Month: June 2009

Transitioning From Freelance Writer To Author

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This post, from Raj Dash, originally appeared on the Freelance Folder site on 7/31/08. While it’s aimed at freelance writers, its content will also be of interest to bloggers who are looking to transition from blog to book. 

Go on. Admit it. You might be a freelance writer for now, but you’ve dreamed of being an author, yes? Some of you might even be authors already, but for those of you who are not, there are ways to transition into being an author.

Being an author has its own rewards but not always necessarily monetary. However, with the demand for premium content online, there are opportunities for those of you that can package an offer of a book with other types of “premium” content, as discussed below.

How Do You Become an Author?

For me, the process was a long one, though it doesn’t have to be for you. I’d been writing creatively and technically for a long time before my first book pitch in 1989/90. The Editor liked my outlining approach and hinted at the possibility of my writing computer programming books for him for a long time, including book revisions – a cash cow for authors back then.

He had plans to come to a big author’s shindig in Toronto, and when he landed in town, he called and left a message. Unfortunately, my roommate decided not to tell me for three or four days. I missed out on meeting him and several well-known novelists.

He accepted my explanation of the situation, but we never reached any specific agreement. Despite my detailed outlines and pitches, they weren’t right for that publisher’s market. A missed opportunity for sure. It wasn’t until 2002 that I finally found an Editor who liked my book proposal, and ultimately became a co-author for a book that I designed, content-wise.

Your path to becoming an author might be a lot quicker from desire to actuality, but you have to want it, as well as be willing to take the good and the bad that comes with it. That’s just the start; you have to actually research your market and select a project to start with it. 

 

Why Become an Author?

This is something only you can answer. My family and cultural background is one of education, teaching and dissemination of knowledge. Writing a book, for me, is the pinnacle of sharing a skill. It’s never been about “making lots of money” – something few authors do anyway.

For such authors, it’s everything else that comes with being an author:

  1. Regular work – the royalties from a series of books could help keep food on the table.
     
  2. The talkshow circuit, which helps with promotion.
     
  3. The lecture circuits, which usually pays per appearance, not to mention aiding in promotion.
     
  4. Professional recognition, which can lead to other opportunities, including teaching.
     

So there is secondary or tertiary income opportunities sometimes, even with a minimal level of success as an author. Here’s what it usually takes:

  1. Prove your stamina as an author – i.e., actually complete books that you sell.
     
  2. Be in a relatively profitable niche (fiction and non-fic).
     
  3. Enjoy at least a minimum level of sales – varies by niche, but selling out your initial run helps.
     

Meet these criteria – and sometimes others – and authoring could be a long-term career for you.

Pros and Cons of Being an Author

Some people just like the concept of having been an author, not actually doing the writing. Trust me, if that’s all you want, write an 8-page ebook and have done with it. The writing of books has been said to end relationships, marriages and day jobs, and drives some writers to drinking and other intoxicants.

Let’s hope your authoring career isn’t so dramatic, but writing a book is often a thankless task. Don’t do it because it’s “cool” or seems romantic. If you’re lucky, your book won’t be remaindered in the discount bins of a big chain bookstore. The publishing industry real is a game of averages. For every big-name author, there are literally hundreds who are relegated to obscurity.

Some things to consider:

  1. It’s easy to plan and propose a book, but actually completing the book can be a considerable emotional effort. It’s more likely that a fiction author will go through emotional hurdles, but it happens to non-fiction authors as well.
     
  2. You need to pace the workload. If you have X days to complete a rough draft and Y pages to write, then you need to average Y/X pages per day. But don’t get hung up on the exact number of pages written per day. If you’re concerned, keep a log but judge your productively weekly rather than daily.
     
  3. Take breaks regularly, reward yourself for daily milestones. I used to go to the theater and watch an afternoon movie, or jump on the bus to eavesdrop on conversations.
     
  4. It’s important to actually get away from your writing environment at least once a day. Having a clear head is more valuable than spending hours on end getting nowhere. I found that I could spend 4-6 hours writing, break for 2-4 hrs, then spend 4-6 more in writing and get just as much done in 8-12 hrs total per day as spending 16 hrs straight being miserable and unproductive.
     
  5. Depending on the “value” of your book, as assigned by the publisher, you might get to do a signing circuit. This can be either good or bad, depending on the schedule and whether you can afford to take the time off. Make sure you negotiate these sorts of things before you sign a book contract.
     

Ultimately though, if you can handle all the cons, there are the positives of being an author, which include gaining professional respect that can be leveraged into ROI later. What your Return on Investment is will depend on you, what you do, and how you leverage your effort. It could be the opportunity to produce “premium content” marketed online, such as ebooks, books on demand, and podcasts or video workshops packaged on DVD. This is where being an author in this Internet Age can be lucrative. 

Read the rest of the post on Freelance Folder.

Flashbacks Mimic Memory: Samuel R. Delany

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This article, from Susan K. Perry, PhD, originally appeared on the Psychology Today site on 5/7/09.

Create real memories, says sci-fi author Samuel R. Delany.

Flashbacks threaded into a novel are handy devices for dealing with past events. But many writers misuse flashbacks, writes science fiction author Samuel R. Delany in About Writing: 7 essays, 4 letters, & 5 interviews.

Delany, winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards, has written dozens of books, including science fiction novels, short stories, and nonfiction. That experience, as well as his 35 years as a creative writing instructor and critic, have convinced him that flashbacks are often constructed lazily and clumsily.

Here’s Delany on memory and fiction:

However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory-not on the order of actual occurrence. It looks like the writer is telling you a story. What the writer is actually doing, however, is using words to evoke a series of micromemories from your own experience that inmix, join, and connect in your mind in an order the writer controls, so that, in effect, you have a sustained memory of something that never happened to you. That false memory is what a story is.

As if to corroborate Delany, an article by Gary Marcus appeared recently about a woman who seems to have perfect autobiographical recall. That’s apparently a genuine oddity. Writes Marcus:

Ordinary human memory is a mess. Most of us can recall the major events in our lives, but the memory of Homo sapiens pales when compared with your average laptop. … it’s easy for us to forget things we’ve learned; and it’s sometimes hard to dislodge outdated information. Worse, our memories are vulnerable to contamination and distortion…. The fundamental problem is the seemingly haphazard fashion in which our memories are organized…. Human recall is hit or miss. Neuroscientific research tells us that our brains don’t use a fixed-address system, and memories tend to overlap, combine, and disappear for reasons no one yet understands.

Now back to Delany. It’s the fiction writer’s task, he says, "to make that unreal memory as clear and vivid as possible," which depends on the order of the words the writer selects. Delany, in fact, lauds the use of realistic flashbacks, the true-to-life flashes that last from half a second to 10 seconds at the most. "Thus, in texts," he writes, "they are covered in a phrase or two, a sentence, three sentences, or five sentences at most."

