July 26th, 2010
Are you one of those people who jumps whenever you think about going into an Apple store and being able to play with all of the lovely gadgets that they have on display? Do you try to snag a brand new high tech gadget as soon as it’s available? If you do, then you may actually have, in your hands, the perfect tool to help you with your writing. Most people now have a cell phone or as it’s more popularly known, a “smart phone”. These smart phones allow you to do so many things, including listening to music, checking email, and leaving notes for yourself.
Some of these phones allow you to leave yourself a memo with speech, while others have little notepad applications that you can open. If you have something like this, then you’re golden. How can having technology like this make you a better writer? Let me ask you this: have you ever been riding down the road, relaxed and enjoying the day, only to come up with an amazing idea for a new story or novel? What do you do then?
If you have a phone like this, or some sort of electronic gadget that can take memos, you leave yourself a memo! Pull over on the side of the road (as long as you’re not going to be late for a meeting) and jot down what you just thought. You don’t have to flush it out entirely, but it is very important that you make sure to write down what you’re thinking as soon as you’re thinking it. Waiting too long will mean that you may forget about your great idea, and who knows, that could have been the one that put you on the map!
Tags: writing an ebook
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July 19th, 2010
When you own your own business, it’s almost an instant reaction to spend money on advertising. That’s why, when you publish your own ebook, it’s an instant reaction to think about spending money to advertise, or market, your ebook to the rest of the world. But the truth is that you don’t need to spend a great amount of money, or, really, any money to market your ebook. There are a lot of things that you can do to market your ebook absolutely free.
The first thing that you should definitely do is to make sure that you are known on the internet. If you don’t have a website, or aren’t on a social marketing site, then you likely aren’t known on the internet. By creating a presence on the internet, you’re able to get the word out about your new work. Once you’re online, take the time to look for other authors. You will likely be able to find blogs of other authors who write work that is similar to yours. Befriend them! Start by writing a message on their blog (and it’s a plus if you actually take the time to read their work) and letting them know that you’re out there.
Message boards are a great way to get the word out about you and your work. Find some message boards and join them. Answer questions that new people have, and don’t forget to add the address to your website in your signature on the blog. Make sure that you pop in on the site regularly, so it doesn’t look like you’re just there to advertise. It’s also a great idea to join writers groups online, which are similar to message boards, and to get in touch with writers this way! It’s entirely possible to market your book online without ever spending a dime, so make sure that you take advantage of the internet!
Tags: market ebook
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July 16th, 2010
Remember high school English, when the teacher pounded all of the various parts of the sentence into your head so often that you thought you’d be able to tell what a predicate was in your sleep. Years later, however, you suddenly start scratching your head and realize that you can’t remember what all of those technical English terms mean again, or how you’re supposed to use them. The idea of editing, when you start thinking about all of those technical rules, can be very daunting, but in reality editing can actually be very simple.
When you start editing, start by just making sure that all of your sentences are complete. How can you do this? Read the sentence by itself. If you can read the sentence by itself and it makes sense, then you know that you probably have all of the important parts in the sentence. If, however, you read the sentence and it seems odd, you likely have missed something. Take, for instance, these two sentences:
The house was on fire.
The house on fire.
That may seem like a very easy mistake to avoid, but when you’re in the heat of writing it’s easy to think that you wrote a complete sentence when, in reality, you were only thinking of the complete sentence. Make sure that your periods are in the right place. How can you tell? A period should go where you’d stop for emphasis or to take a breath when you’re talking. Writing something, like, this, for, instance, wouldn’t work. You’d sound like you were gasping for air. Writing something like this, for instance, would work. Editing doesn’t have to be difficult. Read what you’ve written and, if something seems off, take time to work with the words to see what sounds better.
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July 14th, 2010
Are you ready to publish your work? Are you sure? There are many authors who complain about their work, wondering why they don’t have as many followers of their writing as they hoped that they would have. Half of the reason why so many authors fail when they first start is because the work that they put out isn’t really ready. The work may be incomplete, or the story may be thin, or it may be simple editing problems that keep the work from being ready to publish. Before you publish your work, check out a few things first in order to give your work the best chance to shine.
