Archive for August, 2007

If You Want to Write for Major Magazines …

Friday, August 31st, 2007

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If you’d like to write for major magazines, but you haven’t got a clue as to how to do it, join us for Writers on Call in September.

Writers on Call is a weekly teleclass for freelance writers. Every Thursday night we meet, via conference call, to discuss some aspect of freelance writing.

During the month of September, the topic for each Thursday night class will be “Learning Tips and Tricks to Break into the Magazine Markets.”

You’ll also learn how to develop good working relationships with editors, so they will call on you time and time again when they need a writer for a particular article. (more…)

Choosing a Best-Selling Title: Replay and Special Offer

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

I don’t know if you were on the call last night, but I answered LOTS of questions. You can now listen to the replay.

Even though I answered many questions on the call, I realized I could not do the topic justice in one teleseminar. The topic is too important, and too few people know how to come up with a winning title. (This includes publishers. I know–I have participated in many titling meetings as an editor.)

If you’re going to go through all the effort of writing a book, don’t you want to be confident that your title will sell it and not be a deterrent to sales? That would be like wrapping a Rolex watch in cheap newspaper.

To help you choose the best title you possibly can, I will be teaching a 5-module TeleCourse on “Choosing Your Best-Selling Title,” starting the first week of October.

There is an early-bird special that will save you lots of money, PLUS if you’re one of the first 7 people to sign up (and that number is going down rapidly), you will ALSO get my “Jump Start Your Book Tool Kit“–manual,workbook, plus two audios (one on “How to Write Irresistible Queries and Book Proposals,” one on “How to Start an Information from Scratch”). As part of the Tool Kit, you also receive 20 minutes of coaching from me in which we determine your best publishing path, based on your answers to the 12 questions in the Jump Start Your Book Manual. (more…)

Join my teleseminar tonight on “Choosing a Great Title”?

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

I hope you will join me on my teleseminar tonight as I answer questions submitted, both before and during the call (as there’s time) about how to choose a best-selling title.

If you want to ask a question ahead of time, you can still do so. Asking now gives you more of a chance I’ll answer it tonight, since I do like to prepare good answers ahead of time.

You may also ask a question during the teleseminar if you are near a computer and can listen to the webcast. (more…)

“Short title or long title–which is better?”

Monday, August 27th, 2007

This is only one of the questions I’ll be answering on the teleseminar, which takes place TOMORROW, Tuesday, August 28, 2007.

If you haven’t yet asked your question about how to choose your best-selling title and subtitle, please do so now.

When you ask your question, you’ll get all the call-in details. You’ll be able to listen over the phone or online, so if long-distance charges
are a problem, you can listen to the webcast at no charge.

When you sign up, you’ll also receive a special surprise bonus–a resource that you will turn to again and again, not only to create compelling
book titles and subtitles, but gripping sales copy as well.

Please sign up even if you can’t make the call–there will be a replay available.

Hope to “meet” you on the call. Call in a few minutes early to introduce yourself!

More on Finding Your Best-Selling Title

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

I just got back from vacation, and a fun one it was, too! I hope you had some time to relax and “refill the well” this summer. Hard to believe it’s winding down already!

I wanted to remind you about the upcoming teleseminar this Tuesday on “How to Choose Your Best-Selling Title.” Please ask your question and sign up. (Even if you can’t think of a question, please put in something so you can get the call-in details.)

In preparation for the call, I encourage you to read
the following two articles: How to Choose Your Best-Selling Title and 7 Ways to Find Your Best-Selling Title.

As “your book publishing coach,” my goal is for you to take action on the information I give you. So I have prepared an Action Tips Special Report that goes with the second article. It’s called “7 Action Steps for Choosing Your Best-Selling Title.”

When you read the article, “7 Ways to Find Your Best-Selling Title,” you’ll also see the details of what’s in this Special Report.

I hope you will read these two brief but meaty articles and ask me your question, then join me on the teleseminar on Tuesday.

I also urge you to get the Special Report. This will give you a head start on choosing your winning title. Also, when you read it and begin to implement the suggestions, it may spark a question I can answer on the call, or the blog. It’s an excellent way for you to get my targeted coaching at no cost.

