|
|
| HOME |
|
Articles You may use any or all of the following articles for personal use providing you adhere to these strictures… 1. You must not in any shape or form alter the content 2. You must include the author’s bio featured at the foot of each article --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's So Special About Traditional Publishing? "Traditional" publishing relates to the long established practice whereby companies buy the rights to make selected works public. A traditional publisher, whether small or large, will select the best work out of many submissions, draw up a contract with the author, take out a copyright in the author's name, and pay the author for various rights, including first publication rights. The publisher makes the entire monetary investment, as well as taking all the monetary risk, and recoups that investment from book sales. The author may be paid an advance, which is in effect an advance against royalties. Once the advance is earned back, the author receives any additional royalties from further book sales. But that is only the start of the multiple benefits accruing to those authors who opt for the traditional route. Rapid developments in print-on-demand (POD) technology coupled with aggressive marketing from the major online publishing players are exerting considerable pressure on traditional houses but even so the concept still continues to offer considerable attraction. Just One Published Book Is All It Takes... Just One Traditionally Published Book Could Pull in Streams of Residual Income and Set You Up For Life Consider this if you doubt the viability of traditional publishing... My original work was first published way back in 1995. It is now in its 5th edition and over the years has enjoyed multiple reprints. Save for updates the text has remained unchanged and yet the book continues to sell in ever-increasing numbers offline and online. Add to that the incremental income from the many additional avenues of profit available to traditionally published authors. Do it once and you will rapidly discover that you can do it over and over again; setting you up financially for life. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author with 37 published titles in the realms of both fiction and non-fiction http://creativewritingmasterclasses.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All That Glisters is Not Gold First time out of the traps as an embryo author I got three offers of publication. The first two were from long established publishing giants and the third from a smallish comparative newcomer. I chose the newcomer. Now why did I do that when clearly the book must have something special going for it to interest mainstream publishers? Here's why... The owner of the small house persuaded me with reasoned argument that the text required substantial reworking if it was to become a page turner and then proceeded to instruct me on how to accomplish that. What he effectively did was to teach me how to re-format my work so that it became injected with the mystery ingredient that leads to bestseller status. As a result, that initial effort (out of 35 subsequently published titles) is still my front runner 15 years on with no obvious signs of slowing down. I have never altered the structure, only updated it as required with the passage of time, and yet on each reprint and new edition it continues to sell more copies than before. On my fourth or fifth offering (I cannot recall which) I was tempted by the lucre of a major house by way of a hefty advance but the experience was less than satisfactory; the book died on the shelves after less than two years due mainly to lack of aggressive promotion by the publisher. The moral is: don't be star struck when choosing your first publisher. Smaller houses are invariably hungrier; eager to snap up proposals with potential and they go out of their way to ensure success. The mystery ingredient; what is that? I'm not about to give that away in an article but I will give you a hint; it has to do with what bestsellers are all about: the durability factor. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author with 37 published titles in the realms of both fiction and non-fiction http://creativewritingmasterclasses.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Residual Earnings: What Every Creative Writer Aspires To... Residual earnings are what every creative writer sets out to achieve; passive income from traditionally published book sales, offline and online; royalties that increase year-on-year with multiple editions and reprints. Add to that PLR (public lending library rental fees) and your residuals burgeon with each new book you succeed in having published. Do it once; repeat the formula, and you will profit forever after. But there are other ways to galvanize your residuals... 1. Book clubs 2. Serialization rights 3. Licensing rights 4. Broadcasting rights 5. Merchandising 6. Contributing articles to magazines 7. Speaking engagements None of these tasks are difficult even if you self publish; it's a matter of APPLICATION - coupled with patience, persistence and perseverance. And when you've accomplished all of that, you can turn your hand to converting your traditionally published output into virtual books (you own the author copyright after all) ; marketing them independently on gigantic virtual distribution sources such as Amazon.com and Google Book Search. Promoting your e-books through Amazon will cost you but the Google Books Search facility is free and provides a raft of useful marketing services; linking to your own website, RSS feeds, and more... Think about residual earnings this way; you toil and sweat to write your book; you work even harder to get it published, and it although it's fulfilling to see it in print, wouldn't you rather milk your work for all it's worth? JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of fiction and non-fiction with 35 traditionally published titles to his bow - and more virtual books in distribution than you could shake a stick at... http://www.writing-residuals.