In my own novel-in-progress, I use a lot of momentary flashbacks, sometimes as a way of metaphor-making. Here are two examples:

 

1.  He could smell his own skin, the prickles under his arms, in his groin. A fear scent etched in memory from the first week he’d had his driver’s license and his car had skidded sideways on the freeway.

2.  My husband dipped his hands again and again into a bowl of curly orange-colored snacks, until his palms and fingers took on a putrid glow. His wedding ring was incongruous on those oversized little boy orange hands. The setting sun glinted off one of the ring’s small diamonds. A sudden image popped up of a glittery Cracker Jacks ring from when I was six, and me, in my bedroom, staring into the ring’s central bit of multi-faceted glass. A microcosm lay within: a sunny country setting, large leafy tree to the left with a person sitting under it, a meadow, a stream. A sense of this being a place you could walk into. I shrieked for my mother, but try as she would, she wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of it. Nor could I, ever again.

Realistically, explains Delany, when you try to concentrate on a past event longer than a very few seconds, the present always intrudes. So he refutes the logic of having a character walk down the street and run over the previous three months, say, in a relationship. Those stories simply start in the wrong place, he insists.

Read the rest of the post on the Psychology Today site.

The Evolving Role Of Agents

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This post, from Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Idea Logical Blog on 6/29/09.

Because of a couple of panels I spoke on last spring and because of the development of FiledBy, I have had more and more conversations lately with agents. They are part of the General Trade Publishing ecosystem. So their lives are getting more difficult and more complicated, like everybody else’s in Book Valley.

The agents’ concern is frequently expressed as “what do I tell my authors?”  Publishers are increasingly insistent that a prospective author have an internet platform to build on before they sign a book. Editors always wanted credentials to back up a writer’s authority on any subject; now they’d like to see that the writer has a following on that subject as well.

But agents are also concerned about themselves. The two most innovative imprint initiatives in recent memory — Bob Miller’s HarperStudio inside HarperCollins and Roger Cooper’s Vanguard inside Perseus — are built on the idea of reducing risk, paying the author a lower advance. Yes, they also promise a higher reward (higher royalty), but experienced agents know most books don’t earn anything beyond the advance.

Miller and Cooper are smart guys and it could well be that their imprints will have a higher percentage of earnouts than most. But, as smart guys, they wouldn’t be willing to pay more on the high side if they didn’t believe they were saving at least that much on the risk side.

The advance pool is probably shrinking. John Sargent, Macmillan’s CEO, said as much at a gathering of agents a couple of months ago when he explained that the de-leveraging that is taking place throughout the economy is also taking place in publishing. Big houses just won’t have the cash available to them that they used to, and that means less money for advances, less money for printing, and less money for promoting.

But in addition to shrinking, publishing advances are taking on much more of a power law configuration, with concentration at the top and a long tail of books getting less and less (and extended by mushrooming self-publishing where the “advance” is actually negative; it’s a cost!)

This is already having an effect. I have heard from people who know that larger agencies are now shopping among the smaller ones to buy them out. It takes more agents working to pay the same rent than it used to. And the smaller agents are finding it harder and harder to make a living so they’re ready to sell out a bit of their upside to get some stability. The small number of agents that have clients at the power end of a power law distribution are doing great; those who have traditionally made a living on making lots of second level deals are really suffering.

Compounding the problem for agents is the changing nature of publishing opportunity. While the sales and royalty potential of the book through the publisher is declining, other opportunities are opening up. There is a multiplicity of ebook channels that in the aggregate do not replace the revenue that print used to provide and doesn’t anymore. Chunks of books and material too short to be published as a book can be sold through them. Agents have for years been trying to split off audio rights to sell to Audible or Brilliance or Tantor Media. The opportunity to sell content to web sites seems to be emerging. But all of these deals require conceiving, pitching, closing, negotiating, and contract reviewing. For fifteen percent of what?

Read the rest of the post on The Idea Logical Blog.

Ernest Hemingway's Top 9 Words Of Wisdom

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 This post, from Henrik Edberg, originally appeared on his The Positivity Blog on 6/13/08.

“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

As you probably know Ernest Hemingway was a writer, journalist and Nobel Prize Winner. Some of his most famous stories include “The Old Man and The Sea” and “The Sun Also Rises”. He also participated in both World Wars and worked as a correspondent during for instance the Spanish Civil War. Now, here are 9 of my favourite words of wisdom from Ernest Hemingway.

1. Listen.

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”

Learning to really listen to someone rather just waiting for our turn to talk can be a difficult skill to develop. Often we may have much on our mind that we want to say and so listening falls by the wayside.

How can you become a better listener? Here are three tips:

  • Forget about yourself. Focus your attention outward instead of inward in a conversation. Place the mental focus on the person you are talking and listening to instead of yourself. Placing the focus outside of yourself makes you less self-centred and your need to hog the spotlight decreases.
  • Stay present. This will help you to decrease the bad habit of thinking about the future and what you should say next while trying to listen. If you are present and really there while listening then that will also come through in your body language, which gives the person talking a vibe and feeling that you are really listening to what s/he has to say.
     
  • Be open. Keep your mind open to the possibility that whatever the person is about to say will actually be interesting. If you have already made up your mind that he or she will say something boring then it will be hard to pay attention.

Also, if you really listen then that alone will often provide you naturally with a better and more genuine answer than the clever response thought up while trying to listen simultaneously.

2. Take the first step.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

The thing is if two people or more are waiting for someone else to take the first step then that step may never be taken. Or you may at least have to wait for a very long time.

If you after some time realise that, like in this example, you couldn’t trust the person then at least you have learned that.

By not taking the first step you’ll perhaps never know. So instead of waiting around and trying to figure things out just take first steps of different kinds in interactions. Be proactive.

3. Keep your eyes on where you are going.

“Never mistake motion for action.”

It’s very easy to get lost in busy work. You may spend much time in your in-box or filing and organizing things. But at the end of the day or week, what have you accomplished?

Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean that you are moving in the direction you really want to go. To do that you have to do the things that you know are really important and in alignment with your goals. And not getting lost in busy work.

So, improve your effectiveness and productivity. But, more importantly, never lose your view of your big picture. And take the action and do the things you need to do to get yourself where you want to go.

4. Just do.

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

How do you get things done? You take action and do them. You may need to do some planning, but don’t get lost in that stage or in over thinking things. Planning or thinking won’t get you any results in real-life if you don’t take action too.

So take action and just try something. Maybe you’ll succeed. Maybe you’ll fail, but if you do then failure can always teach you a bunch of things. The worst thing is not failure, it’s to just sit on your hands and do nothing.

Developing a just do it habit – where you learn to do what you know you want to do despite how you feel or what your thoughts are telling you at the moment – can be difficult. But it’s rewarding not only because you’ll get actual results and – sooner or later – success. It also builds real confidence in yourself, in your capabilities and in your own personal power to achieve what you want in life. 

Read the rest of the post on The Positivity Blog. 

Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You

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Building and growing your author platform requires you to be very active and vocal online, and this opens the door to two outcomes you will want to avoid: being guilty of online defamation and libel yourself, or being the victim of someone else’s online defamation and libel. Most people seem to think that anything published on a website or blog is automatically classified as opinion, and is therefore protected free speech. They’re wrong. Bloggers have been hit with millions of dollars’ worth of libel judgments, and there are entire legal practices specializing in internet defamation.

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What Constitutes Libel?
I’ll open with the usual disclaimer: I am not an attorney and nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice. I can sure quote the heck out of people who are attorneys and legal experts, though. Nolo Press, the US’s oldest and most respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses, defines libel as, “An untruthful statement about a person, published in writing or through broadcast media, that injures the person’s reputation or standing in the community.”
 
For those of you living across the pond, Website-Law.co.uk has this to say about defamation and libel:
 
Defamation is all about reputation, and in particular about statements which damage others’ reputations. The English courts have not settled upon a single test for determining whether a statement is defamatory. Examples of the formulations used to define a "defamatory imputation" include:
 

  • an imputation which is likely to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking people;

  • an imputation which injures a person’s reputation by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule;

  • an imputation which tends to make a person be shunned or avoided.  

The law of libel is concerned with defamatory writings; whereas the law of slander is concerned with defamatory speech. There are some differences in the laws relating to slander and libel…defamatory statements on a website will be libelous rather than slanderous…
 
So any online statements you make, or which are made about you, fitting the above criteria are in violation of U.S. and U.K. law and subject to prosecution. Most Western countries have defamation and libel laws that read similarly, but as you’ll see later in this article, the defamer’s country of residence need not be a barrier to the victim in pursuing a charge of libel.
 
What Doesn’t Constitute Libel?
Bear in mind, not every negative or potentially damaging statement made online or in print constitutes defamation in the legal sense. The first and best defense against a claim of defamation is simply that the statement in question is true. The next go-to defense is often that the statement in question is a statement of opinion, because in most cases such statements are generally protected free speech (see next section for information on the exceptions). For example, imagine Johnny Author, the author of a book about business ethics, has a criminal record for fraud and someone shares this information online or in print. It’ll certainly injure his reputation and standing in the community, but it’s not defamation because it’s true. Now, suppose he was tried for fraud but found innocent of all charges.
 
Web Troll A blogs, “Anyone who trusts anything Johnny Author says is a fool; everyone knows he was arrested for fraud last year.”
 
Web Troll B blogs, “Johnny Author is a liar and a fraud.”
 
Web Troll A’s statement probably has the most potential to do damage, but surprisingly, Web Troll B’s statement is the one of these two that more clearly qualifies as libel because it’s the only one making “an untruthful statement” about Johnny Author. Web Troll A’s remarks are a mixture of opinion and fact.
 
How Not To Be Guilty Of Libel Or Internet Defamation
The easiest remedy is prevention: don’t publish nasty comments about other people on your website or blog. Even if the things you’re saying are true, sharing them only makes you look like a mudslinger and a gossip—hardly the sort of person with whom your peers or people in the publishing industry will want to associate. If you have a legitimate reason for making negative remarks about some person, to blog about a specific issue related to that person for example, then don’t refer to that person by name and leave out identifying details.
 
Couching your statements in explicit qualifiers like, “In my opinion,” “If you asked me I’d say,” and “It seems to me that,” etc., may strengthen your defense if you get hauled into court, but even a statement explicitly labeled as opinion can be legally actionable as libel if the court concludes any reasonable person reading the statement would interpret it as asserting statements of verifiable fact, or as implying that facts exist to support the defamatory statement. Only an attorney versed in internet defamation can offer an opinion as to whether or not your online statements would be likely to pass this test.
 
Also, none of these cautionary measures will grant you absolute immunity from a charge of libel or internet defamation here in the U.S., where anyone can attempt to sue anyone for anything, so why not make your life safer and easier by just avoiding such statements altogether?
 
My Own Internet Defamation Story
I was prompted to write this article after being subjected to internet defamation. It hadn’t previously occurred to me that internet defamation is an author platform issue. As damaging as it can be, it’s something most authors haven’t thought about and would have no idea how to deal with.
 
At first glance it would seem my case was hopeless. The defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in another country, and posted the defamatory statements on his/her own site. Despite all these obstacles I succeeded in getting the defamatory material removed or blocked from public view, and so can you.
 
When You’ve Been Defamed Online
If you believe you’ve been defamed online, you need to ask yourself:
 
  1. Is the offending material really libel, not statements of fact or non-actionable opinion?
  2. Is the offending material likely to be seen by large numbers of people?
  3. Is the offending material truly likely to damage your reputation?
It’s not usually worth taking action to get the defamatory material removed unless the answer to all three of these questions is a resounding YES, and the defamatory remarks are being made in reference to you under your legal name, pen name, or business name. Defaming remarks being made about your online alias aren’t usually worth fighting unless your online alias is clearly linked with your legal name, pen name or business name (i.e., in a user profile, on your own site, Twitter profile, etc.)
 
Questions #1 and #3 can only be answered by you (possibly with the input of an attorney, in the case of #1), but you can get the answer to #2 using some free, online tools. Run the URL of the website—not the specific page, but the main website URL—where the defamatory material is posted through these two tools to view traffic statistics and other data about the site:
 
Even if you’re not absolutely certain the defamatory statement(s) will pass the ‘actionable opinion’ test, if you feel very strongly that your reputation among your peers, readers and/or the publishing community is being damaged, it’s still probably worthwhile to take action to the extent you can do so without getting an attorney involved. Most people would rather take simple steps to make a problem go away on their own than risk legal action, so the threat of that risk can often get results.
 
Chain Chain Chain, Chain of Legal Liability
Let’s say you’ve decided to take action. If you ask the defamer to remove the objectionable material directly, your request isn’t likely to be honored and will most likely generate more online abuse and exposure. However, that isn’t the end of the story. Even if the defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in a foreign country, or is defaming you on his or her own site, so long as the company that hosts the site is based in a country with libel laws, you’re still in business.
 
The defamer is just one of the people in the chain of legal liability for internet defamation, and certain others in the chain are usually easier for you to get to—and have a lot more to lose. The chain consists of every person or company involved in the creation, publication and presentation of the offending material. This group may include:
 
  1. Discussion group administrator
  2. Site administrator
  3. Site editor
  4. Site owner
  5. Blog or Site platform/software provider
  6. Content aggregator
  7. Site hosting company
You’ll probably find you’re wasting your time lodging a complaint with parties #1 – #4, even if the site or discussion board in question has specific prohibitions against defamation in its Terms of Use (ToU) or Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). All of these people are usually ignorant of the law, and will tend to dismiss your complaint. Worse, if any of them are pals with the defamer, your complaint will likely backfire.
 
There are certain legal protections that tend to insulate #5 and #6 from most claims relating to the objectionable or illegal use of their services by individuals, so these are also usually dead ends. And this brings us to #7: the hosting company.

