Join Me in My Putsch to Avoid Euphemisms That Are Bad Medicine for Authors

This is just a little quotation I found when I was updating the flagship book (2nd edition) of my #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter.   It includes a couple of euphemisms you may want to avoid--or not! (-:

"Even as publishers shift more of the responsibility for marketing to their authors, many authors are convinced there is something déclassé about the words "marketing" our work or "shopping" our books even though we sense we must build platforms regardless of the words we use.  We know we must submit the most professional proposal, synopsis, and chapters we can, but the idea that the image we are creating is part of a promotion plan of sort gets lost in . . . well, the language."

I thought maybe you would like to join me in my putsch to avoid words that may nudge authors to lesser things rather than greater!



MORE ABOUT THE EDITOR and BLOGGER

 Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor. Her latest is in the series is  How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Learn more on her Amazon profile page, http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile . Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving--and The Great First Impression Book Proposal, another booklet, helps writers who want to be traditionally published. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it will help them convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs at all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at The Frugal, Smart,and Tuned-In Editor (http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com). Her SharingwithWriters.blogspot.com blog focuses on the writing life and book marketing and promotion. It is a Writers' Digest 101 Best blogs pick. Carolyn is also
marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers including the award-winningest book in the series,  The Frugal Editor.

A New Preferred Term Leads to a Fave Topic, Saving Money

Unless you either write books of your own, are in business for yourself, or are just involved in marketing and advertising in some way, you probably won't need to know about this new marketing term. Still, those interested in editing are generally curious (and exacting!) folk,  so I thought I'd share my story with you. Besides . . .the story involves some good, hard advice about paying good, hard money for things you can get free on your own and will probably be more effective if you do! Here it is:

Today you get a hard reminder prompted by a new term being bandied about.

In The Frugal Book Promoter I talk about advertorials in conjunction with a section warning writers—but especially new writers—to use publicity (meaning free) in their marketing rather than advertising (which always means paid-for!). The section includes a little back-door method for getting to know the same newspaper and magazine folks who can say yay or nay to your marketing efforts as an alternative for cold calls or for giving up when you discover you've missed a submission deadline. 

One of the terms I tell you about in that section is “advertorial” which means a paid-for ad that looks like free editorial copy and is often more effective. To put in the grossest terms, it’s more effective because it fools many readers into believing that it’s editorial copy or vetted news or feature material chosen strictly on the basis of its newsworthiness or general appeal.

Now we have a new term for the same thing—possibly designed to disguise an advertorial with ritzier words. It is certainly less likely to be deciphered by the general reader. It is…drumroll… “native advertising.” According to David Lazarus, columnist for the LA Times, Lord & Taylor is facing a deceptive-trade charge from the Federal Trade Commission because they used this ploy—a huge embarrassment for a clothing company of L&T's stature.

You’ll see this tactic used—whether they call it advertorial or native advertising—in special advertising sections produced by newspapers and similar kinds of features in magazines—and sometimes they can be valuable reading like the sections Time magazine often runs. These advertorials are paid for by large corporations or countries, usually companies or countries that want to improve their image among Americans or the business community. 

However, even useful advertorials can only be interpreted well by the reader if it is very clear that they are paid-for. Like anything we read, we should know the source and that’s one reason that the Web is so iffy. By the way, this Lord & Taylor snafu was “native advertising” on the Web, which is notorious for disseminating misinformation (a PC term for “lies.”)

It’s important for authors to know about this. They need to know what to avoid in their marketing (and how to use whatever they choose ethically). Maybe even more important, they need to be able to discern the propaganda aimed at naïve authors by scammy businesses—both big businesses and individuals—trying to entice them into paying for marketing programs that are either useless or can be gotten free.

As it happens, this topic has been on my mind because I am working on a chapter for the next book in my award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. Getting Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically will be published late this summer. Believe me, there are a lot of “Please-pay-me” schemes revolving around every aspect of publishing but the review scams are at the top of my hate list. Authors desperate to get the reviews they’ve always dreamed of having are perfect targets, especially first-time authors. So, yeah. I’m on my soapbox again! (-:

As far as editors go, now you get to choose. Do you want to use "advertorial," "native advertising," or plain old "advertising."  Generally speaking I'd opt for the latter. "Advertorial" may sound like a foreign language no matter what language your audience speaks. "Native advertising" is a euphemism (and therefore misleading). We might as well call what it is--marketing that you pay for as opposed to marketing you don-t known as "publicity." 

