Agent Query
We’re Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Phyllis Zimbler Miller.
We are two authors who have a book idea based on two well-known premises — the “Everyone Knows Theory” and “Everyone Believes Assumption”:
Everyone knows that publicity
is more frugal than advertising.
Creative authors believe their works are difficult —
if not impossible — to promote.
This proposed book is based on the online expertise we’ve both developed — online expertise we want to share with other authors as well as with publishers and publicists.
What we’ve learned from working in the book marketing field is that there’s a whole lot more marketing help for nonfiction authors than there is for authors of fiction (novels, graphic novels, short stories) as well as poetry and memoirs. (Yes, memoirs are theoretically nonfiction, but they’re not the how-to books that grab people’s attention.)
Here’s what one fiction author has to say about this predicament:
“I love PR and marketing people who parade their wares for nonfiction and add as an afterthought, ‘And this works for fiction too!’ Yeah, right! Then why don’t they have any fiction writers on their list of success stories?” — Nadine Laman
With Marketing Your Fiction, we aim to help fiction authors have as many tools in their marketing arsenal as their nonfiction book author colleagues have.
Following Carolyn’s advice in her ebook available on Amazon — The Great First Impression Book Proposal — we have prepared our book proposal. Only, as we both actively market on the Internet, we’re using tools of the Internet for this proposal.
These tools include this site, which offers a taste of our blogging chapter, BLOGGING YOUR WAY TO … IF NOT FAME AND FORTUNE THEN AT LEAST BOOK FANS, as well as the entire blogging chapter if you sign-up in the email opt-in box found at the top right-hand side of each page of this site.
And from a well-known nonfiction book marketer, here’s a quote about the need for a fiction marketing book:
“Although there are a number of good book marketing guides, I haven’t seen any that deal in any depth specifically with marketing fiction,” says Dana Lynn Smith, book marketing coach and author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides.
“Authors and publishers of novels, children’s, and young adult books are selling entertainment, rather than information, and their target audiences are less easily defined. They can use many of the same marketing tactics as nonfiction authors and publishers, but they must be creative in adapting those methods to their product and their audience.”
We two authors want to address these two premises:
We have backgrounds in computers and publicity and also have written books in the genres most think can’t be promoted well. Between us that includes a novel, a book of short stories, a memoir, and several chapbooks of poetry.
We know that promoting theses types or writing is possible and we know — firsthand — how to do it. We want to share that knowledge with other writers who not only need to know how to promote but need to understand that their “impossible to promote” genres can indeed be destined for success with.
Our book Marketing Your Fiction (Frugally) will help authors understand that they can promote their fiction and will tell these authors exactly how to do it.
Throughout our book we will be giving specific promotion examples for:
- novels
- short stories
- children’s books
- memoirs (not strictly fiction yet also a hard-to-market genre)
- screenplays
- graphic novels
Because between us we have business, journalism, retailing, publicity and publishing backgrounds, we also have ideas for promoting that won’t feel reheated and warmed over from other books on promotion for writers.
And we need a good agent to help us bring our book to a publisher who will make the book cook and then help us bring it to a boil.
We are Phyllis Zimbler Miller and Carolyn Howard-Johnson. And here are only a few of our credits:
Phyllis is a novelist with years of marketing consulting to call upon. She has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic LLC, which helps clients with social media marketing and WordPress websites. She often writes guest posts on book marketing, including for Bookbuzzr.com, and has several of her own blogs.
Carolyn has been an instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program for the past six years and she presents at conferences throughout the USA as varied as Dayton University’s Erma Bombeck’s Writers’ Conference, the Sinclair Lewis Writers’ Conference and San Diego State’s Writers Conference on everything from marketing one’s book to writing better dialogue. Carolyn is also the author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and has a strong following for her practical books among authors as well as in writing communities and the media.
We have prepared a detailed proposal including a sample chapter on blogging, which is already receiving positive feedback as a free download available at FictionMarketing.com, a website already in place to promote Marketing Your Fiction. And at this site you may find more of our credits.
We believe we can have this book ready for you in a year, and if you email us we will send you the private link to the download of the proposal. Or we will be happy to mail the proposal to you in hard copy.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson Phyllis Zimbler Miller
hojonews@aol.com pzmiller@gmail.com
Writers’ Digest 100 Best Websites
California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment
Winner USA Book News Best Books of 2004 and 2007
Winner Book Publicists of Southern California’s Irwin Award
Winner Glendale, CA’s Ethics Award for Promoting Tolerance
Honored for “literary Activism” by The Pasadena Weekly
Military Society of America’s Award for Excellence in Poetry
Pasadena Star News Women Who Make Things Happen
Reader Views Literary Award
New Generation Indie Award in Marketing
Multi-Award Winning Blogger
Semi-finalist in Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award