Red Engine Press Featured Article

Cross-Promotion: The Steam that Drives Good Branding

Good Branding: The Fire Behind Book Sales

Cross promotion. It's the Little Engine That Could.

When all else fails (or all else is only so-so) add cross promotion to the firebox that makes promotions run and you'll increase the power of whatever you're doing incrementally.

Book fairs are a good example. Most authors find they disappoint in terms of book sales. Even if author are promotion-savvy and know that other things like publicity, networking and exposure count, they still often walk away dissatisfied with results.

That was my experience, too. I'm a slow learner. I tried big ones, small ones, ones where I took a booth and didn't present, ones where I took a booth and also was featured in one or more of the programs. Finally--when I wrote THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER (learn more at http://carolynhowardjohnson.com/) --I recommended authors eschew them excepting under certain circumstances and, of course, I gave my readers a bulleted run-down of what those parameters are.

I should back up a bit. I have always believed in cross-promotion. Some of those practice fair experiences were cross-promotion oriented. It dawned on me that the more I worked with authors on cross-promotion projects before the fair, the more successful our efforts were. Thus Authors' Coalition was born and each time I have worked a fair and increased the numbers of cross promoters and the associated projects, they have become better and better. My book sales jumped by more than ten times this last Festival over the one before. I expect another jump in 2006. But this is not about sales. It is about branding, about promotion, about sharing.

This year Authors' Coalition has become a formal entity including a Website (http://authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com/) that will be linked and mentioned in our the LA Times Festival of Books' guides, tabloids and other promotional literature. Hooking this cross-promotional campaign on that powerful little train has been no less than an amazing experience for me.

We have tailored giveaways to truly fit with an authors' branding campaign instead of giving out doodads that don't really fit with the program and will probably get tossed. We have a catalog of titles going out to booksellers and this turned into a little cross-promotional project of its own. We will be elaborating on a free CD that was very successful last year. And we have broadened many of these value-added fair projects to include other authors, not only those who are partnering with the booth.

Authors' Coalition has picked up speed, too. We wrapped my "Sharing with Writers" newsletter as an essential power into the Coalition. We brought several partners together to give it more steam. We asked ourselves, "What do writers want and what do they need?" We are adding those features to our membership one by one.

Our first media releases about the formation of Authors' Coalition were just sent and now we have several sending that release to their media lists and writer-friends instead of two or three or four. Soon we will have the power of hundreds. That's hundreds carrying our logo, reading our blog (http://redenginepress.com/chjohnson) on making book fairs successful (naturally!). Hundreds utilizing services like our book-and-author-personalized-promotion packages. Hundreds who, instead of letting their books (and the idea of promoting at book fairs) die, will be cross-promoting like crazy and loving it!

Cross-Promotion: The Steam that Drives Good Branding Good Branding: The Fire Behind Book Sales Cross promotion. It's the Little Engine That Could. When all else fails (or all else is only so-so) add cross promotion to the firebox that makes promotions run and you'll increase the power of whatever you're doing incrementally. Book fairs are a good example. Most authors find they disappoint in terms of book sales. Even if author are promotion-savvy and know that other things like publicity, networking and exposure count, they still often walk away dissatisfied with results. That was my experience, too. I'm a slow learner. I tried big ones, small ones, ones where I took a booth and didn't present, ones where I took a booth and also was featured in one or more of the programs. Finally--when I wrote THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER (learn more at http://carolynhowardjohnson.com/) --I recommended authors eschew them excepting under certain circumstances and, of course, I gave my readers a bulleted run-down of what those parameters are. I should back up a bit. I have always believed in cross-promotion. Some of those practice fair experiences were cross-promotion oriented. It dawned on me that the more I worked with authors on cross-promotion projects before the fair, the more successful our efforts were. Thus Authors' Coalition was born and each time I have worked a fair and increased the numbers of cross promoters and the associated projects, they have become better and better. My book sales jumped by more than ten times this last Festival over the one before. I expect another jump in 2006. But this is not about sales. It is about branding, about promotion, about sharing. This year Authors' Coalition has become a formal entity including a Website (http://authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com/) that will be linked and mentioned in our the LA Times Festival of Books' guides, tabloids and other promotional literature. Hooking this cross-promotional campaign on that powerful little train has been no less than an amazing experience for me. We have tailored giveaways to truly fit with an authors' branding campaign instead of giving out doodads that don't really fit with the program and will probably get tossed. We have a catalog of titles going out to booksellers and this turned into a little cross-promotional project of its own. We will be elaborating on a free CD that was very successful last year. And we have broadened many of these value-added fair projects to include other authors, not only those who are partnering with the booth. Authors' Coalition has picked up speed, too. We wrapped my "Sharing with Writers" newsletter as an essential power into the Coalition. We brought several partners together to give it more steam. We asked ourselves, "What do writers want and what do they need?" We are adding those features to our membership one by one. Our first media releases about the formation of Authors' Coalition were just sent and now we have several sending that release to their media lists and writer-friends instead of two or three or four. Soon we will have the power of hundreds. That's hundreds carrying our logo, reading our blog (http://redenginepress.com/chjohnson) on making book fairs successful (naturally!). Hundreds utilizing services like our book-and-author-personalized-promotion packages. Hundreds who, instead of letting their books (and the idea of promoting at book fairs) die, will be cross-promoting like crazy and loving it!	Paula Abdul & Carolyn Howard-Johnson



	Carolyn Howard-Johnson will be co-authoring The Complete Writer Publishes with Pat McGrath Avery, Bev Walton-Porter and Joyce Faulkner in 2006
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered are both award-winners. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems have appeared in national magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on culture, tolerance, writing and promotion and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations nationwide. She is an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and has shared her expertise at venues like San Diego State's world renowned Writers' Conference and Call to Arts! EXPO. She was recently awarded Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by the California Legislature and her city's Ethics award for her work on promoting tolerance. Her nitty gritty how-to book, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER won USA Book News' Best Professional Book 2004 and her chapbook of poetry, TRACINGS, is now available from http://finishinglinepress.com/. She loves to travel and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, UK: Herzen University in St. Petersburg, RU; and Charles University in Prague.