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hitting the High Spots Without the Support of a Mainstream Publisher Traditional publishing houses don't always get it right when it comes to spotting potential winners. Nowadays they operate under considerable pressure with profit margins cut to the bone as major retailers, online and offline act more and more like supermarkets in their demands. As a result, mainstream publishers tend only to accept proposals on what they reckon will sell in big numbers. I was a victim of this policy myself. Despite acquiring bestseller status with my first 2 books on the topic of retirement ('Your Retirement Masterplan' and 'Earn Money in Retirement') I came unstuck with the third entry. 'Maximising Mindpower to Enrich Your Retirement' (ISBN: 1933817364 EAN: 9781933817361) was turned down flat on the basis that it did not fit in with the publisher's profile (whatever that means...). As I was of the opinion that this was the best book I'd ever written, I decided to have it published privately which I did in August 2007. Amazingly, just three months late and with no promotion on my part, it would appear to be attracting inordinate attention online and is currently featuring prominently on 1000s of websites including Amazon, Google Books, The Reading Warehouse, and a miscellany of major and minor online booksellers. Despite the fact the book is not stocked by offline booksellers, sales are starting to flood in - and I do mean 'flood'... The moral of this delightful situation: if you have written a book of any description which you are convinced other people will want to read but haven't yet found a publisher who agrees - do it yourself. With the ever-growing incidence of POD (print on demand) the costs are negligible. After all, DIY did John Grisham no harm; the sole vehicle of distribution for his first book was the boot of a car. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of fiction and non-fiction with 37 traditionally published titles to his bow - and more virtual books in distribution than you could shake a stick at... http://www.elite-creative-writing-course.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some Thoughts on Crafting Fiction Like any idea you conceive in life, fiction starts and ends in the mind; first in the conscious, then the subconscious, and finally digging deeper into the labyrinth of ageless wisdom; the subconscious, the ever-lasting fountain of imagination and inspiration. I will not attempt here to teach you how to write fiction because quite frankly I do not believe it can be done with modular instruction. Crafting invented stories and converting them into novels and novellas is a highly personalized art form which writers approach in a myriad of disparate ways. What I will do on the other hand is provide you with some personal thoughts on crafting fiction; thoughts derived from my own experience. WHY I WRITE FICTION While I have a preference for non-fiction I also write fiction with a modest but nonetheless marked degree of success. Some writers take one route, some the other; I take both - but only after I managed to master the first: non-fiction. Why should this be so? I discovered early on in my writing career that coming to terms with the disciplines of crafting non-fiction dramatically improved my ability to create fiction and to attract proposals for publication of my increasing output. So why do I write fiction? Quite simply, to amuse myself, to stretch my reach, to challenge my imagination - and when my offerings are published and other people tell me they like what I create, so much the better. Having proposals for works of fiction accepted for publication is never easy but with contracts in my pocket for all ten outpourings to date, I am not complaining… HOW I WRITE FICTION Drawing on the disciplines of one genre I apply them to the other - and so - my golden rule on crafting fiction is to operate solely within the confines of what I know. That is why before tackling a fictional project I visit my subconscious to establish levels of interest, knowledge, and above all expertise. Functioning in scenarios where I feel comfortable, relaxed, confident, and at ease makes writing fiction a joyous occasion and provides me with a sense of fulfilment. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of fiction and non-fiction with 37 traditionally published titles to his bow - and more virtual books in distribution than you could shake a stick at... http://how-to-write-cutting-edge-fiction.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Commissioning Your Characters to Take Over the Plot When the first and crucial chapter of your book has been put to bed and your scenario is in position, you will do something so radical that it might scare the pants off you: Commission Your Characters to Take Over the Plot… Look upon your plot or central theme as the engine room and the characters you have invented as technicians maintaining it and driving the engine. You will have already recorded snatches of conversation between them (you ought to a bundle of these by now) and you will have involuntarily ‘listened in’ on the occasional tête-à-tête emanating from this team of virtual co-workers. Now hand over management of the plot to them; lock stock and barrel. Something magical occurs when the characters take over. They edge the storyline along in directions you would never have imagined, and mystically expand the overall theme and sub-plots. Don’t worry, you are still in command of the story, but you are being fed on a regular diet of gold nuggets gathered up by your virtual co-workers from the inner labyrinth of your subconscious while you have been asleep… Let the Characters Craft the Dialog Now they are doing the walking, let them also do the talking. You wouldn’t send a lawyer into a court of law with a statement written by you to plead in your defence. Treat your characters with the same respect. They have by now perfected their own individual voices; allow them to express themselves in their own way; say what they want to say, not what you want them to say. This is how to cultivate what the pundits call ‘a natural ear for dialog’ where the discourse matches the original voice of the character. Paint Word Pictures o Allow the amazing power of words to illustrate scenes in your story; o Ultilize your words like the colors in a paint-box to flesh out the action. Compare this brief text with the embellished version immediately underneath… “As they walked along the prom in high spirits, the pretty young lady linked arms with her youthful companion.” “As they walked along the prom in high spirits, the pretty young lady in pink cloche hat and purple pleated short skirt linked arms with her youthful companion. He wore outrageously wide yellow Oxford bags topped by a candy striped blazer.” Do you see the difference? o The first is a bland statement of fact; o The second a word picture that sets the action in a definitive period in time and engages the reader to the full in the scene you are painting. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of fiction and non-fiction with 37 traditionally published titles to his bow - and more virtual books in distribution than you could shake a stick at http://how-to-write-cutting-edge-fiction.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Growing Your Small Business Rapidly Online If you run a small business of any description you may already have given some thought to online marketing. You might even have read up on the subject and been put off by what you gleaned. That is not surprising. Much of what is written about the cyberspace marketplace is directed at big business and as such, quite inappropriate for your circumstances. What is even more alarming, some of it is mendacious, emanating from unreliable sources and is therefore worse then useless; it is downright dangerous. The truth of the matter is that the internet is an androgynous mix; a volatile cocktail of brashness and subtlety that blends only for those who understand the formula. But when you learn how to recognise the disparate characteristics in action and know how to fuse them constructively from the point of view of the small business owner, you have at your command the most powerful and cost effective marketing device of the 21st Century. The tragedy is though that many small businesses are still using the internet as a means of being seen to be ‘doing something’ online and so fail to take full advantage of the formidable and inexpensive range of electronic marketing tools and techniques available; resources that can mean the difference between maintaining a viable business or closing up shop; the difference that becomes singularly apparent when you become aware of its potency and apply its muscle to your own enterprise. The value of a good website to the small business owner These are the benefits you should be looking to accrue from your small business website: a fusion of incoming and outgoing information, intelligence that you should embrace to service existing customers and attract new ones. And unlike printed matter, you need never be nervous about imparting sensitive information (price lists, specifications, etc) because you have the facility to update variable data instantly. As for direct selling, you’ll get the odd sale or two from your site, but not a lot. Not yet anyway. Stick with it though and you’ll do much more direct selling in time as the retail ethos of the web begins to bite – and there is evidence that it is starting to do just that - for even the smallest of trading concerns. The percentage of sales taking place online has grown by 30% over the last four years with 8% growth in the most recent year alone. Average dollar per online transaction has also steadily increased over the last four years. In addition, online sales showed the strongest growth across all Census Divisions – in most regions online was the only channel with growth. JIM GREEN is the author of "How to Grow Your Small Business Rapidly Online" (ISBN 9781845281595) http://howtoproducts-xl.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Social Media To Attain And Maintain Bestseller Status I was using social media to promote my books years before the terms Web 2.0, social marketing, and bookmarking became fashionable buzz words. I frequented places offline and online where people congregate to: • Exchange views • Offer opinions • Ask questions • Seek or offer assistance • Make friends. Early on I discovered that social media was an excellent vehicle for maintaining the bestseller status I had attained in other directions; maintaining the status not by overt promotion but by giving freely of my expertise and dispensing knowledge gratis. • Radio is Social Media • Article Distribution is Social Media • Video Channels are Social Media • Public Speaking is Social Media • Book Reviewing is Social Media • Writing Circles are Social Media • Forums are Social Media Nowadays though the opportunities to engage in social marketing are greater and more widespread than ever before; offering a variety of ingenious ways of unobtrusively strutting your stuff before a receptive audience without ever getting in their face or causing offence. CASHING IN ON THE SOCIAL NETWORKING PHENOMENON Let's begin with a basic outline... Web 2.0 and Social Networking are interchangeable terms that are used to describe interactive environments and communication strategies applied on the internet. Web 2.0 is a general term applied to any website that reacts to the input and activity of its users, such as a blog, a MySpace profile, a forum, or a Squidoo lens page. Social Networking is best defined as the regular interaction of people for some common cause. Of course there is really nothing new about social networking, and it's something many of us do every day offline, especially in schools or in the workplace. But as a marketing trend this concept is growing more and more popular online. But first a few questions that require answers before we proceed further: What is social media? What is social marketing? What is social bookmarking? SOCIAL MEDIA allows people with basic computer skills to tell their stories using publishing tools such as blogs, video logs, photo sharing, podcasting (audio stories broadcast from the web or downloaded to a computer) and wikis (collaboratively edited web pages). They