The first thing that you should do is to make sure that you’ve thoroughly edited for the basic things, such as spelling and sentence completion. This is done easily enough, and when you do it, make sure that your sentences and paragraphs aren’t too long. A paragraph that is too long runs the risk of boring your readers, which is something that you definitely don’t want to do. The same holds true for sentences. You need to make sure that you justify every sentence that you have in your work. If you can read a paragraph and can remove a sentence or two without altering the meaning of the paragraph, then those sentences likely don’t need to be there in the first place.
It’s also a good idea to have a friend or two read your work before you go to publish it. This not only helps you to catch any mistakes that you may have missed, but also help you to ensure that your work is complete and that the story makes sense. Double check everything and you’ll quickly find that your work becomes better and better!
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July 5th, 2010
When you think marketing, the first thing that you may think of is trying to advertise your book. And it’s true that advertising is a great way to get your book out there, but there are many other ways that you can market your ebook that don’t involve paying a dime for advertising. One thing that many new authors don’t realize is how important it is to get in touch with other authors. It’s easy, when you first start writing, to think of other authors as your competition. You may even start comparing yourself and your work to theirs, or trying to outdo them.
In reality, other authors can actually be a huge help to you. Some of the best contemporary authors have made friendships with each other. They are there to support each other and to lend a helping hand, by being there to bounce ideas off of, and to help you to not only possibly edit your work, but also to help you to market your book. If you were to create a group of writers, say five to ten, and you were to each help each other to market their books, you could potentially have a large group of new readers to entertain.
One thing that is interesting is that most authors don’t finish writing at the same time. If you have a group of five authors, you likely will find that you each get done within a few months of each other. This means that you can all take turns supporting each other in marketing your books. Make friends with authors, as they can help you to not only promote your book, but to get your book absolutely perfect before you put it out there for others.
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June 30th, 2010
Most established writers have a strategy for writing. They may create a character web or some other type of outline that helps them to understand their work and to get it done well. What you don’t know is that most marketing experts also have a strategy. They never try to market a book until they know what they want to do and are ready to do it. This strategy helps to keep them organized and it helps to make sure that they do everything that they need to do in order to sell the book.
Most ebook writers don’t have a marketing guru behind them, so they need to learn how to market their ebook themselves. This means that you should definitely make yourself a marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy should be something that you can realistically follow, as well as something that hits all of the different levels of marketing that you need to do in order to have the best hope of selling many copies of your work. So how should you start your marketing strategy? First you should make sure that you know all of the different ways that you can market a book. You can, for instance, market your ebook through your website, through social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) and even though your regular, printed contacts.
Once you’ve got all of your marketing ideas written down, start organizing them in a way that makes sense to you. Most start by doing what is the most easy for them to do, but some say that doing the most difficult things first make sense, as after you figure out how to do the strategy, you can then spend your time doing the easier things. A marketing strategy is a great way to help you to sell your ebook – make sure that you know what plans you have and how you’re going to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself.
Tags: marketing ebook
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June 28th, 2010
The summer months are a great time of year. It’s when you can get out and can enjoy the warm weather. You can grow things in the garden and you can enjoy many recreational activities that you can’t enjoy when the winter months are here. That also makes it much more difficult to find the time to write. When the winter months are here, finding the time to write is easy, especially if you live in the northern areas, as it’s never a fun thing to want to go outside during the yucky winter months. When summer comes, however, it is extremely difficult to find the desire to stay inside and write when the summer sun is shining.
When the summer months come, it’s time to give yourself a new strategy for writing, especially if you’ve already got a project that you’re working on. The first thing that you should do is to set aside specific times or days for you to write. For instance, if you have Wednesday evenings free, make sure that you sit down at the computer on Wednesday evenings to write for a few hours. You can also set a specific amount of pages that you must get done before you stop.
