The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity: A Comprehensive Resource -- From Building the Buzz to Pitching the Press

A Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity has been very helpful in preparing me for dealing with the whole publicity process. Once you finally send off your last edits, this is the book you are going to need on your bedstand as you leave the realm of writing and enter the realm of selling your book. I am impelled to write a review of A Savvy Author from the scathing and unfair review written by KDCmarvel below. I looked at the other reviews written by this marvel and was unsurprised that they were equally negative. I assume that someone savvy enough to have written a book and have landed a publisher, will be able to be unswayed by childish rantings. As always, read the reviews by reputable sources before making your decision to buy or not.

I have dozens of friends and acquaintances who have labored years to get a book written and published and then, when their book came out, were hurt and baffled that their book wasn't promoted and didn't sell. The Savvy Author's Guide can help first-time authors help realize their life dreams of getting their book out there into the hands of thousands of people. The little secret that The Savvy Author's Guide lets you in on is that there is a short window, three to six months, after a book is published when the tide of public opinion will lift the book and it's sales, or it will sink to oblivion. Lissa Warren provides hand-holding advice for the author who needs to switch gears from laboring for years behind a computer to spending a few months out on the hustings and in front of the spotlight promoting his or her book. I know most authors don't have a lot of money to spend on buying books, but this is one you will need. I tell my new author friends that if they only buy two books, one should be The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published (by Bykofsky and Sander)(which, for some reason, is weak in the chapter on book publicity) and the other is this book, the Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity.

My only wish with the Savvy Author's Guide is that I had it in my hands when my co-author and I were developing the publicity plan for The Renegade Writer. Warren's book gave me a view of the book publicity machine that I haven't seen before, and showed me where our plan was weak. While we have a great publisher, we don't have a dedicated publicist on our team, so this book IS my publicist. The best thing about the the Savvy Author's Guide is that it gave me some great ideas about how to generate even more buzz for our book. I appreciate the listings of book events, expos, freelance publicists, and media trainers. This is a book I'm going to keep close at hand as I develop proposals for more book projects! Diana Burrell, co-author of The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success

Wow! As I perused the website of The Virginia Festival of the Book to catch a glimpse of what fellow authors I will share the day with, I came across Lissa Warren. As she mentions in her book, visual presentations do attract more attention than plain text. Consequently, my attention was drawn to the title of her much needed book, The Savvy Author's Guide to the Book Publicity. I feel like I'm forever indebted to Lissa Warren for offering such a complete reference to parenting paper children. I'm the father of two now. One of my books is a newborn, and after reading this book I feel confident to make sure this book is raised the right way. Oh, I rushed right out the hour I found out about her book (last night). Five hours later, it was read. Yes, I did take a few pages of notes. How could I not? I highly recommend it. In fact, I will bring it to the attention of the many aspiring authors and poets who are understandably all too eager to write and release a book within two months. It's always hard to tell them they should add about a year to that plan. I tell them to "Research. Learn the pros and cons of the different types of publishing. Learn about author/publisher contracts. Spend enough time editing the manuscript." But it's difficult to explain that all of that is the easy part, and that a homeless paper child, like many stray animals, may get "put to sleep" (remaindered). It's sad. It is. Yes, conceiving the paper child is the easy part, but then you have to make sure your newborn books find homes filled with bookmarks, reading lamps, and loving readers. Fortunately, Warren tells us exactly how to do this in her book, including an ample appendix and detailed Table of Contents for easy referencing. Ha ha, I read it first! Now look out world, 'cause here I come!--Éric L Farrell, Author & PoetSeeking Solace: Finding Peace and Comfort in Times of DistressVerbalizions of Enlightenment: The Secret to the PainHost of WordStage Poetry Lounge & TOUR (Virginia Festival of the Book 3/27/04 8PM)