(continued, next page; read on to learn how to get defamatory statements & reviews removed) 

Twitter Strategy To Increase Targeted Traffic

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This post, from Chris Al-Aswad, originally appeared on his My Corporate Blogger site on 5/7/09.

I’ll admit it took me awhile to fully comprehend the madness behind Twitter. But nothing is ever revealed right away in life and so it was with Twitter. In this post I will talk about a few essential Twitter tools to build a Twitter following, and my new favorite social media strategy to gain targeted traffic.

I have about eleven websites and blogs on the Web. My daily routine is juggling those sites, adding content to them, fulfilling my clients’ needs, and of course, finding new ways to direct traffic to my sites.  MyCorporateBlogger.com, what you’re reading right now, is actually one of my newest blogs and it is also my professional blog, where my clients can find me and learn what I’m up to.

If you want to dramatically increase targeted traffic to your website, here is what you will need. Think of it like a recipe:

  1. a blog
  2. a twitter account

In addition, you will be using these tools and services:

  1. Twollo
  2. TweetDeck or Hoot Suite
  3. Twitter Button
  4. TwitThis Button
  5. Huitter/Mutuality

Twitter Strategy to Increase Targeted Traffic

Step One:  The Basics, a blog and a twitter account

The first thing you will need to do is set up a twitter account.  When you choose your username, try to pick the same words of your site URL or organization.  Think keywords–something instantly recognizable.  On the twitter account I just set up for this blog, I use “mycorporateblog”.

The most optimal SEO strategy is to create a Twitter account for your business or your website rather than a personal account.  This is because your Twitter page has a small place to put your website URL and a short description.  Your Twitter page will therefore represent your website.  Focus on your site versus “you” the person.  But make sure you upload a picture of yourself.

These are the basics.

Next you will need a blog which you probably already have.  If you have a business website but no blog, then start a blog.  Why?  Because a blog is dynamic while a website is static.  User-generated content is what creates traffic.

Step Two:  How to use Twollo.com

There are a number of auto-follow Twitter tools on the Web.  These tools enable you to automatically follow people.  But remember, your goal is not simply to increase your followers.  What you want is targeted followers, followers interested in what you’re interested in, followers who belong to your niche.

For example, one twitter tool called TweepMe.com charges 12 bucks a year to increase your followers.  It is not a targeted traffic tool, however, and will do you little good.

I recommend Twollo.com.  On this service, you add the keywords you’re interested in and the tool searches conversations in which these keywords appear.  You tell the app to follow 10, 20, 30, 40, 100, 200, 500, or unlimited amounts of people who are using the keyword you have chosen.  You can add as many different keywords as you want.

But wait?  You’re following them; they’re not following you.  Correct, but about half of those people will follow you.

I also suggest paying the 7 bucks to give you priority in the system for one month.  This means the system will process your requests faster and ultimately you’ll gain more traffic to your Twitter page.

The traffic comes to your Twitter page, but your website URL is right there.  If people are interested in what you’re interested in (i.e. keywords), then they will click on the link to your site.

Step Three: Use TweetDeck or even better HootSuite

The phenomenon of Twitter is not going anywhere but up.  Twitter is the next Google mainly because of the possibilities in real-time search.  It will revolutionize communication and we’re yet to see what that will look like.  We just need to learn which tools will make that communication worthwhile.

It’s best to be as personal as possible and not to simply automate your Tweets.  Here is a great article from PC World  which I’ll quote:

If you’ve got a blog that’s connected to your business, you can use a service such as TwitterFeed to directly channel your new blog posts into Twitter posts. Sounds nifty, doesn’t it?

Well, don’t do it. Your business’s primary Twitter feed ought to be hand-fed. If you publish a flood of impersonal links, your Twitter account will just seem like a faceless promotion machine. And that’s not any way to engage people on Twitter. Link to the very best stuff on your blog, as well as relevant stuff you see elsewhere on the web, and also post items that don’t contain links at all. (Don’t forget to use a URL-shortening service such as tinyurl, is.gd, or xrl.us for your links.)

Rather than use automated feed, engage!  TweetDeck is a personal browser to connect and converse with your contacts across Twitter.  It allows you to see exactly who is sending you messages and simplifies the complex rhythm that is Twitter.  Twitter can be very overwhelming; an advanced tool such as TweetDeck is very worthwhile.

If you want to engage on Twitter and only have one Twitter account, then I recommend Tweet Deck.  If you have multiple accounts, however, use HootSuite.  HootSuite is my personal favorite because you can toggle between accounts.  For clients who are running multiple business websites, this is an ideal platform

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes Steps 4-6 and the author’s results, on My Corporate Blogger.

Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You, Part 2

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(Continued from part one. As in part one, nothing herein should be construed as legal advice.)

Gather Documentation
First things first: take screenshots, create pdfs, or save offline copies of the web pages where the libel occurred. Be sure to note the URLs and bookmark them; you’ll need to share these with others later. Also retain copies of any emails, phone calls, faxes, instant messages, or other communications you send or receive pertaining to the matter going forward.
 
Identify The Site Hosting Company
Go to the Network Solutions WHOIS Search page and enter the domain name of the site where the defamatory material appears. For example, if you were investigating Google, you’d enter “google.com”. The WHOIS record will show in whose name the domain is registered, and will also list the Domain Name Servers (DNS) on which the site is hosted. The DNS entries will follow this format:
 
[server ID].[host company name].com
 
Now that you know the host company name, go to their website by typing www.[host company name].com into your browser. If that doesn’t get you to their site, do a Google search on the company name to find it.
 
Hosting Company Terms of Use / Acceptable Use Policy
Once on the hosting company’s site, look up their ToU/AUP. You may have to hunt around a bit to find it, and may have to click a link to a page where the company’s hosting services are being offered for sale, but the document you need will definitely be somewhere on that site. Find the paragraph in it which specifically prohibits defamation, libel, or ‘any other illegal activity’, which should read something like this.
 
[must not] encourage, allow or participate in any form of illegal or unsuitable activity, including but not restricted to the exchange of threatening, obscene or offensive messages, spreading computer viruses, breach of copyright and/or proprietary rights or publishing defamatory material;
 
If the document is very lengthy, you can use your browser’s Find > On This Page option to speed up your search. When you find the paragraph, make a note of the paragraph number or letter and save the entire document as a pdf, screenshot file, or offline web page for later reference. Even if you don’t find the paragraph, the fact that the host company operates in a country with libel laws gives you ammunition to proceed.
 
Put The Hosting Company On Notice
Click the host company’s ‘Contact Us’ link and look for the ‘Abuse’ department or email address. Some companies take abuse so seriously that they provide a telephone hotline.
 