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 Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults, and speaks on issues of writing and publishing. Find her at http://howtodoitfrugally.com. Find the second edition of her multi award-winning The Frugal Editor: Do-it-yourself editing secrets for authors: From your query letter to final manuscript to the marketing of your bestseller. (HowToDoItFrugally Series of Books for Writers). Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/writers_books.htm , where writers find lists and other helps including , Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her SharingingwithWriters blog. She tweets writers' resources at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo . Please tweet this post to your followers. We all need a little help with editing. (-:

Recommended Reading, Listening and Help from "The Frugal Editor"

Here are some of the people and sources I've mentioned or quoted in the text or appendixes of The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. The editing process can become as addictive as chewing gum. Like chewing gum, there are some great benefits.

In the Appendix of The Frugal Editor (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870/) you'll also find lists of the agents who contributed to the chapters on writing picture-perfect query letters, a short list of common errors, sample query letters, sample cover letters and more. Here are some recommended books.

Editing

Lapsing Into a Coma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--And How to Avoid Them, by Bill Walsh.

Concordance is a text-analyzing computer program that makes indexes and wordlists, counts word frequency, compares usages of a word, analyzes keywords, finds phrases and idioms, and publishes to the Web: http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/.

Writing Help is a collection of computer programs by Roger Carlson, including "Passive Word Highlighter," "Preposition Highlighter," "Adverb Highlighter," "Adverb Eliminator," "Word Frequency Counter" and "Count Lines." You need some computer expertise to set your computer's security settings to accept macros, reboot your computer so the new settings will take effect and install the programs. For more go to: http://www.rogerjcarlson.com/WritingHelp/TechTips.html.

Editors

Trudy McMurrin is an editor with decades of university press and freelance experience in fiction and nonfiction. Her authors have won many regional and national awards in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Reach her at trudymcmurrin@aol.com. Her blog is www.TrudyMcmurrinEdits.com.

Barbara McNichol, editor and writer, was introduced earlier in this book. Learn more about her at www.barbaramcnichol.com.

Virgil Jose, writer and freelance editor, may be reached at scribe1937@yahoo.com.

Grammar and Style

AP Stylebook by Associated Press.

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right, by Bill Bryson.

Chicago Manual of Style by the University of Chicago Press Staff.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss.

Far From the Madding Gerund, by Geoffrey K. Pullum et al.

Garner's Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner, is complete and excellent for Americans. For our purposes--that is not to rile an agent or publisher--choose the more formal of possibilities it offers. Or, if the suggestion feels stilted, rearrange the construction of your sentence.

Grammar Snobs Are Big Meanies: Guide to Language for Fun & Spite, by June Casagrande. Use this book when you want to argue with an editor, not when you want to impress one. A more formal tome that may be used the same way is The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (Fowler and Burchfield). It isn't nearly as entertaining, however.

StyleEase for Chicago Manual of Style and Turabian's Manual for Writers is a computer program to help you automate some of what is in this book. Go to:
http://www.masterfreelancer.com/wsstore/styleeaseCHICAGO-download.html.

The American Heritage Book of English.

Audio Classes for Writers, a series of MP3 or CD-ROM lessons. The title "Flesch Readability Score: A Rarely Used Tool for Tweaking Manuscripts and Targeting Your Audience," produced, written and recorded by Allyn Evans, Joyce Faulkner, Kathe Gogolewski, Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Marilyn Peake, tackles that subject in depth. Find it at http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/audio.asp.

Perrin and Smith Handbook of Current English has been around so long you might find it in a used bookstore. When you’ve read it, you’ll know the difference between temerity and timidity--or at least know to look them up. “Half knowing a word may be more dangerous than not knowing it at all” is the kind of truth you’ll find within its pages.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition, by William Strunk Jr., E. B. White, Roger Angell.

The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations, by David Grambs.

When Words Collide--A Media Writer's Guide to Grammar and Style, by Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald.

Websites

A site that will help you with straitlaced, no nonsense rules of grammar:
http://www.rit.edu/~962www/grammar-misused_words.html.

A site that gives a lot of detail and practical tests for grammar is: http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/lhyphen.htm.

Craft

The Complete Writer by Bev Walton-Porter, Mindy Phillips Lawrence, Pat McGrath Avery and Joyce Faulkner. Do your Amazon search on ISBN 0974565261.

Writing Dialogue by Tom Chiarella is a must-read because poor dialogue technique is a glaring tip-off to editors and publishers that a manuscript is written by a beginner who has not taken the time to learn our craft.