can also help us filter and organize the overwhelming amount of information on the web. SOCIAL MARKETING is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Face book, Bebop, YouTube, Daily motion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions and many others. SOCIAL BOOKMARKING is a user-defined taxonomy system for bookmarks. Such a taxonomy is sometimes called a folksonomy and the bookmarks are referred to as tags. Unlike storing bookmarks in a folder on your computer, tagged pages are stored on the Web and can be accessed from any computer. Technorati, a blogging site, describes the system as "The real-time Web, organized by you." Websites dedicated to social bookmarking, such as Flickr and Del.icio.us, provide users with a place to store, categorize, annotate and share favorite web pages and files. So what, you might well ask, has any or all of this to do with helping me establish myself as a bestselling author and proceeding to maintain that status? A great deal in my experience providing you treat social networking as an adjunct to online marketing activity and NOT as a replacement; providing too you keep your approach simple and consistent. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in both fiction and non-fiction. http://elite-creative-writing-course.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Social Networking to Sell Creative Writing Can you really do this; use social marketing to sell your creative writing output? I don't know for sure yet but I will have an answer in the coming months. You see, I am about to embark on an exercise using social networking exclusively to supplement the publisher's launch of the 5th edition of my first bestselling book. "Starting Your Own Business" (ISBN 9781845283124) first hit the bookshelves way back in 1994. It has had four editions to date and countless reprints. On the age-old concept of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", the content has remained unchanged over the intervening years save for updating in the shape of additional topical inclusions. Here is the gist of my plan of implementation to boost sales through social networking: SOCIAL MARKETING I will use these core channels deploying events and promotions by way of articles and videos where appropriate. · Facebook · MySpace · Squidoo · Hub Pages · YouTube · Bebo · Daily Motion · Hi5 · Gather · Yahoo 360 SOCIAL BOOKMARKING My social marketing activity will be bounced onto these equally core bookmarking channels. · Propeller · Slashdot · Digg · Technorati · Delicious · StumbleUpon · Twitter · Reddit · Fark · Newsvine · Furl · Swik · Connotea · Sphinn · Blinklist · Faves · Mister-Wong · Spurl · Diigo This engagement with social networking might be paralleled to acquiring permission to advertise on the BBC - but here's a better analogy; a strategic social networking campaign in full throttle resembles a motorised fountain whose powerful engine emits jets of cascading water spiralling in every direction. The comparison ends there though. The effect of the physical fountain is imprecise and scattergun in delivery; the effect of virtual social networking is precise and objective as its outpouring streams hit multiple pre-determined targets plumb centre; targets from which it enthusiastically bounces onto associated website(s). How will I know if my engagement with social networking bears fruit? Here's how. Because the book has already been through four editions I know what to expect by way of initial uptake from the publisher's own launch promotion. Anything extra on this occasion will be down to social networking. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of fiction and non-fiction. http://ultimate-creative-writing-course.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Does Video Help Sell Stuff Online? I have been marketing online for ten years or more; promoting my published works, my creative writing courses; my self-generated produce in a variety of niche markets. In the process I have used every conceivable vehicle save one: video - until recently that is... When I decided to put video to the test I chose 3 dormant products; products that spawned substantial returns years ago but no longer do, products whose websites are still floating around in cyberspace. So what did I do, how did I do it, and what was the outcome? 1) As I have no video footage available for any of these products, I used still images; images that react at my command; images that move, fade, ease in and out, zoom, pan, dissolve, ripple, pixilate, rotate, spin, etc; images that tell a story, my story, my way. 2) Having processed and published my videos (using Windows Movie Maker) I uploaded them to YouTube, embedded the respective HTML codes into a series of web pages, and let the YouTube media players do the marketing for me. 3) Surprisingly each of the Spartan pages have achieved high rankings on Google and Yahoo! - and even more surprisingly - sales have started to trickle in for products that had been fallow for years. Early days yet but now I am using video to... 1) Promote all of my online and offline ventures; 2) Highlight my skills; 3) Broadcast achievements. If you would like to learn more on how I am using video, visit the website featured in the resource box below... JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of fiction and non-fiction with 35 traditionally published titles to his bow - and more virtual books in distribution than you could shake a stick at... http://moviemakermagic.