9 Ways To Get Started & Stay Motivated by Lisa Scottoline is good advice for any endeavor.

Future of Print points out what is obvious to many and resisted by just as many.

Set Up Guide For New Computer will help you avoid the dumb things we all do when we get a new PC or Mac.

Takeaway Truth

The web is a resource of information if you know where to look.

If you want to be a professional writer, write for your peers. That doesn’t mean to dumb it down, but it does mean to not be intellectually snobbish and disdain the common reader. Most of those we revere today as renowned authors were considered genre authors in their day.

I have few favorites among today’s so-called literary authors because most of them don’t know how to plot worth a darn. They’re all flash and no substance when it comes to creating prose – sparkling sentences that have no relation to the forward motion a novel should possess.

Authorial Requirements

You must possess the narrative skills that enable you to craft a well written piece of fiction. Today, fiction of every genre is vibrant and exciting, with excellent characterization. Most of today’s best writers work in genre, not the so-called literary fiction.

Find your identity as a writer. Discover the stories you want to tell, and find a niche that allows you to tell them. That’s writing on your own terms.

Path To Discovery

One way to discover yourself is to simply write. One of my favorite literary authors Larry Brown and bestseller thriller author Dean Koontz both said virtually the same thing: “You must write X number of words before you’ll ever write anything worth publishing.”

I believe that. There is a related truth to that theory. No one knows what X is because it’s different for every writer. A good way to get started is by writing a blog. Being a generalist isn’t a problem because you can do a little thinking with a pad and paper and brainstorm a list of things that interest you. Then narrow it down to 7 things that interest you enough that you’d like to write about them frequently, as in, 7 days a week.

Takeaway Truth

Practice makes perfect or, at least, better, even when it comes to writing.

I received an email from Office Depot. They’re having a desk chair sale. Use Coupon Code 19876054 to get a discount. (Nope. I’m not getting a discount or payment for this. Just passing along a way to save money.)

The coupon is good for in store or online, but the offer expires 06/19/10 so hurry. I’ll be looking for a new one so maybe we’ll bump into each other.

By the way, if you haven’t signed up for their WorkLife Rewards, do so. You get a neat gift card every quarter based upon your purchases the previous quarter. I just got one, and it certainly adds up.

Takeaway Truth

A good desk chair is a necessary tool for writers.

Peter Applebome of The New York Times was mourning the loss of a local bookstore in his town. He reported some statistics from The American Booksellers Association. Now they are about “1,500 booksellers at 2,500 locations,” but 20 years ago, they were “4,200 at about 5,500 locations.” The independent booksellers have decreased by more than half. How sad since some of my happiest memories are of browsing bookstores.

Takeaway Truth

Independent booksellers who once thrived have been edged out by big chains and Internet retailers.  The bottom line for writers is that it’s much harder to make a living at this business now than it was 20 years ago.

This San Francisco company opened for business in 2007. Two years later they have millions of documents being sold by writing entrepreneurs. The big publishing companies have jumped into this also. In June of this year, Simon & Schuster announced that they would sell digital copies of their published books on Scribd.com. These are books by their top hitters: Dan Brown and Stephen King to name a couple.

Important Info

1. Be sure and read the Terms of Service and all the FAQs so you know what you’re getting into.

2. You can’t cash out until your earnings reach $100.00 in a quarter.

3. You set the price.

4. Scribd takes 20% of your earnings plus 25 cents per sale.

5. You can choose to publish in a format that prevents your work from being downloaded and subsequently pirated so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet the purchaser knows as well as other websites will offer your work for free thus eliminating your ability to earn income as a writer from your hard work.

You select Readable in Adobe Digital Editions with DRM (Digital Rights Media). This lets the purchaser view the content in iPaper when logged into Scribd as well as allowing them to download a secured copy that is licensed to the purchaser. That secure copy can be read offline, but it must be read with free software called Adobe Digital Editions. This option gives purchasers less control over how they use the content, and disables their ability to print the work. However, those limits are offset usually by the low purchase price, and those same limits are what protect the copyright holder from unauthorized duplication.