Use the provided email address or phone number to report the incident(s). If you begin with a phone call, follow up with an email to create an electronic paper trail. You can follow this basic format, customized with your details:
 
Subject: Your Client In Violation Of Your [ToU or AUP]
 
Dear [Hosting Company Name] Representative:
Your client is using a website hosted on your server to make libelous statements about [me/my work/my business]. Your client’s statements are illegal and in violation of your own [ToU/AUP], [provide paragraph number or letter]. In allowing your client to utilize your hosting service for such use you may be held liable as the publisher of the libelous statements if you are made aware of them and fail to take action to remove them. Here are links to the offending content:
 
[provide links]
 
I am taking this very seriously, and if I do not receive notice that you are taking action to remove the offending material I will pursue legal action against your company in the matter.
 
–          [your name]
–          [your contact info]
 
School The Hosting Company
You may luck out and score a win with your first contact, but it’s more likely that the person on the receiving end will be ignorant of the law and respond with some boilerplate message about protecting the company’s clients’ right to free speech. So, you’ll need to take him to school. Respond with an email patterned after this one (including links):
 
You seem to believe your client’s defamatory material is protected free speech, but you are mistaken.
 
ACCORDING TO NPR’S "ON THE MEDIA": "The Media Law Resource Center, which tracks these cases, reports that there’s been over $16 million in [libel] judgments against bloggers."
 
ACCORDING TO ATTORNEY SEAN EGAN, OF LAWFIRM BATES, WELLS AND BRAITHWAITE: "The law of defamation prohibits defamatory statements being made and defendants may include the original author, a person publishing or editing the statement. Libel is making defamatory statements in writing. In principle therefore whoever hosts a webpage will be liable for any defamatory statement and will be considered to have published the statement."
 
[Host company name] is the publisher of the defamatory and libelous statements being made by your client on [his/her] site, and your company became complicit in the libel from the moment your company was made aware of the offending material and did not act to remove it or have it removed.
 
[If you found a paragraph prohibiting defamation, libel or other illegal activity in the host’s ToU/AUP, include the following paragraph as well:]
 
[Furthermore, I am advised that if you refuse to enforce your [ToA/AUP] in this instance, given all the documentation of that fact, you are establishing a precedent which any of your other clients may use to prevent you from enforcing said [ToU/AUP] in the event any of those clients violate your terms or policies. Selective enforcement is typically deemed no enforcement at all by the courts.]
 
Please provide your legal counsel’s full name, address, phone number, fax and email so I will know where to direct a Cease and Desist letter.
 
–          [your name]
–          [your contact info]
 
 
In the great majority of cases this second contact will spur the host company to action, if for no other reason than the fact that they must pay their legal counsel his or her usual hourly rate just to read your Cease and Desist letter and reply to it—even if the reply is nothing more than a legal-ese version of, “Get lost, we’re not doing jack.” Allowing a C&D letter to get through to their attorney also puts the attorney on notice that the company is potentially in legal trouble, and in publicly-held companies this sets a chain of notification requirements in motion: senior management must be notified immediately, followed by board members and shareholders if the matter isn’t resolved quickly.
 
It’s a whole lot cheaper and easier for the host company’s Abuse department to send a notice to their client advising him or her of the ToU/AUP violation and asking the client to remove the offending material on pain of having his or her site shut down with no refund of hosting fees. It also keeps the Abuse department manager from getting chewed out by the higher-ups.
 
The Cease And Desist Letter
If the second contact doesn’t work, your next step is to obtain a Cease and Desist (C&D) letter from an attorney and send it to the host company’s lawyer. If you Google “internet defamation” you should be able to find plenty of attorneys who specialize in these matters, and the letter should only cost you around US$100. While that’s a considerable chunk of change, it may just be worth it if the libel is hurting your sales, your standing as an author, your reputation among your peers or your reputation within the publishing industry.
 
Many communities and colleges with a law school sponsor low-cost legal clinics, so those are other avenues to try if you feel the libel is very serious but you can’t afford to hire an attorney at regular rates. Contact your local city hall, community center or universities to inquire about available low-cost legal clinics.
 
A Third Act Plot Twist For U.S.-Based Hosting Companies
Here’s where things get a little more interesting for defamation victims dealing with U.S.-based hosting companies. Here, in addition to charges of defamation, you can charge misappropriation of your name, likeness or trade name for profit, intentional interference with economic relations, and more. This sample C&D letter from the Chilling Effects website includes several charges. Your C&D letter should include as many charges as can reasonably be applied, per the opinion of the attorney preparing the letter.
 
A Common U.S. Defense Tactic: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Attorneys for U.S.-based software companies, internet service providers, hosting companies and similar are used to summarily rejecting any defamation claims levied against their clients’ end-users on the basis that their client is protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act; Google it if you want to know the particulars of that piece of legislation. In a nutshell, it’s intended to protect those providers from the illegal actions of people who use their software or services. In most cases it’s a more or less bulletproof defense. Does this mean our hero (you) is ruined? Not necessarily.
 
If the plaintiff can show that the provider has access to edit, block or delete its clients’ content, and has previously done so for any reason, the provider will have a hard time proving it does not act as the publisher of its clients’ content. Nevertheless, this can be tough to prove and therefore more likely to result in a legal battle than a speedy, out-of-court resolution.
 
Misappropriation: The Charge Most Likely To Get Fast Results In The U.S.
A charge of misappropriation of a person’s name, likeness or trade name for profit isn’t so easily dodged, and violation of this U.S. law is readily apparent to anyone viewing the pages with the defamatory material. If the page with defamatory material also contains advertising, or links to buy products being offered for sale by the site, host, blog author, etc., then the page content qualifies as content being used for a commercial (money-making) purpose. See this blog post from Internet Law Attorney Erik Syverson, and this one from Internet Defamation Attorney Adrianos Facchetti for more information, and specifics on how the same concept can be applied to defamatory online reviews.
 
How I Prevailed
In my situation, the defamer’s hosting company is based in the U.S. I put the company on notice with a first email as suggested in this article, which was answered with the expected ‘freedom of speech’ boilerplate. I followed up with the suggested second email, in which I reiterated the defamation charge and also added the bit about the risks of selective enforcement of the company’s ToS/AUP. I was truly prepared to go the full distance to clear my name and protect my reputation, and I made that fact very clear.
 
I can’t say whether it was the defamation schooling, the selective enforcement schooling, or the request for their legal counsel’s contact information that finally got the company to take action, but within 36 hours one of the offending posts was deleted and the other was marked as ‘deleted or locked’. A ‘locked’ post on the site is still visible to registered site members, but the site’s registered membership is a low number so I’m not terribly concerned about it. What mattered to me was having the post removed from public view and Google search results on searches of my name, site names, etc.
 
What About Retaliation?
The sort of person who would attempt to maliciously defame another is not the sort of person to graciously accept censorship. You may find that in winning the first battle, you’ve touched off a war in which the defamer takes to spreading his or her damaging lies about you on other sites.
 
No worries! So long as 1) the site carries advertising, or 2) the site, hosting company or corporate owner of the site is refusing to enforce its own ToU/AUP, or 3) the hosting company or corporate owner of the site is based in the U.S., U.K., or any other country with libel laws, I know how to get defamatory material removed.
 