Writing for Emotional Impact: Advanced Dramatic Techniques to Attract, Engage, and Fascinate the Reader from Beginning to End, by Karl Iglesias.

Custom Dictionaries

Many professional organizations will share their print conventions with authors. Just ask. Here are a few:

Zoologists and those who write about wildlife will find free custom dictionaries at: http://home.comcast.net/~wildlifebio/c_dic.htm.

This site is for linguists and others who would like foreign language custom dictionaries:
http://www.bmtmicro.com/BMTCatalog/win/msworddictionaries.html.

Here is a custom dictionary for medical terms: http://www.ptcentral.com/university/medterms_zip.html.

To find a tree and woody plant dictionary go to:
http://shade-trees.tripod.com/tree_dic.html.

Promotion

Book Promotion from A to Z, by Fran Silverman.

Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye, by Katherine Sands.

PromoPaks: Nearly Free Marketing for Authors, by Janet Elaine Smith. Available only at http://starpublish.com/starbooks.htm.

The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't, by Carolyn Howard-Johnson. USA Book News' Best Professional Book award and the Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award winner. Helps authors build a credible package or platform necessary for selling writing to agents and publishers and for selling books once they are released.

Publishing

The ABC's of POD: A Beginner's Guide to Fee-Based Print-on-Demand Publishing, by Dehanna Bailee. Those choosing to self- or subsidy-publish and thus required to do most of the detail work on their own will find this reference useful. For more information visit the author's website: http://dehanna.com.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Marilyn Ross and Tom Ross.

The Well-Fed Writer Publishes by Peter Bowerman.

Gorham Printing (http://www.gorhamprinting.com/) has a free e-book with some helpful guidelines on publishing on their home page.

Book Proposals

Book Proposals That Sell, 21 Secrets to Speed Your Success, by Terry Whalin.

How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen.

Typesetting and/or Formatting

Books, Typography, and Microsoft Word by Aaron Shepard. This is a downloadable e-book.

Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann and E. M. Ginger.
The Complete Manual of Typography by James Felici.
For desktop publishing: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/basic/a/textcomposition.htm.

Having Fun

Sun Signs for Writers by Bev Walton-Porter.

The Complete Writer's Journal, edited by Pat McGrath Avery, Joyce Faulkner and Carolyn Howard-Johnson, is a journal crammed full of quotations from old pros and newbies to amuse and inspire you.

Directories: Marketplaces for Your Work

International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses, edited by Len Fulton, includes information that will help you target the right publisher for anything from an article to a poem.

Writer's Market, published by Writer's Digest Books, has companion volumes targeted companion for markets like poetry, novels and short stories, Christian markets and more. Updated annually. Everyone uses them.

Writers' Journal, a bimonthly magazine, focuses on writers who are beginners.

The Writer, a monthly publication. This one seems targeted to those writing only for pleasure.

The Writer's Guide to Magazine Markets: Fiction, edited by Krieger and Freedman, includes information on grants and other topics of interest to writers.

The Literary Press and Magazine Directory: The Only Directory for the Serious Writer of Fiction and Poetry, edited by the Council of Literary Presses and Magazines.

The Poet's Marketplace, edited by Joseph Kelly. This reference is not updated frequently, and authors need to check the facts in any targeted publication before submitting. Buy a copy of the magazine. You'll get more than current contact information from the experience.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com.

Carolyn Great First Impression Book Proposal Is Here!

Don't put it off any longer. You can learn the knack of book proposals without so much pain, I promise you. You can be a pro with and investment of only 20 minutes and 49 cents with my Great First Impression Book Proposal Short. And, yes, editing is super-important in anything that's a "First Impression!" So this sure enough isn't off-topic. (-:

Listen to Author Access Award-Winning Podcast

Irene Watson, podcast host and editor of AuthorSuccess says of the new podcast interviews in her series: "... I have no doubt this episode [of AuthorSuccess.com podcasts] will go on to be forever in our Top 10 list. Congratulations on a great show!"

Here is her invitation to listen:

Visit with the creative force behind the HowToDoItFrugally Series of Books for writers. Carolyn shared her best tips and strategies for low-cost/zero-cost marketing campaigns and also talked about what NOT to do to market your books. She also talks about the value of editing and how it directly controls how your proposals, books, and marketing are peceived in the marketplace. Listen to the interview on Authors Access(visit link and click on the PODCAST button). Tune in each week as Irene and Victor interview industry luminaries on marketing, writing, editing, and publishing by subscribing to the RSS feed.