6. If you’re the instant gratification type, you can use their Web forum to post instantly, charge for the document, and see results just as instantly.

About Scribd

They call themselves a social publishing company. Of course, I somewhat cynically think that in the Web 2.0 world, you just tack social onto anything. Voila! It’s immediately the new “in” place to gather.

They help you easily convert most files, including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, into Web documents for sharing with the rest of the planet.

You create an account and can publish instantly. Then you build a community by subscribing to people, publishers and companies with similar interests. That’s the social part of their business model.

Sure, you can browse interesting content in just about any genre. Use their search engine, and you can find just about anything. Scribd content of course is indexed by the search engines. Read the About Us page for stats and other information as well as a list of the well-known companies using them which adds to their credibility.

Takeaway Truth

There’s a publishing revolution going on. Writers who are smart business people will learn all they can in order to see how they can benefit from new technologies.

Brick & Mortar To Internet

Enter ConquestGraphics.com that saw its first 85 years as a commercial printing company with a sterling reputation for service and quality. In 2006, they ventured onto the Internet so the rest of the world could take advantage of what they have to offer.

Visit their secure website, and you’ll see that you can reach them by phone, email, or Live Chat. They make design as easy as purchase. Their ultra-modern printing facility is energy-efficient, reflecting their interest in going green. In fact, they care so much about the environment that they have begun to employ Green Printing methods. You can read more about it on the website.

Beyond Business Cards

Whatever your printing needs, business cards to bookmarks and beyond, they can help you every step of the way. You can upload your own design or use their design templates. Whatever you need to know about design, quality, product, shipping, or other policies is covered on the website.

I like a company that has this goal: “Our goal is to provide our customers with quality products and services, as well as a quality experience.”

Takeaway Truth

Even in this technological age, there’s still a need for quality printed products.

This blog post is aimed at those who aspire to be professional writers, not at someone who has a full-time job and dabbles in writing as a way to earn a few extra bucks. There’s a vast difference between the expectations of a professional and an amateur. I think a rift has arisen because many who started out as dabblers now consider themselves professional, but they don’t have the same professional expectations of writers who have been in the trenches for years. This may be one reason people write for writer mills and are happy to receive the small fees paid.

Old School

For those of us who have been around a long time, we feel forced to tilt at the windmill of better pay for writers. As professionals, we know how hard it is to craft an educational and entertaining article and present it articulately and compellingly to an audience whose attention is sought by Internet, TV, video games, books, periodicals, and more.

The Situation

Virtually no entertainment, from greeting cards to movies to websites to video games, would exist without writers yet we are the ones who end up with the smallest piece of the pie. Witness the Hollywood writers’ strike a couple of years ago. It was all about writers trying to get compensation for new media rights. What they wanted amounted to about a nickel from a DVD sale.If you haven’t watched Harlan Ellison’s rant, view it now because it’s the absolute, bottom-line truth.

10 Guidelines

For all of you who are trying to carve out a niche as a freelance writer, here’s a little advice that might help you understand why it’s a good thing that someone is critiques companies that use writers, as Angela Hoy did in the report she recently published about Demand Studios. We all need those who believe in the impossible dream of adequate compensation.

1. Don’t kill the messenger.

When someone critiques a company such as DS or any of the other writer mills, don’t feel compelled to launch an offensive on the person making the report.

2. Do feel compelled to read and analyze.

If your own experience is dissimilar, do your own fact checking to see if your experience is unique or the report is false. This is easy to do by creating a keyword phrase like “complaints about XYZ Inc.” and entering it in one of two search engines of your choice. It’s easy to find information if you truly want to discover the truth or falseness of a claim.

3. Don’t fail to read the Terms of Service.

No exceptions. For any business for whom you intend to write, know exactly to what you are agreeing, how it will be used, how and when you will be compensated, what rights you are selling, and how your private information will be used.

