USA Book News Announces Winners and Finalists of the USA "Best Books 2011" Awards

ME D I A  R E L E A S E

For Immediate Release

Contact: Carolyn Howard-Johnson

E-mail: HoJoNews@aol.com

USA BOOK NEWS ANNOUNCES WINNERS AND FINALISTS OF THE USA “BEST BOOKS 2011” AWARDS

Simon & Schuster, St. Martin’s Press, Random House, Penguin, Harper Collins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons and hundreds of Independent Houses contribute to this year’s Outstanding Competition!

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LOS ANGELES – USABookNews.com, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, announced two of Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s books were among those that placed in THE USA “BEST BOOKS 2011” AWARDS on November 1, 2011. Awards were presented for titles published in 2010 and 2011.
Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of USA Book News, said this year’s contest yielded an unprecedented number of entries. Winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape: Simon & Schuster, St. Martin’s Press, Random House, Penguin, Harper Collins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons and hundreds of independent houses contributed to this year’s outstanding competition. Keen adds, “Our success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.”
Award highlights include the following:

(Full results listing available on USABooknews.com)
The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher (Second Edition) by Carolyn Howard-Johnson won best business book in the writing category.

Blooming Red: Christmas Poetry for the Rational by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball was a finalist in the poetry category.

Prodigal Father Pagan Son: Growing Up Inside the Dangerous World of the Pagans Motorcycle Club by Anthony Menginie and Kerrie Droban (St. Martin's Press) was honored in the “Autobiography/Memoirs” category

Oprah: A Biography by Kitty Kelley (Crown Books/Random House) was awarded “Best Biography"

Perfect One-Dish Dinners: All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers by Pam Anderson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) placed number one in “Cookbooks”

The Daughter's Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick (Water Brook/Random House) took home the “Best General Fiction” prize

One reviewer said reading Howard-Johnson’s books is like picking the brains of a master marketer. It received plaudits from industry shakers like Marilyn Ross, founder of Small Publishers or North America and Tim Bete, director of Dayton University’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference. The new one carries endorsements from the likes of Dan Poynter and Tony Eldridge.

Howard-Johnson, an instructor for nearly a decade at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, chose to have the new edition published in both e-book format and paperback in order to give her struggling students and clients affordable and convenient choices. Whichever format a reader chooses, The Frugal Book Promoter assures an author’s book the best possible start in life. Full of nitty-gritty how-tos for getting nearly free publicity, the author shares her professional experience as well as practical tips gleaned from the successes of her own book campaigns. A former journalist and publicist (she wrote media releases for fashion designers like Christian Dior), she tells authors how to do what their publishers can’t or won’t and why authors can often do their own promotion better than a PR professional. Her poetry is published in dozens of literary and review journals worldwide.
USABookNews.com is an online publication providing coverage for books from mainstream and independent publishers to the world online community. JPX Media Group, in Los Angeles, California, is the parent company of USABookNews.com.
A complete list of the winners and finalists of The USA “Best Books 2011” Awards are available online at http://www.usabooknews.com/.

Learn more about Howard-Johnson at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com and http://carolynhoward-johnson.com/.

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Cover image and media kit available on request at HoJoNews@aol.com.
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Best wishes,
Donna M. McDine
Award-winning Children's Author
The Golden Pathway ~ August 2010 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc.
http://guardianangelpublishing.com/pathway.htm

To Pseudonym or Not to Pseudonym by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

One of the writers I trust for promotion advice is launching the second edition of her multi award-winning Frugal Book Promoter. And now it is available for Kindle (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkProKindle) . I'm helping her celebrate with this short piece, a partial excerpt from the new edition.

To Pseudonym or Not to Pseudonym

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Nora Roberts, the author of more than 150 romance novels, was asked why she writes romantic suspense novels under a pen name. Here is her answer:

"It's marketing."

She says because she writes quickly that makes it difficult for her publisher to publish all of her work with an appropriate amount of time between each of them. So she writes works which are “edgier” than her romance novels under the pseudonym J. D. Robb. She says. "Putting it under a pseudonym helps brand it for the reader." Children’s writers often separate their real names or their “other” writing names from their children’s work to keep work intended for children untainted.

Writers will find information on the concept of branding in the second edition of The Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) including some of the reasons why you shouldn’t use a pen name. You will, of course, have to weigh the pros and cons, but keep in mind that Ms. Roberts has a powerhouse publisher and its marketing department to help her navigate the difficulties inherent in using a pseudonym. If you are considering using a pen name here's what you should know:

1. It is very hard to keep a pen name secret. Everyone knows who Kristie Leigh Maguire is, as an example, but most know that it is a pen name. If people didn't know before that Robb was Nora Roberts' pen name, most of them will now that Time magazine let the cat out of the bag. They also revealed (big time) that Nora Roberts is also a pen name!