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How To Sell Your Books On Sound Radio In October 2004 when my book “Your Retirement Masterplan” (How To Books ISBN 1857039874) was published I participated in eleven 15-minute live interviews on local radio over a period of just five days. The results were highly encouraging; the book leapt from nowhere on Amazon.co.uk to position 194 out of 3123 competing titles and eventually grabbed the No.1 spot for its core keyword (retirement) where it remained for nine months. I repeated the broadcast exercise for my next published tome "How to Earn Money in Retirement" (How To Books ISBN 1845281128) but before doing so I was to a head start... Although this title did not hit the bookstores until May 2006 it ranked at No.47 out of 3453 competitive titles on Amazon.co.uk – which means of course that it was already selling in big numbers online – thanks largely to the success of its predecessor and the initial boost it got from radio promotion. These promotional interviews are arranged by my publisher’s media consultancy and I do not require to visit a single studio to take part; they are all conducted over the telephone, sitting at my desk at home. So what if you self-publish your output and you don’t have a publicist to arrange radio interviews? Does that mean you are excluded? No way; I have self-published several books in the past and managed my own promotion. Here is what you do… 1. Wherever you live in the world you’ll find that the majority of local radio stations are banded together into a single network for cost-effectiveness; 2. Identify the controlling network; 3. Visit the corporate website containing links to all subsidiaries; 4. Pick out those stations within a 500/1000 mile orbit; 5. Visit each local station website individually; 6. Scan the daily programming schedules; 7. Highlight those programs that might identify with the topic of your book; 8. Note the presenter’s name; 9. Email him/her with a well-couched request for a live interview; 10. Follow that up with an identical snail mail request; 11. Follow that up with a telephone call (you’ll get to speak to someone in authority); 12. You know your topic inside out; speak up with confidence and you’ll get your interview; maybe not straightaway but, if you sell yourself and your project professionally, you’ll be logged into and up-and-coming slot in the station scheduling. Go for it…it’s free! In truth though there is more to creating bestselling books than spieling about them on radio and if you’d like to learn how I manage to produce bestsellers consistently, visit the website featured in the resource box below. Jim Green is a bestselling author with an ever-growing string of niche non-fiction titles to his credit. http://1st-creative-writing-course.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why Has It Become Crucial Nowadays To Write Cutting Edge Fiction? Read on and discover why… It’s an open secret that fiction is the most notoriously difficult of genres to break into as a writer aspiring to achieve the recognition that leads to publication. The biggest majority of competent wordsmiths activate their innate skills for years on end but all they have to show for persistent effort is a never-ending stream of rejection slips. And it's getting more difficult with each day that passes. The book trade is now almost totally geared towards bestsellers and so-called celebrities. Breaking in new fiction authors and placing their work in bookshops is no easy matter. But it was ever thus in the publishing industry. What for example do these celebrated authors have in common? Alexandre Dumas D.H. Lawrence Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Rice Burroughs George Bernard Shaw Gertrude Stein James Joyce John Grisham Mark Twain Mary Baker Eddy Rudyard Kipling Stephen Crane Upton Sinclair Virginia Woolf Walt Whitman William Blake Zane Grey These famous masters of fiction were all obliged to take the route of shelling out hard cash to have their debut novels printed before they acquired celebrity status. So what, if anything, can contemporary scribes do to circumvent this seemingly insurmountable barrier? They can add a vital edge to their fiction; a cutting edge that will transform them from hopeful writers into published authors aspiring to bestseller status; a cutting edge developed by an author who first made his mark with a stream of bestselling books in the realms of non-fiction and who is now duplicating that success with his fictional output; a cutting edge that will do the same for any writer. If you would like to read more of this author’s thoughts on cutting edge fiction visit his website. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of both fiction and non-fiction. http://how-to-write-cutting-edge-fiction.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Taking on the Mantle of Your Fictional Characters To take on the mantle of your characters is to be at the very hub of cutting edge fiction. You invent these skeletal entities, add flesh to the bones; give them names, commission them to act out a part, bestow on them a distinct personality. Now you must live with each of them for a time before you write your story. You must converse, eat and sleep with them; you must infiltrate the inner recesses of their psyche; you must discover how they react to situations and stimuli. Next you will turn your attention to their unique attributes; how they look, dress, walk and talk. o Which of them is shy and introspective? o Which is lively and outgoing? o Which are strong enough to take the leading roles? o Which are not? While they are not real live human beings, they are real in your mind, and if they don’t come across as such on the printed page, your work of fiction is doomed. Strong storylines with weak insipid characters never cut the mustard but modest storylines populated with robust lifelike characters frequently produce outstanding fiction. Create Snatches of Dialog Before You Write Your Story Add this one to your list of things-to-do. As your characters develop they will start to talk to you. It can happen while you are asleep, walking the dog, or engrossed in a task that is unconnected to your project. When they talk, take heed. As they begin to develop their own distinctive voice they will provide you with snatches of dialog. You might wake up some morning to several such snatches from disparate characters. Write them down immediately and incorporate them into your story later. Above all, ensure your characters are factual, because paradoxical though it might appear, it is facts, not flights of fancy, that make fiction perfect. JIM GREEN is a bestselling author in the realms of both fiction and non-fiction. http://how-to-write-cutting-edge-fiction.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
|