4. Do know what remedies are available to you if things go badly and always have a plan B.

5. Don’t accept rudeness from anyone.

Rudeness should not be tolerated, on either side, in professional writing relationships. A true professional knows how to critique in a way that helps the writer produce better copy. A pro editor wants to build a solid relationship with writers where respect is given on both sides of the desk.

6. Do meet rudeness, if you get it, with calm professionalism.

Every person, even freelance copy editors, have someone to whom they answer. Find out who that someone is and file a complaint about the person, but be sure you can back up your complaint with evidence other than hearsay. Keep a paper trail of correspondence and be ready to produce it.

7. Don’t let others make your decisions.

Read, research, and reflect. Draw your own conclusions. If Ima Writer says the company you write for sucks, don’t feel bad even if you personally agree. You have your own reasons for staying with them. If Ima Writer says they’re wonderful, but you don’t think so, don’t feel as if you have to persuade her to avoid them. She has her reasons.

8. Do make conscious choices about the clients for whom you’ll write.

If you choose to write for low pay, then acknowledge that it’s low pay and that you have valid reasons for doing it, but don’t try to convince others that it’s not low pay. Don’t deny the facts of the situation. Suck it up, do the best work you can, and look for better jobs.

Occasionally, there are times when all writers knowingly write for less than they should. They do this for many reasons from economic necessity to hoping it paves the way to a bigger job.

If your spouse is out of work, and you’re scrambling to just create some income, then you may take any job that comes along. Why? Because your ability to earn bucks supercedes the value of your time.

You may write for low pay because the client promises you a brass ring if you do X number of jobs at a low rate. Of course, we all know from experience that sometimes the client makes good on his promise, but sometimes he doesn’t. It’s a crap shoot. I know a lot of writers who have been disappointed with this scenario.

9. Don’t take it personally.

Life is too short to get bent out of shape over what other people say. Sticks and stones. When you read something that questions the integrity of a website or client for whom you’re writing, don’t take it as a personal insult to you and your decision to write for them. Again, your decisions are your own. The writing business is hard and competitive, and it can grind your soul to dust if you let it. Don’t let it.

10. Do learn how to write excellently.

On the Internet, writers in North America compete with writers from India and the Philippines where a buck an article for 100 articles is considered good pay. That writing though is sometimes not very good because idiomatic English is a skill not usually possessed by those who learn English as a second language.

For us in the U. S., compensation like that is not something we can live on, and I don’t truly believe anyone can turn out 100 well-written, researched articles in a week or less. You have to know from the get-go that you’re going to lose a lot of jobs to writers whose first language is not English because they’ll work for pennies an hour. The answer is not for you to attempt to do the same, but for you to polish your skills and become a consummate professional. You’ll get the higher paying jobs from clients who want excellent writing and who will respect your ability.

Takeaway Truth

If you want to call yourself a professional writer, use every writing job as a stepping stone to something better. To do this, you must be able to claim your writing. That means you need a byline on everything you write that’s published. In print writing, samples of work are “clips.” Use your clips or published work to create a portfolio of work to show prospective clients to get better jobs. You deserve adequate compensation.

The Literary Machine is for any writer who must think critically and creatively and who composes and produces documents as well as anyone who sorts and analyzes information. Of course, this means just about anyone from researchers to novelists to teachers, scientists, lawyers, and more.

This software uses a textual concept-mapping matrix. You can use it to brainstorm story and create characterization and more. It’s supposed to work the way your brain works. There’s a learning curve so be prepared to learn it before you use it.

Takeaway Truth

Freeware is free to download. If you like it, make a donation to the development team.

