The Finney School of Real Life

Question:

What was it like as new authors in the publishing world?

Answer:

As free-lance writers of informative articles, we had no prior
experience with book publishers. We did a lot of research
and were aware of some basic contract and publishing
procedures, yet there were many things we were not
prepared for. For instance, there was the book cover design
to conceive of - which our good friend Brian McAndrew
created. The back cover text had to be developed, an
author’s bio written, photos to have taken and lists of nearly
2 hundred contacts to sort out. The marketing research took
weeks to do, but it resulted in a 12-page plan to ease our
way. Then there were formal things like dealing with the
Library of Congress and Copyrighting. For instance, copies
of the book had to be sent to the Library of Congress at our
expense. There are rules to be aware of as well. The rights
for free use (using quotes from other people) is so gray that
we opted out of including this kind of text. Unfortunately, that
meant more editing. We were disappointed because there
were some very good quotes that would have added a great
deal to the book.

Question:

What were some publishing experiences or unexpected turn
of events?

Answer:

While Lillian was browsing the Internet looking up
information on other publishers, she came upon Publish
America’s website. It inspired her to send a query in on the
spot. Within 3-days we received a request for a sample
manuscript. Now, these publishers only accept 20% of the
thousands of queries that cross their desks, so we were
excited to have such a good response in a very short time.
Unfortunately, we were also relocating our home from one
part of town to another, finishing a garden year and working
as well. Time was short and stress was high. We got that
sample manuscript off in a timely fashion, however, and we
received an acceptance within a few days. The heady
sensation of signing the 7-year contract flew by us in a blur.

Question:

What time and resources do we put in for promoting the
book?

Answer:

Every day we put in 2-6 hours into some aspect of the book.
The Internet has proven to be a powerful tool where an
immense amount of information can be found from
newsletters, publishers, forums and authors. Every on-line
communication we have is an opportunity to plug our book
by simply attaching an auto signature. We developed
promotional materials (flyers, mini-posters, large posters,
bookmarks, labels) and, of course, galleys and sample
packages for editors and booksellers. Most importantly, we
had a great website built for us by Brian McAndrew of
Beyond Graphix.

Question:

What did you learn in researching the book?

Answer:

We thought we were committed to the concept of the book
in our lives, but when researching and writing this book we
found we became much more motivated, more committed
and more informed about waste reduction.

Question:

As a writer, what have you learned about staying organized
or motivated?

Answer:

Having a plan of action for every project is vital. Every project
should have an outline starting from the title through to the
end. There should also be a market plan laid out. Who are
you marketing to? How you are going about it? What will you
do first? These are the most important tools of a writer. Most
people think of a writing career being one where you have
lots of leisure time and creating with words. On the contrary,
most of the time is spent marketing and organizing projects.
For instance, we might write an article and query it to a
market. That market may take a few days to get back to us,
but it may also be as long as a year before we hear from
them. That article is idle and we do not get paid until after it
is published. A writer may have hundreds of pieces of their
work at various stages of writing and marketing at one time.
They need to know where it is and its status, at a glance. We
use the Excel program to take care of this. For the book,
plans were indispensable. The market plan alone is a book
in itself and will take us years to complete. That is normal,
actually. A writer must spend much of their time promoting
the book for years after publication in order to keep sales
happening. Unfortunately, promotion and writing time are
unpaid hours in the meantime.

Question:

When do you write?

Answer:

We have to do a bit of juggling to manage our business, day
job and writing career with some kind of balance. Usually,
We work as a team, though we write separately and then
conglomerate and edit the work together. Because we
share one computer, this can be a bit of a juggle. Dave
works shift work so when he is at work or sleeping Lillian
will use the computer to research and promote.

Question:

What is your professional background?

Answer:

Dave and Lillian began their (paid) writing career working as
staff writers at Openminder Newsletter where they
experienced the harried pace of getting several articles and
even feature or interview articles ready for a by-weekly
deadline. It was our start in the writing world and plunged us
head-first into the community, interviewing unique and
enterprising people. The concept of Trash Talk was already
developed and this market snatched up the column
immediately. When Openminder closed shop, we started a
free-lance career. Our articles have since appeared in a
variety of magazines including Seeds of Diversity, Country
Connection and ISKRA.

Question:

Have you won any awards or contests?

Answer:

Yes, Dave has recently won first prize in the Nature category
of BC Cottage Magazine’s 2004 Photo contest. Lillian has
won several editorial awards for her poetry and has had her
work published in 5 hardcover anthology books of poetry
through contests.

Question:

What is the most important lesson in your writing career?

