go too?

# Audiobook #Bookboost

So this just happened, I received notification that my book, The Lilac Princess, that Sage IA recorded into an Audiobook has already sold 24 copies! And we haven’t even promoted it yet! If you’d like your own copy,it’s available at http://www.amazon.com/author/wandaluthman

#Parenting 101 #Trust vs. #Mistrust

This month’s blog post for Parenting 101 will begin our discussion of the developmental stages of children. When we take a look at the stage our child is in, we can know how best to show him or her love. We aren’t just guessing anymore but instead we are acting in an informed way.

I like Alfred Adler’s Stages of Development, so we’ll be using that.

The first stage in a child’s life according to Adler is Trust vs. Mistrust (age 0-18 months).

From a previous post, I discuss empathy. Utilizing empathy, pretend you are a helpless, small baby born into a world of large adults and you cannot communicate with them other than by crying. You are hungry, wet, tired, uncomfortable, hot, cold, gassy, sad, lonely, scared…You get the idea. Our number one job as parents is to care for our child’s needs. They have a lot of needs and we have to figure out what they are and meet them, hopefully, in a timely manner.

I hear a lot of parents talk about how their baby is manipulating them. This is unfortunately very short-sighted and uninformed. If you mean by manipulate that the child cries because they have a need and you who is their caretaker must spring into action to meet that need, then, yes, that is what a child does. However, if you mean that a child cries in order to make you get up out of your comfy bed or chair to do some mundane task that you’d rather not do just to annoy you, then you would be terribly wrong.

Most of them time, when we use the term “manipulate” it is in a derogatory manner. We mean someone else is using their cuteness and charm or some form of threat to get us to do something we don’t want to do. But, in order for one person to truly “manipulate” another, they have to have some insight and forethought of what exactly they are doing. Children, especially babies, do not have this insight or forethought. They have a need and no way of getting this need met except by you. They have no idea that you’d rather watch tv or sleep or talk to your friend than do what they need done. They just need you.

Our babies are not manipulating us. Our babies have very real needs and we’re the only ones that can meet them. What a special role we have! So, if we can remember this stage of trust vs. mistrust when our babies cry, we can take a different stance from annoyance to realizing that we are laying down the foundation for the rest of this child’s life of how they see the world. Is the world that they have been delivered into one that they can trust or one that they mistrust? If we respond to our child’s needs by meeting them in a timely and loving way, they feel they can trust their world. They develop a peaceful, instead of an anxiety-filled, demeanor.

This doesn’t mean we have to be perfect, it just means we have to do our best to love our child in a way that actually means love to that child—meeting their needs again and again. Parenting is tiring and hard work but we have an awesome job and that is to develop this human being into someone that is healthy and happy and becomes all they can be. Here’s to developing trusting babies!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

A purple calla lily flower popping up to wish everyone a beautiful Valentine’s Day!

#Bookevent

It’s a beautiful purple flower morning! Just a reminder to come see me this Saturday, Feb. 13th at the Suntree Library from 1-3pm. I’ll be there with the Canaveral Pen Women Book Fair. There will be Authors, Musicians, and Artists!

#Guest #Blog Part 2 #Marketing

The 2nd Part of this month’s Blog is continued today by our Guest

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning

HowToDoItFrugally series  of books, one for writers and one for retailers

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 an 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.

Below is number 8-15 (but the computer won’t allow me to start with #8)

Develop new activities to publicize: Don’t do just book signings. Use your imagination for a spectacular launch. Get charities involved. Think in terms of ways to help your community.
Send professional photos with your release: Request guidelines from your target media. But it never hurts to send a Kodak (or iPhone) moment–properly labeled–along with your release.
Frequency is important: The editor who ignores your first release may pay more attention to your second or twenty-fifth. She will come to view you as a source and call you when she needs to quote an expert. This can work for novels, too. I received a nice referral in my local newspaper because I am now an “expert” on prejudice, even though my book was a novel and not a how-to book. I am now writing poetry with tolerance as a theme and that adds to my credibility as a source.
Follow Up: Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy

World, reports that follow-up calls boost the chances of a press release being published. Voice contact builds relationships better than any other means of communication.
Keep clippings: Professional publicists like Debra Gold do this for their clients; you do it so you’ll know what’s working and what isn’t.
Evaluate: 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 columns wide and each column of your story is six inches long, that is 18 column inches. How much does that newspaper charge per inch for their ads? Multiply the column inches 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.
Set 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 already have a track record, aim for 20%.
Observe 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.

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Instructor for nearly a decade at the renowned UCLA Extension Writers’ Program

Author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers 

Amazon Profile: http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile

The Frugal Book Promoter: http://bit.ly/FrugalBookPromo

Web site: http://www.HowToDoItFrugally.com

E-mail: CarolynHowardJ@AOL.com

Facebook: http://Facebook.com/carolynhowardjohnson

Twitter: http://Twitter.com/FrugalBookPromo

Pinterest: http://Pinterest.com/chowardjohnson

You pin one of my book covers, and I’ll pin one of yours! 

Let’s Network Today!

 

 

 

 

#BookBoost

Check out @BookBearTweets’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/BookBearTweets/status/693441742880776192?s=09

Thank you, Book Bear for all you’re doing to get the word out about my book!