Barnes and Noble

1. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Hardcover)

2. Twilight Saga Collection by Stephenie Meyer (Hardcover)

3. Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin (Hardcover)

4. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Hardcover)

5. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (Hardcover)

6. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey (Hardcover)

7. Cook Yourself Thin: The Delicious Way to Drop a Dress Size by Lifetime Television (Paperback)

8. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (Hardcover)

9. Finger Lickin’ Fifteen (Stephanie Plum Series #15) by Janet Evanovich (Hardcover)

10. The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity by William P. Young (Paperback)

Amazon’s Top 10

1. Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies by Michelle Malkin

2. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

3. Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine by Glenn Beck

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

5. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

6. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

7. The Shack by William P. Young

8. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader’s Circle) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) by Stieg Larsson

10. South of Broad by Pat Conroy

Have you read these? If so, what do you think about them, their premise, the author’s execution? What about them makes them so popular with readers? How does your work stack up in comparison?

Takeaway Truth

Analyze and read successful books. They’ll define market trends and show you what customers are buying.

Internet’s Identity

The Internet was created as a free resource for all. Long time users still expect this, but the younger generations, not so much. Even Net Vets have come to accept, albeit grudgingly, that websites sell: subscriptions, products, resource material, and information.

Content

You don’t want your website to be about nothing but selling. You must give in equal measure, and what you give is content that is of value to the visitor. Always think about how you can help those who visit your site. If you’re a writer, then you want to give content that helps other writers as well as readers. Let your content address the needs of your visitors.

Maybe you maintain articles on the craft of writing for aspiring writers, or links to promotion writers that might help published writers publicize their books. For readers, perhaps you have discussion questions listed for your most popular title or maybe links to book discussion groups.

Business people, other than writers, should also offer content of value to their visitors along with the chance to buy a product. For instance, if you’re selling water filters, maybe you should have articles about contaminants found in tap water to explain why purified water is healthier. Or articles explaining why water is the better choice over soda or even juice. This content is information the visitor needs, and it supports the value of the product you sell.

Communications

Give your visitors a way to interact with you. Enable comments and reply promptly to them. If you have a huge volume of traffic, maybe add a bulletin board to your website. If you don’t want to manage a bulletin board or pay someone else to do it, then make use of any of the popular social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Blogged, or any of the others. and Maintain a daily presence if possible.

Always maintain a special email address, not the personal one you use for friends and family, so your website visitors can contact you privately. Screen it carefully, of course. Respond to anyone, legitimate, who takes the time to contact you through any of these ways.

Commerce

The last element is one you may think applies only to business retailers on the internet. Businesses pay a lot of attention to successfully converting visitors into buyers. They offer discounts, bonuses, reward points, and special offers to entice a visitor to buy and to return at a future date to buy again.

Listen Up, Writers

Commerce isn’t just for retailers. It’s an element to which writers should pay attention also. You’re probably thinking you agree if I’m talking about freelance writers who self-publish materials like reports, how to books, etc. to sell on their websites, but that published authors with books out in the stores don’t have to worry about that. Wrong!

Install Those Links

Published authors should always have links on their websites that visitors can click to buy their books. Put a link to your publisher, links to your favorite online booksellers, and especially a link to your favorite local indie bookseller or their location and phone if they don’t mail order. That’s the way you use Commerce.

Takeaway Truth

Work on using the 3 C’s, and you’ll make your website more desirable and magnetic or sticky. A sticky website will bring more visitors and keep them coming back for more, and that will promote you and your product whatever that may be.

Easier Than You Think

Achieving a website that’s desirable is probably easier than transforming oneself into a raving beauty when you weren’t born one. The desirability of a website, its stickiness to use a term coined by Thomas H. Davenport, Professor of Management Systems at Boston University, in an article he wrote for CIO Magazine, is “a measure of how much attention a website gets over time.”

Measurement Details

This “stickiness” is measured by either or both of these ways: how long a visitor stays on a website and/or how often that visitor returns to that site. The longer a visitor stays, the stickier the website is considered. The more often the visitor returns to that site, the stickier the website.

Why Bother?

I’ll answer this from two viewpoints.

If you’re a writer, you want to entice people to your website in order to promote yourself and your writing. You want them to stay on your site because you want them to get to know you, to like you, and to think maybe I’d enjoy reading what they write. Of course, you hope that they will buy your book or request it from the library (that results in one or more sales) and to tell others about your books or articles and website thus increasing the visitors to your website.