This doesn’t mean that you should spend all of your time indoors during the summer months. Part of the reason why the successful writers are so successful is because they write about life, and you can’t write about something when you don’t experience it, so make sure that you also plan some time to spend out of doors. You will soon find, if you stick to a schedule, that you have enough time to write and enough time to enjoy the warm summer months while they’re here.
Tags: writing, writing a book, writing an ebook
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June 25th, 2010
One of the biggest mistakes that many new authors make is in assuming that they should only advertise online. They write an ebook and then they try to sell it online. Getting established online is extremely important, and that’s something that we’ll go into in depth. But you should never forget about the local people. They are the ones who will be proud of your accomplishment and who will also help you to become the person that you want to be.
Once you’ve written your ebook, and you’ve started promoting it globally, start promoting it locally as well. There are many ways that you can promote your ebook locally, and even plenty of ways that you can do it without much, or any, money. One thing that you can do is to put the information about your book up on your local community bulletin boards. These bulletin boards are the ideal place to put up your information and will help people to see exactly what you’re doing. Make sure that you include a link to your website so that they can see even more about what you’re all about.
You can also connect with the local media. Talk with the newspaper reporters in your area and let them know about what you’re doing. If you live in a small area, you may be one of the first people to write and sell an ebook, which makes you newsworthy. You could also connect with your local radio stations, who may be willing to work with you to do a giveaway. If you’re interested in getting your ebook sold, and in getting your name out there, make sure that you think not only globally, but locally as well.
Tags: markting ebook
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June 21st, 2010
Since the introduction of the iPad, other companies have been rushing to get out their products. They have been attempting to create new items that not only are able to make phone calls (which the iPad can not do), but that have much more internet access and abilities. Now it’s even possible to watch a movie on many of the different phones that are out there. Because of this it is becoming even more important to make sure that you know about epublishing.
Epublishing used to be something that only a very few people did. You could find plenty of fan websites that had fanfiction that you could enjoy online, and this was one o the first versions of epublishing. Now, however, it’s possible to find entire books, even some of the newest releases. Look at the bookstore and you’ll find some new books by your favorite authors. Look online and you’ll be able to find the same books, in e-format, and often for a much lower price, especially if you purchase a plan that allows you to download a specific amount of books within a specific time frame, much like people download music.
The main goal of any aspiring writer used to be to get published by a reputable publishing house. This could be very difficult, as publishing houses were very specific about who or what they wanted. The world of epublishing, however, has opened up the realm of possibilities for writers, and has made it easier now than ever before for someone to be able to publish their work. And now epublishing is not only easy, it’s reputable as well. If you’ve been wanting to publish your work, look to epublishing. It can help you to get your work published and to achieve your dreams.
Tags: epublishing
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June 18th, 2010
The other day we talked about writing books for children. Now we’re going to get into a whole different world – writing books for teenagers and pre-teens. Teenagers and pre-teens are a whole different type of crew when you talk about writing. They are too old for books that were created for youngsters, and too young for books that are created for adults. They need to have stories that intrigue and entice them, but that is much harder than it sounds, especially when you’re dealing with teenage boys.
So how do you write a story that is engaging to teenagers? First you have to figure out who your target audience is. Teenage boys, for example, are into entirely different things then teenage girls. There are some books that appeal to both sexes, but it can be extremely difficult to write a book that is enjoyed by both. Once you’ve figured out who your target audience is, start thinking about what type of story you’d like to write. What appeals to that sex? Girls, for instance, tend to be a bit more interested in stories that have a bit of a romantic twist to them, while guys tend to like stories with more action and adventure.
Once you’ve got a good idea in your head, it may be smart to run it past a teen or pre-teen. Snag one that you know and start telling them about the story. If they start asking questions and seem to be enjoying the idea, you’ve got something. If they don’t seem to be getting into it, ask another teenager, and if that one doesn’t get into the idea, it may be time to start at the drawing board again. Once you find a great idea, though, you can create a teen or pre-teen masterpiece!
Tags: writing a book
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