Answer:

Research. If you know something is coming up, research it
and make a plan of action well ahead of time. If we did not
start the market plan and develop a plan of action and
estimated schedule soon after finding out the manuscript
was accepted, we would have never been ready for the
myriad of work ahead of us, much of which is time-sensitive.
Doing it right is essential - there is but little chance to make
an impression with a reviewer, reader or publication. Even
with the best of preparation you will be caught off guard or
unprepared. Don’t sweat it too much if you make a mistake.
Think of it as a lesson.

Question:

Have you any advice for new writers?

Answer:

We hate to sound redundant, but again, do your research.
Join forums and research the previous messages for
several months ago. You will find many novice questions
are thoroughly answered with many different people
contributing ideas and opinions. Always research your
market and query them in a professional manner before
sending a finished product.

Dave and Lillian Brummet, authors of the book Trash Talk -
a guide for anyone concerned about his or her impact on the
environment, that offers useful solutions to reduce waste
and better manage resources.

http://www.sunshinecable.com/~drumit

Why to write article? Article Directories are the best source
of publishing and generating traffic to your web-site. Several
of these sites will publish your article right away, and because
of higher rankings of these sites, your article will quickly
indexed in the search engines.

Many article directories are looking for new articles that can
be used on their websites, blogs, and in their ezines. Following
are the major reasons why to write articles. 1. Write to reach
more people: When you write good articles, people may visit the
site often looking for new articles and information from you. 2.
Write for free advertising: Submitting your articles to other
websites provides an opportunity to advertise your website
without paying exorbitant fees. 3. Write to gain high search
engine ranking: Optimize your article to make it search-engine
friendly. After you publish your article, search engines will
craw that article and you may get good page ranking from this.
4. Write to increase link popularity: Submit an article at other
sites, be sure to include a link to your site in your resource
box. When these websites publishes your article, you
automatically get a link back to your site. 5. Write to
establish credibility: Through writing good and original, you
not only give your site exposure, but you also create a good
impression with your prospects. How to Write Article: Certainly,
it is good to write your own article, but before begin to write
you should research on writing article styles. A good research
helps you to know where to start, and can help to make the
article smoother.

There are some writers who like to write their articles without
a plan, but beginners, especially, those who are apt to find
them helpful. However, you don’t have to stick to the outline
completely, but can change it around while writing. You can get
some tips from http://www.1888Articles.com.

Submit Your Article to Editors: After completing writing your
articles you can submit it to the editors of E-zines that are in
constant need of fresh articles. Submission procedures are
casual. Many will also welcome unsolicited articles.

Simply send an e-mail to the editor your article with a short
personal note. Most of the websites and ezines have specific
submission strategies they want you to follow. Check ezine web
sites for submission guidelines.

Once the editors realize that you can post them good articles,
you can post your articles into a regular column. Submit Your
Articles to Online Article Directories: If you do a search for
article directories or article banks, you will possibly find
hundreds of them on internet. Submit your articles to various
directories that provide free submission of the article to their
article to their sites. There are many sites out there, which
allow writers and author to submit their articles, for example
http://ezinearticles.com, http://goarticles.com and
http://www.shvoong.com and many more. You can search for
directories on search engines by using keyword like “free
article submission”.

Writing article itself is the most significant part of the
process. Make it informative and interesting to lure the
reader’s attention. It is recommended that you should spend more
time on writing and editing the actual article than on the
research.

About the Author : Allen Brown is a freelance writer for
www.1888Articles.com<http://www.1888Articles.com />, the premier
website to find thousands of free online articles related to
various categories like science articles , health articles ,
feature articles , news articles , technology articles,
management articles and more. He also freelances for
www.1888PressRelease.com <http://www.1888pressrelease.com/>.

Increase your ezine subscribers by submitting articles once or twice a week to the opt-in ezines. Read by thousands, even hundreds of thousands, you get 10-25 new subscribers for each submission. Your articles also bring people to your Web site to buy your products. Use this checklist to edit your own work.

Knowing these benefits, you want to create and submit as many excellent articles as you can. At times, you have the articles complete, but don’t have anyone handy to edit them. While it’s best to get at least two other edits from business associates, you can edit your articles yourself with a little help.

Use this checklist to edit your own work:

1.Start your introduction with a question or startling fact. You must hook your readers with something that reaches their emotions.

2.Make your introduction only a few sentences. Your readers want to get to the heart of your article fast. They want easy-to- read quick tips. Long stories can bring a yawn to your reader.

3. At the end of your introduction, include your article’s thesis to stay on track and make your article clear and compelling. For instance, “use this checklist to edit your own work.”