2. It is very hard to promote a book in person when you use a pen name—especially if you choose an opposite-sex pen name. In fact, promotion of all kinds can become touchy if you use a pen name because you are intent upon keeping your real identity a secret.

3. Using a pen name isn't necessarily an effective barrier against law suits.

Read more about Roberts in Time magazine's "10 Questions" feature, page 6 of the Dec. 10, 2007, issue.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, is a multi award-winning novelist and poet and has a hard enough time keeping those identities separate from her work as the author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books—one for writers and one for retailers. Learn more about all of them at www.howtodoitfrugally.com. She also blogs at http://www.sharingingwithwriters.blogspot.com/ and at http://www.thenewbookreview.blogspot.com/.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

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

Author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally books including the second edition honored by USA BOOK NEWS

The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo):

E-mail: HoJoNews@aol.com

Facebook: http://Facebook.com/carolynhowardjohnson

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

Carolyn, it's been a pleasure hosting you today. Very interesting information on Nora Roberts. Thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Best wishes,
Donna M. McDine
Award-winning Children's Author
The Golden Pathway ~ August 2010 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc.
http://guardianangelpublishing.com/pathway.htm

How to Promote Your Book ~ The Frugal Book Promoter, Second Edition by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

New Edition of Multi Award-Winning Book Released

Thousands Expected to Dig for Nuggets
More than a dozen authors, mentors, and nationally known book marketers will offer thousand in bonus gifts focused on the needs of authors when novelist, poet, and book marketer Carolyn Howard-Johnson releases the second edition of the first book in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter.

Among those supporting Howard-Johnson’s book are self publishing gurus Dan Poynter and Shelley Hitz, book marketers Dana Lynn Smith, Patricia Fry, D’vorah Lansky, and Aggie Villaneuva and even some fun stuff like a full book of poetry from Magdalena Ball and advice on feng shui from Anna Maria Prezio, Ph.D. Leading the charge is Amazon and book launch expert Denise Cassino.

Collectively, they offer an inestimable value in career boosting bonus gifts to anyone who pays a mere $9.95 for The Frugal Book Promoter in its Kindle iteration (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkProKindle) or $12.82 (discounted from $17.95) for the paperback on Amazon (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo).

The project will reach a crescendo on Wednesday, October 8, when an unprecedented number of people will visit Howard-Johnson’s launch page and launch her valuable to number one on Amazon.com, a great way to help make this book visible to even more authors who need it. Check out her site on October 8 at http://frugalbookpromoter.homestead.com/index.html. 
Howard-Johnson, an instructor for nearly a decade at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, chose to have the new edition published in both e-book format and paperback in order to give her struggling students and clients affordable and convenient choices. Whichever format a reader chooses, The Frugal Book Promoter assures an author’s book the best possible start in life. Full of nitty-gritty how-tos for getting nearly free publicity, the author shares her professional experience as well as practical tips gleaned from the successes of her own book campaigns. A former journalist and publicist (she wrote media releases for fashion designers like Christian Dior), she tells authors how to do what their publishers can’t or won’t and why authors can often do their own promotion better than a PR professional.

Howard-Johnson even assigned a new subtitle to this edition of her book to reflect its appeal to a broader array of authors. It is now The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher. She says, "With the advances in Internet marketing and the role social media plays in communicating, it was high time even writers who had the first edition had access to my frugal (frugal of both time and money!) ideas for new networking opportunities." The big, fat book (416 pages) also has money-saving ads in the back and an amazing new cover—the epitome of “frugalness”—by Chaz DeSimone, http://www.chazdesimone.com/.

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of 14 women of “San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen.” She has worked for Good Housekeeping Magazine and as a journalist for several newspapers and has been a popular presenter at writers’ conferences nationwide like the one at San Diego State University and the Sinclair Lewis Writers’ Conference. She is also a novelist and poet, which informs the advice she gives to authors of those genres.

Learn more about Howard-Johnson at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com/ and http://carolynhoward-johnson.com/. 
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Cover image and media kit available on request at HoJoNews@aol.com. 
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Instructor for the renowned UCLA Extension Writers' Program
Author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally books:

The Frugal Book Promoter
The Frugal Editor
The Great First Impression Book Proposal
Great Little Last-Minute Edits

E-mail: HoJoNews@aol.com

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



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Best wishes,
Donna M. McDine
Award-winning Children's Author
The Golden Pathway ~ August 2010 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc.
http://guardianangelpublishing.com/pathway.htm