#Bookevent

Thank you, Lori Mitchell, for hosting me today at your school. I had so much fun talking to the 3rd graders! They were very enthusiastic and had great ideas! And thank you, Neva Murray for inviting me to visit your Kindergarten class. They were precious! I’m looking forward to next year!

#Bookevent

I’m here at Imperial Estates for a Book Event today for the 3rd Graders!

#Guest #Blog Part 1 #Marketing

This month’s Blog is a Guest Blog by someone very special.

I’d like to introduce you toCarolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning

HowToDoItFrugally series of books, one for writers and one for retailers

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 an 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.

 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 toPasadena 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.

Today’s blog will be brought to you in two parts- The first half will be posted today and the second half will be posted next week. Please follow her on her links, buy her books, share this post and enjoy!

15 Publicity Commandments that Work for Getting Free Press for Everything

  If we read the newspapers or watch TV we know that advertising sells. But even those big guys who do all the advertising aren’t sure what works best when it comes to advertising. A huge retailer once said that advertising works, we just don’t know how, why, or where it works best.

Publicity is advertising’s less mysterious cousin. It is the more reliable relative because it is judged on its merit alone and carries the caché of an editor’s approval. It also is surrounded by the ever-magic word “free.”  

The two are easily identified as kin. They often walk hand-in-hand and yet they can be incompatible. The editors of good media outlets will not allow the advertising department to influence them. Still, in an effort to be completely impartial they reserve the right to use advertiser’s stories editorially if they deem them newsworthy. That is why it is helpful to use advertising in a vehicle that plays to the audience you would like to see standing before your cash register or clicking on your Amazon buyer page.

Advertising can be an entrée to the decision-makers. A contact in the advertising department may be willing to put a news release on the desk of one of his editors, maybe even encourage her to look at it. They can make no promises, but it does sometimes work. If you’re going to try this route, choose a “little pond”, a bookish brochure or an “arty” weekly so that the dollars you spend will be noticed.

Sometimes a magazine or newspaper runs a special promotion called advertorial. These are sections where you pay for an ad and then the newspaper assigns a reporter to cover the story you want told. The article carries some of the prestige of editorial copy—that is the general reader may assume the article has been chosen only on its merits because of its copycat character. The writer or editor you meet can be approached later when you have an exceptional story to tell. Erin Shachory handles consumer publicity and consults on advertising strategies. She knows that her clients hire her—at least in part—for her “great database.” It is something that, over time, you can build for yourself.

Still advertorial isn’t FREE if you have to pay to see yourself or your book featured. If you can’t really afford to approach a publicity campaign this way, carve out some time to do it yourself and follow these 15 commandments for doing it yourself:

Educate Yourself: Study press releases that come to you from suppliers, stores, and other authors. Read books like the multi award-winning  Frugal Book Promoter now in its second edition. Take a marketing class especially designed for people in your field. Authors will find online classes given by most universities these days. Why take a chance with the vagaries of the Web when these classes have been vetted?
Read, read, read: Your IBPA and writers’ groups’ newsletters. Your newspaper. Your e-zines. Even your junk mail. My daughter found a flier from the local library in the Sunday paper stuffed between grocery coupons. It mentioned a display done by a local merchant in the library window. Now we’re going to install one for my book, too! Rubbish can be the goose that laid the golden egg.
Keep an open mind for promotion ideas: Look at the small details in your book. There will be angles there you can exploit when you’re talking to editors. My first novel, “This is the Place,” is sort of romantic (a romance website will like it) but it is also set in Salt Lake City, the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics © and, though that’s a reach, I pitched it to sports desks, and as a related idea to feature editors as Olympic © fervor grew and after the Olympics when editors needed still needed stories but they weren’t receiving as much information in their e-mail boxes..
Cull Contacts: Develop your Rolodex by adding quality recipients from media directories. You reference librarian can help you find amazing resources that list every newspaper or every magazine in the US. A good research librarian is like a shark; she’s tireless and once she has her teeth in something, she won’t give up until she has what she wants.
Etiquette counts: Send thank-you notes to contacts after they’ve featured you or your book. This happens so rarely they are sure to be impressed and to pay attention to the next idea you have, even if it’s just a listing in a calendar for your next book signing.
Partner with your publicist and publisher: Ask for help from their promotion department—even if it’s just for a sample press release.
Publicize who you are, what you do: Reviewers aren’t the only way to go. E-books are big news right now. What if you’re very young? What if writing a book is a new endeavor for you? Several editors like the idea that I wrote my first book at an age when most are thinking of retiring, that I think of myself as an example of the fact that it is never too late to follow your dream.

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Instructor for nearly a decade at the renowned UCLA Extension Writers’ Program

Author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers 

Amazon Profile: http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile

The Frugal Book Promoter: http://bit.ly/FrugalBookPromo

Web site: http://www.HowToDoItFrugally.com

E-mail: CarolynHowardJ@AOL.com

Facebook: http://Facebook.com/carolynhowardjohnson

Twitter: http://Twitter.com/FrugalBookPromo

Pinterest: http://Pinterest.com/chowardjohnson

You pin one of my book covers, and I’ll pin one of yours! 

Let’s Network Today!

And stay tuned next week for Part 2