4.Make all of your sentences short. Since standard sentence length is 15-17 words, make most of your sentences under that number. Complex sentences and multiple phrases make the reading tougher. Make it easy for your readers to find the subject and verb of each sentence, so they get the point fast.

5.Avoid dull, slow sentences. To avoid passive construction, start them with a subject, and then follow with a verb. For instance, “The coach marketed her business and books through submitting articles online” is an active sentence. “The coach’s books were marketed online through submitting articles.” is passive. Drop linking verbs such as “is,” “was,” “seemed,” or “had.” Replace them with power, active verbs. Instead of “She is beautiful,” you could say, “Her beauty compels you to stare at her.”

6. Aim for compelling, clear copy. Write for the 8-10th grade reader. Don’t try to impress with pompous words such as “utilize.” Always think “What’s in it for them?”

7.Use specific nouns and names. General references don’t engage your readers’ emotions. Let them see the size, color, and shape. Rather than say, “Write your book fast to make lifelong income,” say “Write and finish your book fast so you can take that long vacation to a Caribbean island.” Money alone doesn’t motivate, but what we can do with it does.

8. Let go of certain adverbs. Words like very, suddenly, and sparingly, tell instead of show. Use adverbs as often as you celebrate your birthday. Did I show, rather than tell? Your readers are hungry to experience feelings as well as picture themselves in your examples.

9.Let go of adjectives. Instead of saying, She is a super-intelligent person,” you could say, “She’s a genius.”

10.Appeal to the senses of sight, sound, and emotions. Telling is not effective. Instead of “Buy this book today because it is so useful,” say, “Would you like to double, even quadruple your Online income in three months?”

11.Cut redundancies. Too much repetition in your articles speaks boring or “talking down” to your readers. Be willing to part with some of your “precious” words. Your first edit should reduce your words at least by one-fourth.

12.Don’t use pompous words to try to impress your reader.
Use the shortest, simplest, most well-know word. Check your word’s number of syllables. The more syllables, the more difficult.

13.Keep the subject and verb as close together as possible. Don’t make your reader work to get the meaning.

14.Use the present or past tense of the verb rather than the “-ing” form of the verb. Instead of “she is singing,” say, “she sings or she sang.

15. Put your point at the end of a sentence, a paragraph, or chapter for emphasis. This position hooks the reader to pause and notice or hooks him to keep reading.

16. Cut clichés. Once, original metaphors, clichés age and become trite. Instead of “Birds of a Feather Flock Together,” you could say, “Birds of a Feather Need to Fly Away.”

Make your articles sculptured and painted like a fine work of art. Your word choices do make a difference–both in commercial acceptance as well as audience understanding.

Self-editing will help.

Judy Cullins, 20-year book and Internet Marketing Coach, Author of 10 eBooks including “Write your eBook Fast,” and “How to Market your Business on the Internet,” she offers free help through her 2 monthly ezines, The Book Coach Says…and Business Tip of the Month at http://www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml and over 140 free articles. Email her at mailto:Judy@bookcoaching.com

Yuck, it’s that time again, newsletter time. Are you stuck in front of a blank page or computer screen? Do you struggle each time you have to write? People seem to find all other tasks preferable to writing an article. We have a friend who finds himself washing out socks instead of writing. There’s a term for it: “shaving the yak.”

Originally coined by Seth Godin, marketer and author extraordinaire, “shaving the yak” means that when faced with writing, some people find themselves doing any other chore they can think of, eventually finding themselves down at the zoo, shaving yaks.

Writing can be painful to many people. It doesn’t have to be. Here’s a basic outline of how to write an article quickly and without the painful struggle.

1. Pick a topic that appeals to your readers. This may not be what you think they want, so you need a way to ask, or find out what they want to know. Either ask them directly, or use keyword search tools to find out the most popular requests on the web in your field.

2. Write to appeal to basic human emotions. While you may know a lot about software engineering, or whatever your field, you have to hit readers where it hurts, where they feel, rather than appeal to their brains. So even if your article is about finding a computer networking solution, base your article on the pain that readers encounter with this problem.

3. Get to the point quickly in the first paragraph, using the key words you know people are looking for on Google. State the problem on an emotional level, then make a bold statement to indicate you have a solution.

4. Exaggerate the problem and the pain. Give some real-world examples of how it manifests in your readers’ lives, affecting their work, play, family, physical and mental well-being. Use emotional words that resonate with readers, appealing to universal human dilemmas.

5. Next, suggest three ways to solve the problem. The brain finds it easy to think in threes. Limiting your solutions to three points makes it easier for readers to digest your ideas. It also makes it a whole lot easier and faster to complete your article.