If you’re in business, it’s a no brainer why you want to make your site sticky. The more people who come to your site, the more the chances that they will buy something. The longer they stay on your site, again, the more the chances that they will buy. Sure, you want them to tell others about your site and products also.

So, whether you’re a writer or a business selling thingamajigs, you want your site to be sticky. Check back to learn the techniques you can use to make that happen.

Takeaway Truth

Website desirability or stickiness can be created using the right techniques.

Five Years Strong

Norman asked me to post a link on my websites to introduce others to Reader’s Circle. They were founded in 2004, and I’d discovered them around that time. I visited their website again and am impressed by how they’ve grown so I’m happy to tell readers and writers about them.

Meet Reader’s Circle

Reader’s Circle is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and they currently serve 85,000 inquiries for book clubs every year. If you’re an author with a book you want to get in front of readers, you can sign up, pay a small fee (that’s what keeps this organization going and growing and enables them to keep their site alive and live) and get listed to do a phone chat with readers.

The Way They Work

Norman told me the way the listings work. They put up new promotions Sunday nights, and reader groups respond to the listings directly if they find a book they’d like to read. Then book selections and phone chats are arranged independently.

Listings get placement on their homepage for one month and are then moved to the author database for a year. At the moment, they have 750+ groups who use the site to recruit members and arrange phone chats. On average, they get 41,000 page views per month. That’s darn good traffic if you’re an author looking at a way to connect with readers.

Arts Calendar

They also have an arts calendar where authors can post their entire book tour for free. If you want to get involved, they just need some basic information.

Details

The listing fee can be payed online through PayPal. Listings typically take two weeks to post. You receive an email to confirm as soon as listings are up. If you’d like to know more about this, email Norman: nhicks at readerscircle dot org.

Other Benefits

Authors, cruise their website, and you’ll be impressed by their commitment to promoting books. In a world where reading is declining, this organization is supporting and encouraging our favorite pastime. You can locate book clubs in your state with their handy locator page. Chances are there’s a group near you, and you’d probably enjoy making your presence known to them.

Takeaway Truth

The best kind of author promotion is the kind that connects authors with readers looking for good books.

Here are some interesting facts about population. You can think of these the next time you hear something about the census.

10 Fascinating Facts

1. In 5000 B.C., the world population was estimated at 5 million.

2. Today, the world population is approximately 6.76 billion.

3. The world’s population has been continuous growing since about 400AD.

4. In the 10th century AD not one city in Europe had more than 400,000 people.

4. Despite a long-term growth trend, there have been periods like the 14th century in Europe where there was probably more death than growth due to the Black Death, or Black Plague.

5. In 1610, the population in the American colonies was 350.

6. In 1790, only 5% of Americans lived in cities.

7. In London, the percentage of children who died before five years of age from 1730-1749 dropped from about 74%  to about 31% in 1810-1829.

8. The fastest growth rate periods: during the 1950s for a short period, 1960s and 1970s for a longer period.

9. Since births outnumber deaths, the world’s population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.

10. The National Population Council estimates that more than 74 billion people have been born and died in the last 500,000 years.

Takeaway Truth

Research not only gives you the facts you need to write accurately but also it gives you some good conversation fodder.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Susan Crealock. Susan requested permission to place a link on her blog  Online-Novels.blogspot.com to my romantic comedy published in 2008,  Moonlight On Snow.

Susan’s blog Online-Novels has more than 400 works of fiction listed with accompanying links. These works of fiction are all free online reads so I know you’ll want to bookmark the site. One thing I want to make clear is that these are NOT pirated novels. They are novels posted free online at various sites which Susan catalogs and lists the links for readers to find them.

Of course, I knew the amount of work that must go into a project like this. After my publisher and I gave permission to be linked, I asked Susan to visit with us here at Sling Words and tell us more about her ongoing project. Not only did she agree, she also sent a stunning photograph of the village where she and her husband live. Bettona in the Fog was taken a few days ago by Susan’s husband, Alejandro Toyofuku, Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.