And now, so do you!
 

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April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat and the Publetariat Vault.

36 – No, Make That 59 – Free eBooks For Authors

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This post, from Holly Lisle, originally appeared on her Juiced On Writing site on 9/17/08. In it, she shared links to 36 free ebooks of interest to authors. While the individual links can still be followed from that original post, Holly has since combined them all, and added some more, in a downloadable ebook of her own and offers it for free on her site.

 

This list has now been superceded by the publication of a free e-book containing 59 Free E-books for New Writers. You59ebooks are welcome to download this e-book. For more details and to download please see The Ultimate Guide to Free E-Books for New Writers.

 

Original Post (October 2008)

Looking around the web, I’ve lately found 36 free ebooks to download for writers. These do not include the seemingly hundreds of free ebooks and articles available on writing or producing eBooks to sell, as I’ve tried to concentrate on creative or other online writing guides. Links are current at this point in time. Let me know if there are any more.

In no particular order –

1. Mugging the Muse by Holly Lisle.
This 209 page eBook incorporates many of the articles and workshops from Holly Lisle’s main writing site, with additional material. It is now available as a free download both in PDF and Exe ebook versions. This is one of my favourites, I must add.

2. The Non-Celebrity’s Guide to Getting a Children’s Book Published
This free eBook is avilable from Write4Kids.com, along with a couple of others.

3. Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin
Okay, not strictly about writing, but Seth Godin’s publications are some of my all time favourites because they are applicable to any writer’s lifestyle, marketing and creativity. And most are given away quite freely, so take a look around his site. Unleashing the Idea Virus is about word-of-mouth marketing.

4. Assaulting a Writer’s Thinking by Lea Schizas
This eBook is available via Free-ebooks.net, once you’ve registered. In fact, there are 44 results under the Writing and Publishing category at Free-ebooks. However this one has a good rating and is on a general writing subject, whilst most others are more towards ezines and eBooks.

5. Book Writing for Fun and Profit by Brian Scott
From the Bookcatcher site, this 84 page eBook in PDF format contains some information, some advertisements, and some resource links.

6. Improve Your Writing Skills
This is a little Exe eBook downloadable from Mantex.co.uk. It includes some simple grammar discussions, plus chapters on writing strategies, writers block and resources. Although dated 2002, the eBook itself is a good representation of putting together an exe eBook with a good format, working links to pages, and small relevant advertising to the side.

7. Legendfire’s Writers Guide V2
The Legendfires online creative writing community has published version 2 of its writing guide in March 2008, which provides discussion around goals and starters for writing. This 54 page PDF guide is well worth downloading if you are into creative writing.

8. On Creative Writing by Linda A Lavid.
This ebook is found on the Legendfire website also, and comes in 48 pages PDF format.

9. and 10. Blogbash and Blogging for Profits
Both of these ebooks are free to download, on the specific subjects of blogging. Blogbash came about after an event on the Chitika blog and interviews 30 successful bloggers. Blogging for Profits is written by Yaro Starak who runs the successful Blog Mastermind ecourses. Both give some excellent principles for writing for the blog platform. Both are free.

11. Manage Your Writing by Kenneth W. Davis
This is a free download via the Scribd website, where you will find other writing themed books as photocopies / scans or uploaded PDFs or text files from some authors. This eBook concentrates on Business Writing.

The Oxford Essential Guide to English, a scanned edition is also currently available from Scribd, as are other dictionaries and references.

12. Creative Freelancing
A free ebook available from writingcareer.com.

13. Make Your Words Sell
This large and free ebook by SiteSell.com’s Ken Evoy with Joe Robson. At 250 pages, it’s an excellent reference for copywriters, or making your words work on the internet. While you’re there, check out the other free large ebooks in PDF format – Make Your Content Presell, and Make Your Knowledge Sell (the last being on information products or eBooks).

14. How to Write a Great Query Letter by Noah Lukeman
This ebook is relatively famous out there on the internet, and has been given back as a gift to the writing community by the author. On the same page you will now also find the free download eBook, How to Land a Literary Agent. The How to Write a Great Query Letter is available only via a free download at amazon.com however. Which means there is a difficulty from my own perspective as I’m a UK amazon customer, and the U.S. Amazon places restrictions based on geography on digital downloads.

15. Writing Success Secrets by Shaun Fawcett
A general eBook of 89 pages on everyday writing – letter writing or writing essays or papers.

16, 17 and 18. Tropes and Schemes, Begin Writing Fiction and Dangers for Fiction Writers
These three short eBooks (around 35 pages each) by Shruti Chandra Gupta are available as free downloads at the LiteraryZone blog. These are a compilation of the content on the website, where you can continue to read this content if you don’t want to download the eBooks.

Read the rest of the post on Juiced On Writing.

Publishers: About To Make All The Same Mistakes As The Music Biz

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This piece, from Susan Piver, originally appeared on her website on 2/11/09.

Hello book publishers. You’re starting to scare me.

I work in publishing but was a record label executive from 1990-2001 and am fascinated by parallels between the two industries. When it comes to the digitization of product and attempts to master/mangle the phenomenon of social media, the publishing business is where the music business was about 10 years ago. And although publishing probably sets its collective IQ (not to mention good manners) as superior to the music business, I can’t find evidence that their reactions to industry sea change are substantially different.

While attending this week’s O’Reilly’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference, I heard a lot of this:

There is still time to change course and we’ve got to do something now—but we don’t know what.

In the meantime, let’s co-opt whatever new trends we see out there by assigning some low-level marketing person to troll Twitter or hiring a social media consultant.

Please, please don’t let us end up like the record business.

If there’s anything to be learned from the recent past, it’s that none of these thoughts are worth pursuing. The “somebody do something” mentality duplicates the kind of hoping-for-the-best attitude espoused by long-time executives in music who simply could not or would not question the viability of the professional cocoons they’d built for themselves. And who can blame them—corporate mega structures are schooled in consolidation as the primary means of growth, not fleet-footed, shape-shifting responsiveness to change. But now we’re in a world where getting bigger is not the answer, getting smaller is.

The question I hoped would be addressed at the conference was: How will publishing avoid being trapped by its own environment? But it never was. Instead, I noticed a lot of talk of waiting and seeing how things are going to work out before making any earth-shaking, world-class responses to a world that has already changed.

At the conference, I was excited for a keynote aimed at comparing the music and publishing industries. Although entertaining, it lacked vision. The speaker talked about how only wimps fear the freedoms of the digital marketplace and attempt to control intellectual property rights and that at least we’re not going to start arresting people like those thugs over at the RIAA. I was disappointed not to hear a more sophisticated dissection, beginning with debunking the idea that digital downloads killed the music business, or could kill publishing.

Downloads did not kill the music business. Shortsightedness and turf-protection on the part of music business executives did. Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.

Read the rest of the post on Susan Piver’s site.

The Five Golden Rules Of Publicity For Authors

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This post, from Katherine (Kat) Smith, originally appeared on WritersWrite.