6. Summarize the problem with the three solutions. Be sure to repeat your key words used in your first paragraph.

7. Finally, go back and write your title. This is the most important step of all, because your title provides two important keys:

a. It ensures readers will open and read it when they see the title.

b. It ensures that readers will find your article on the web when they search for solutions on Google or their favorite search engine.

8. Write an effective resource box, with your name, website and blog URLs, your credentials (what makes you an expert), and how and why people should contact you or use your services. Offer them a free report or white paper on your website to entice them to visit and leave their email address with you, and make sure you offer something compelling.

Now, if I had followed my own advice, I would have given you only 3 steps. You see, I struggle with brevity myself, having been cursed with an over-active brain and too much education.

Here’s what you can do right now to solve your writing woes: Write down your topic (a painful problem), tell your readers how bad it is, and then give them 3 solutions they can take to rectify the problem. Open up a new document in Word and start now!

That’s how you can write articles quickly and easily, without having to wash your socks or go down to the zoo to help shave the yaks.

Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. writes articles for business and executive coaches and consultants. She writes articles on leadership and executive development, blogging and Internet marketing. Subscribe to get her ezine Savvy eBiz Tips for the inside edge to grow your business online. http://www.savvyebiztips.com

How can Newsletter Magic help me create a user-friendly, professional-looking Newsletter?

Newsletter Magic makes it very easy to create a basic Newsletter. Getting started is easy. Simply use one of our built in, professionally designed templates and add any content you want. Our newsletter templates have been tested to work with nearly all email clients including Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo. You can also create and save your own newsletter templates.

Once you have your template, adding content is simple. You can even add content to your newsletter or personalize the subject line of your email based on your subscribers’ specific information. With Newsletter Magic, you can collect whatever subscriber information you wish by simply adding an information field to your newsletter subscription form. Moving or re-ordering this information is easy with our click and drag feature.

In order to catch typos or other errors before you send your newsletter to your subscribers, it’s often important to have someone else proofread your newsletter. Newsletter Magic makes it easy to proofread your newsletter to make certain your newsletter looks exactly how you want it to look. Before clicking “Save and Exit”, send a preview of your newsletter to yourself and/or someone else by simply clicking “Send Preview”. You can preview your newsletter exactly as it will appear in nearly all email clients.

In addition to these features, Newsletter Magic will also do the following:

• Warn you before you save your document if you have forgotten to include an unsubscribe link;
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• insert a specific piece of information you have collected from your subscribers into your newsletter;
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• provide free marketing and newsletter tips.

Marketing tip: Improve your customer service and keep current subscribers active by searching for, exporting and sending a message to people who have NOT clicked a specific link or opened a particular email.

If you’re getting rejections from your submissions, please don’t quit yet until you read the following article. I want you to get a perspective on rejection.

First of all, I’ll assume you’ve been told a few things about rejection: Don’t take it personally; it’s a part of writing; and all well-established writers have been rejected at first, and are even rejected now. Good advice.

Then why are you still discouraged by rejection?

Here’s why. We live in a world where ignorance is bliss. You get rejected all the time, you just don’t know it. Perhaps a friend has considered calling you to do something and then changes her mind. You will never know. She isn’t going to send you a rejection letter. Suppose you owned a business and sent out 1,000 direct mail letters and got a response of ten. This is considered a very good response in the direct mail field. Those ten responses cover your costs and time and then some. Do you lament over the 990 folks who didn’t respond? No. Could you see if you demanded to have every one of them write back and tell you they aren’t interested? You’d be blue then. Consider all the offers you reject on a daily basis. Ah, but as writers we put ourselves on the line by requesting to be rejected. The publishing industry is so unique in that aspect. We demand that publishers respond to us and let us know what they want to do with our writing. We have to in order to know what to do next with our particular article or book proposal.

The reason rejection is such a part of your life is because it is the nature of this business of writing. You can’t expect a publisher to accept everything everyone submits. Even if every submission was spectacular, they still couldn’t publish every one.

So you feel stupid when you get rejected. You beat yourself up. There are great ways to overcome this. Keep writing. Keep sending items out. Be very businesslike. Get a rejection letter? Make yourself feel better by sending out the same package that day to another publisher. Handle your submissions in a non-emotional way. While the writing itself can be emotional, the submission process cannot. Accept this and you’ll be a lot happier. Try saying this to yourself the next time you get a rejection: “You don’t want it? That’s okay, I’ll try someone else.”

Heather L. Koppes is a freelance business writer. She writes company literature including newsletters, brochures, articles, case histories and press releases. You can check out her daily blog at http://heatherlkoppes.blogspot.com