On with the interview. Oh, if you want to make note of the URL, it’s: http://online-novels.blogspot.com. Be sure to get it right because there’s another similarly-named site that isn’t anything like Susan’s blog.

How did you get the idea of starting Online-Novels.Blogspot.com?

Most of the sites listing novels to read on the internet exist to promote books written by their webmasters, and Online Novels is no exception. Last April I uploaded a story I’d written onto a private blog as a sort of ultimate backup in case the house burned down or my computer died. Several months later, wondering if anyone would actually read it, I made the blog public and sat back waiting for readers. And waited. Naturally no one Googles the name of a book he’s never heard of, so my story was destined for oblivion without some kind of plan. A bit of research on the internet turned up a number of directories for online novels. I submitted mine to several of them, got accepted, and readers started trickling in. However grateful I was at being listed, I realized I was pretty much at the mercy of others. If they decided to remove my story or take down their site, I was back to square one. This gave me the idea of starting my own online novel website.

When did you “open for business?”

Online Novels went public at the end of August; I took it down for a few weeks in October, so it’s been up just under three months.

How many visitors does your site get?

Currently the blog receives about 4,600 hits a month. That’s small compared with the older, well-established online novel sites, but the total is growing. I spend three to four hours every day on maintenance – writing authors to solicit listings, answering email regarding the site, updating the database, checking for broken links, etc. – and the effort seems to be paying off.

What kind of book do you enjoy most?

Mostly I read books on history, political science and current affairs, not too many novels.

Who is your favorite author?

Tolstoy.

Is there anything special you’d like visitors to know about Online Novels?

Online Novels contains tracking code to show me where readers are coming from, what they’re looking for, where they go in the site and what books they click on. What never fails to astonish me is the global reach of the internet. As I write this paragraph, there are people from the United States, Australia, Pakistan, Germany, France and Romania reading my blog. Since August, the site has received hits from 95 countries! To further emphasize the international character, I’m based in Italy.

Please tell us something about yourself and how you plan to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s.

I retired at the end of 1999 after 30 years in data processing. In 2003, my husband and I came to Italy, initially to study Italian. After we found la dolce vita suited us, we decided to stay and bought a house in a small town in the region of Umbria, less than 100 miles north of Rome.

At Christmas, for the first time, our town is staging a presepe vivente, or living nativity scene. This is usually a recreation of the manger, featuring live people in the roles of Mary, Joseph and the magi, but ours will be a series of scenes – the shepherds in the hills (with live sheep, no less), the Annunciation, the manger, Herod’s palace and so on – accompanied by a narration of the nativity story.

The production calls for 125 costumes and the whole town will be turned into Bethlehem. Every able-bodied seamstress, including me, has been drafted into sewing the outfits. I finally convinced my husband, who is the event’s photographer, that walking around town in khaki pants and a down jacket will detract from the mood of the spectacle, so he has reluctantly agreed to dress as one of the three kings – but he balks at wearing a crown. After the final presentation, January 6, we plan to take a vacation in the U.S. to visit our children and grandchildren.

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo a tutti!

In return, I wish you and your husband a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year also.

Takeaway Truth

One of the best aspects of the Internet is that it brings together those with common interests.

The theme for December is Giving. The Written Wisdom quotations about Giving are from: Barbara Bush, Buddha, Lydia M. Child, Dale Evans, Audrey Hepburn, Francois de La Rochefoucauld, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In Reading, there’s a great interview with popular erotica author P. J. Mellor.

In Writing, there’s Sticky Is Good an article that will help writers with their web presence.

Wordplay, my website subscription newsletter, has a feature from me So This Is Christmas.

Work In Progress has 12 of 12, the latest in my updates and/or inspiration for me and you too maybe.

Previously Published has Think Outside the Box on finding markets for your previously published work.

Takeaway Truth

I try to offer new content that’s entertaining and educational on my website with each first of the month update.