The hard work, you think, is over. You’ve labored into many late nights writing your book, struggled to literally make sure every "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed. Your book — your baby — is all grown up now; completed and ready to set the world on fire.

Then, the cold, hard truth slaps you in the face like a winter chill. Like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around, your book isn’t going to make a sound — or even be known about by anyone — unless you get the word out. You could hire a publicist, but the often high-costs can be prohibitive, and perhaps most of your "book money" went to editing, design, layout and printing.

What to do?

Relax, set your ego aside, and set up a plan and course of action. Book promotion isn’t rocket science; but it does involve a lot of hard work, persistence and some added touches of creativity. Here are some basic yet invaluable pointers for the bold author who has decided to go it alone in the wild world of book promotion.

Change positions with the media

The essence of book promotion is the utilization of the media to get the word out to the public about your book. Sure, producers, editors and journalists can be a gruff bunch, but the reality is they are literally swamped with books and press releases every day.

What you need to do is put yourself in the shoes of the media. If you were a feature editor at a paper or a producer of a talk show, what would interest you? Too often, amateur publicists simply believe that getting a book or press release into the right person’s hands will do the trick. WRONG. You’ve got to think of an angle, hook, slant — whatever you want to call it — that will interest the right people.

Listen to talk radio. Watch TV talk shows. Read the lifestyle and feature sections of newspapers. Read magazines. See what makes it; then create a press release that will make it happen for you.

Remember: No one ever interviews a book

Getting on radio and TV talk shows is exciting, fun and can really jumpstart book sales. But if you think your book will get you on the air by itself, you’re probably wrong. No one interviews a book … they interview PEOPLE. Of course, the topic your book may be gets the attention of producers, but they need and want people who can be informative, entertaining and articulate. People make a show … not books.

When you’re promoting a book, you’re also promoting yourself. Remember this, practice this, and go for it!
 

Read the rest of the post on WritersWrite.

The Editor Unleashed Guide To Good Blogging

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This post, from Maria Schneider, originally appeared on her Editor Unleashed site on 5/28/09.

The “should I start a blog” topic popped up on the forum yesterday, and I want to offer my answer to this question once and for all: Yes, of course you should start a blog!

Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this fabulous, free opportunity to not only practice your craft, but also start actively building your readership.

Every writer circa 2009 should have a blog. It’s free and the technology is accessible to all. Don’t worry yourself over things like SEO and RSS or HTML. You don’t need to know any of that to start a blog, although your knowledge of these things will naturally grow as you become more comfortable with blogging.

I’ve written many posts on website building and blogging. I highly recommend starting out with a simple WordPress.com account for the most user-friendly, free service. Then, when you’re ready to expand into a full-fledged multi-page website, it’s easy to transfer those files onto WordPress.org, which is a more flexible and powerful platform.

The most important thing is to start and stick with it. That puts you ahead of the pack in more ways than you realize.

Here, I’ve assembled a number of the posts I’ve written on blogging/website building in one handy post. If you’re just starting a blog, this will be more information than you need, so you may want to skim the information and come back to specific topics when you’re ready. 

Choosing a Domain
Since I’m a writer and no techno-wiz, I’ve just gotten past a steep learning curve to build my website from scratch, and I wanted to share what I learned in a weeklong series here on Editor Unleashed.

I’m going to start from the very beginning, because I wished several weeks ago for one reliable resource to take me through all of the steps in a very basic way. Read more…

Website Software and Hosting
OK, so you’ve got your domain registered and you’re ready for the next big step in building your website. Now it’s time to figure out software options and hook up with a Web Host (aka server).

Read the rest of the post on Editor Unleashed.

Phantom Editors and Writing 'Mistakes'

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This post, from Marsha Durham, originally appeared on her Writing Companion blog on 3/6/09.

Do you mark errors you find when you read books? If you do correct text, be sure that what you’ve done is . . . well, correct.

I occasionally correct errors in Wikipedia and books, such as dates and people’s names. Sometimes I correct typos, although I’m not really into joining the super-vigilant typo-police. I usually correct a typo only if it’s in a library book and may mislead other readers. For example, a Colleen McCullough novel had a scene set in a royal court. A whipping there was described as a ‘kindly act’ when the story’s context suggested that ‘kingly act’ was probably what was meant.

Recently I borrowed a library copy of a novel called The Writing Class, by US writer Jincy Willett. I enjoyed the book—it covers writing issues but is also a whodunit—but I was also interested to see that a previous reader had inserted three ‘corrections’.

What do you think about what the book’s Phantom Editor corrected?

Interestingly, Jincy responded, and I’ve now  incorporated her comments.

Akimbo: Correct–or not?

. . .[S]ince all they had to tell the police was that some unidentified joker had claimed that another unidentified man was dead, the police wouldn’t be inclined to race to the beach, blue lights and sirens akimbo.

The origins of akimbo were words meaning ’sharply bent’ and ‘crooked’, and anything akimbo should be able to be bent. It usually refers to human limbs: arms akimbo, legs akimbo.

Can blue lights be akimbo? Maybe, as a figurative description of flashes of blue light breaking over the scene. But a sound—the sirens—can’t be. So yes, I agree with Phantom Editor on this one.

JINCY: “Akimbo” was used in a deliberately off way. We’re in Amy’s p.o.v. throughout (that is, 3rd person, single p.o.v., with the exception of the Sniper material), and this is the sort of deliberate odd word choice that she would make (I hope); it was intended to be droll, because Amy is.

Between you and I: Correct or not?

Carla, a member of the writing class, tells Amy, her writing teacher: ‘Everybody understood that piece but me! Between you and I,’ she had whispered, ‘I was just winging it.’

Phantom Editor had a pencilled-in a correction about it: ‘between you and me’.

The correction makes the phrase grammatically correct. But for dialogue, editors should investigate further. Not every character uses grammatically correct speech. Maybe Carla is someone who always uses the phrase ‘between you and I’. Many people do. A good editor would check with the author and examine how characters talk throughout the book.

JINCY:  Carla uses the wrong pronoun case in dialogue, and again this was deliberate on my part, although I can’t remember why, except that I always notice when people do this.

Careen: Correct or not?

At first all she could make out was a small car entering the far end of the lot at an unsafe speed, at least for speech bumps, and sure enough it hit three of them, bottoming out each time . . . with an attendant rattle that sounded like a dislodged oil pan, and still it careened forward, coming straight for Amy.

Phantom Editor changed careened to careered. Which is right? This one is tricky: It depends on the culture the story is set in, the writer’s cultural background, and the editor’s decision to stick to old or changed rules of usage.

Read the rest of the post on the Writing Companion blog.

13 Twitter Tips and Tutorials For Beginners

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This post, from Darren Rowse, originally appeared on his TwiTip site on 4/18/09.

Just starting out on Twitter? Looking for some Twitter Tips to get you started?

