What are three words that authors hate to hear? Promotion, promotion, promotion! A writer is someone who generally prefers to stay locked away in a small writing studio (perhaps in an undisclosed tropical location), to speaking in front of crowds, answering questions on national radio, or God forbid, have their un-photogenic faces filmed beside Oprah's! But these are all fears that must be overcome in order to reach that coveted title of "bestselling author.” The task is made even more terrifying when you are a self-published author with little or no PR experience and no one to represent you. Because let's face it, the majority of self-published authors can't afford a publicist with services that can cost anywhere from $1,000 - $20,000 just to retain, not to mention their hourly rates.

So what's a poor little self-published author to do? That's where Penny Sansevieri's book, "From Book to Bestseller; An Insider's Guide to Publicizing and Marketing Your Book!” comes in. Penny is in fact herself a self-published author, starting with her novel, "The Cliffhanger” published by iUniverse in 2000. Acting as her own publicist, Penny was able to rocket her little romance novel to number one on the Amazon Bestseller List for the San Diego area, three months in a row! She then marketed herself as a publicity expert, created a very successful business helping self-published authors, and compiled all of her techniques in this easy-to-follow book.

As a print-on-demand author myself, who has been dreading the idea of promoting my book with little or no assistance, Penny's book is like a how to manual on the first steps to publicity. It contains things that a self-published writer (particularly a fiction writer) would never have thought were even available. There are other books out there that will perhaps describe in more detail one or a few of the areas covered here (in fact Penny even states up front that this book should be used more as a guide than absolute Bible), however Penny covers it all fr

om a self-published author's perspective. And not many experts in this area can say they understand that side of it.

Some of the invaluable topics that are covered include:

· Creating an Exceptional Press Kit · Getting Book Reviews · Getting into Book Clubs · Courting Special Sales · Getting Into Catalogs · Garnering Celebrity Endorsements · Pitching to the Media · The Art of the Morning Show Pitch · Tips for a Successful Radio Interview · Book Signings · Internet Marketing · It even lists contacts for The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, and Oprah! Not to mention many others.

Penny's book provides amazing insights into the book-publicizing world and I highly recommend it to self-published authors, as well as traditionally published ones (since it may help them to better understand the tasks faced by their publicist). I myself have begun my marketing campaign using Penny's book as my outline and have so far been enjoying the process. That may all change of course, if I ever have to face the terrifying possibility of appearing in front of millions of Oprah fans.

ISBN: 1-890158-71-2 Publisher: PublishingGold.com, Inc.

© 2005 by David Tucholski This article comes with reprint rights providing no changes are made and the resource box below accompanies it.

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