Twitter is bound to have a load of new users today as it is being featured on Oprah – so I thought it might be a good day to share some tips for the beginner Twitter user who is just getting going with the medium.

1. What’s in it for Your Followers? – How to be Useful on Twitter

2. 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners – good sound advice and tips on getting going on Twitter  

3. 8 Sure-Fire Ways to Tick off the Twitterverse – a few things to avoid on Twitter 

4. 5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter – this outlines why I love Twitter in my business of building blogs 

5. Defining Your Twitter Goals – this one is more for those who want to use Twitter for other purposes than just letting their family know when they’ll be home. 

6. How to Set up a Twitter Account – most of your are probably past this one but it could be useful if you’re a ‘Pre-Twitter’ user.

7. 5 Steps to Model Successful Twitter Users – an exploration of a few ways that Twitter is being used 

Read the rest of the post on the TwiTip site.

How Does A Bestseller Happen? A Case Study In Reaching #1 On The New York Times

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This post, from Tim Ferriss, originally appeared on his blog on 8/6/07.

Last Friday, the impossible happened and a lifelong dream came true: The 4-Hour Workweekhit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list! Thank you all for your incredible encouragement and support. More unbelievable, this week 4HWW is simultaneously #1 on the NY Times and #1 on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller lists.

How is this possible? How could a book from a first-time author — with no offline advertising or PR — hit both of these lists and stick for three months and counting?

The book was turned down by 13 of 14 editors, and the president of one large book wholesaler even sent me PDFs on historical stats to “reset my expectations”–it could never be a bestseller. The odds seem impossible: there are more than 200,000 books published each year in the US, and less than 5% ever sell more than 5,000 copies. On a given bestseller list, more than 5 spots could be occupied by unbeatable bestsellers like Good to Great or The Tipping Point, which have been on the lists for years.

On a related note, how could a blog that didn’t exist six months ago now be #2,835 on Technorati with 874 incoming links and an Alexa ranking of 9,615?

Is it all luck? I don’t think so. Luck and timing play a (sometimes big) part, but it seems to me that one can still analyze the game and tilt the odds in their favor. I don’t claim to have all of the answers–I still know very little about publishing–but I’ve done enough micro-testing in the last year to fill a lifetime.

The conclusion, in retrospect, is simple… It all came down to learning how to spread a “ meme“, an idea virus that captures imaginations and takes on a life of its own.

First, let’s looks at how the bestseller status unfolded. Here are the stats and timing for all of the bestseller lists the 4HWW has hit since release date on April 24, 2007. [Publetariat Editor’s Note: the stats are lengthy, and can be viewed on Tim Ferriss’ blog via the ‘read the rest’ link below]

Those of you who have been here for a while know that I’m fanatical about analytics and imitating good models (in the business sense, not the Naomi Campbell sense).

Before I began writing 4HWW (I sold it before I wrote it, which I explain here), I cold-contacted and interviewed close to a dozen best-writing authors about their writing processes, followed by close to a dozen best-selling authors about their marketing and PR campaigns.

I asked several questions of the latter group, but one of the assumption-busting homeruns was:

“What were the 1-3 biggest wastes of time and money?”

This led me to create a “not-to-do” list. Number one was no book touring or bookstore signings whatsoever. Not a one. All of the best-selling authors warned against this author rite of passage. I instead focused on the most efficient word-of-mouth networks in the world at the time–blogs. The path to seeding the ideas of 4HWW was then straight-forward:

* Go where bloggers go
* Be there with a message and a story that will appeal to their interests, not yours
* Build and maintain those relationships through your own blog too

These three observations are from PR pundit Steve Rubel’s excellent summary of the 4HWW launch on Micro-Persuasion, titled “The 4-Hour Workweek – Behind the Meme.” Interested to know which events I chose and what the Amazon and Technorati numbers looked like at each step? Check it all out here.

For a good take on my blogging approaches, both as a book author and blog writer, see my multi-part interviews with Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net:
Part 1 – from the day prior to the official publication date (good for seeing how I prepped the market)
Part 2 – from about one weeks ago, after hitting the big lists (good for learning how I’ve built traffic)

4HWW created enough noise online that it was then picked up by offline media ranging from Wired and Outside magazines to Martha Stewart radio and The Today Show. To create a fast-acting meme, I’ve come to believe that you need to do a few things well. Here are the highlights, ordered to recreate the familiar acronym  PPC with a certain Don King-esque flavor:

Read the rest of the post on Tim Ferriss’ blog.

My Life In Publishing

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This post, by Henry Baum, originally appeared on the Backword Books blog on 6/18/09.

I’ve been thinking about how I’ve gotten to this point and why I’ve become such a zealot for self-publishing.  I have to say that self-publishing was an absolutely last resort for me.  I was trying and trying to make it in the world of traditional publishing.  And I’ve had some luck.  I mean some people can’t even get an agent, and I’ve had four of them, each representing different novels.  I’ve been translated into French, had a book put out in the U.K. Random House, et al, though, have not come knocking.

My first novel, “Camera Shy” (a lead character and title I used for a story put out in an anthology), was me trying to rip-off my favorite writer, Richard Yates.  Namely: The Easter Parade, which is about two sisters, so was mine.  It was a failure of a novel, but at least I wrote 200 pages in a row, and enjoyed it.

Second novel was called “Dishwasher,” my attempt at writing a first-person Bukowski/Kerouac-inspired novel, with the slacker generation replacing the Beat generation.  It was better and I got an agent for it.  She wanted to call it “Dishboy” because it was “funkier.” She sent it out and it had a nice reaction, but no takers.  “Boy can this guy write,” I remember, which is nice, but no book deal.

Wrote my first novel that was published next: first titled Oscar Caliber Gun (now titled The Golden Calf).  My agent hated it, and reluctantly sent it out. An editor said, “I cannot see a market for a novel that is slight and lacking in any meaningful message.”  I’ve memorized that.  The agent sent it to me sort of gleefully (I thought) as vindication for her distaste for the novel.  Ultimately we had a falling out because I made the mistake of asking her assistant if I could see the cover letter she was sending out with the novel.  Jay McInerney said he liked the book and I wanted to know if she was mentioning that in the letter.  I couldn’t reach her on the phone, so I just asked the assistant to send the letter.  The agent went ballistic.  Said I was doubting her skills as an agent.  Really, she just wouldn’t return my phone calls.  But I think she was looking for a way out because she didn’t like the novel.

And so I went to St. Mark’s Books in NYC looking for small presses to submit the novel to myself.  Got a bite from Soho Books.  Not much else.  And then I discovered a VERY small press, Soft Skull, that had these little handmade books printed at Kinko’s.  I sent in my novel along with a demo tape of a band I was playing drums in called Montag.  The editor, Sander Hicks, accepted the book, and was especially taken with the tape and that I’d begun my query letter with, “Dear Freakshow.”

So, finally, I was published.  I remember walking up First Avenue and my girlfriend at the time calling down to me, “Hey, published writer!”  Such a nice moment.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Backword Books blog.