How to Create a Web Site Quickly and Inexpensively

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

I don’t know about you, but I confess I’m rather lazy at heart.

That is, I like to find the quickest, least expensive option for most of what I do.

Because of this penchant, when I wanted to set up my web site, I wanted something that would be quick and easy–not requiring me to learn or know a lot of technical stuff.

I also didn’t want to be beholden to a “web master” who might take weeks to get to a task that I needed done, as many of my friends complained about. I wanted to be able to take care of most tasks myself.

This week’s recommended resources focus on what I found to help me with these goals. You will learn the resources I used to set up and maintain both a “regular” web site and two blog sites quickly, easily, and very inexpensively.

Read it only if you don’t like to a lot of unnecessary work, and/or you like to save some money!

How to Find YOUR Best-selling Title …

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

This month we’re focusing on something very foundational to the success of your book or information product: the title.

Last week’s article was about the 5 characteristics of a great title.

This week’s article focuses on how to come up with your irresistible title.

I give you 7 places to go to stimulate ideas.

Read all about it.

This article should stimulate some questions for you. If so, you can ask me, and I will answer on an upcoming teleseminar, plus on my blog. Get all the details when you read the article.

Please don’t miss this month’s articles. An irresistible title is so crucial for your book’s success.

More than anything, “your book publishing coach” (that’s me, of course) wants you to succeed as an author! That is my number one purpose in everything I teach you.

Go find that title! (Or let it find you….)

“What is the fastest, easiest way to repurpose content?”

Friday, August 10th, 2007

As you know, you can ask me your questions about writing, publishing, and/or marketing your book at any time. I answered a lot of questions during the teleseminar a few weeks ago, but could not cover them all, so I promised to answer some on my blog.

Here’s a very good question from Leslie:

“What is the fastest, easiest way to repurpose content?”

I believe the fastest, easiest way to repurpose content is to start with what you have, and then either chop or build.

If you already have a book, you have tons of content. In this case, you chop.

When you chop, you need to think of two things: the content, and the vehicle. Start with the vehicle.

For instance, from a book you can chop content into the following vehicles:

  • articles (post them in ezine directories to build traffic to your site)
  • email messages to your list (delivered automatically via autoresponders)
  • mini-course (again, delivered electronically via email) Note: you can get a free Special Report on how to create a mini-course in 1 day, here.
  • ebook (if you publisher allows it. If you own rights, you’re in the clear.)
  • blog posts
  • teleseminars (You can offer them for free, to build your list and platform, or repurpose into a teleclass for which you charge. Then you can further repurpose the audio into something you can sell, alone or as part of a larger home study course, or use as a bonus with your other products.)
  • podcasts

For each of these vehicles, you can fit some of the content from your book.

If you don’t yet have a book, your job is to build.

Start with an article, preferably one offering 7 tips. This is your “flagship” article–the one that gets at the heart of your topic. (It’s good if you have done some market research to test the interest in this topic. You can search keywords in article directories to see how popular the subject is, and search engines and search engine tools.)

Once you have that article, you can write 7 more by focusing on each tip of your original article, and expanding the content.

From that, you can build your topic into some of the vehicles mentioned above.

If you’d like further help on building your article into other products, you might be interested in the special Jeff Herring offered on a recent teleseminar. Jeff built his whole business from articles, and is a master at the “building” kind of repurposing.

I hope this helps, Leslie!

(Here’s a little side note: From this one blog post, I can create an autoresponder email message to my list, and two articles–one just like this, and one on using article directories and search engine tools to test your market interest. In fact, I could probably write yet another two articles–one going in-depth about article directories, one about search engine tools. And what about a teleseminar or two? Four articles and more from one blog post! See how it works?)

(Side note #2: All these ideas came from ONE question from my Ask campaign! Can you see how powerful such a campaign can be? Contact Diane–diane at words to profit dot com–to talk about setting up an Ask campaign for yourself.)

New Article on How to Choose a Best-Selling Title

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

This week’s article focuses on something very foundational to the success of your book or information product: the title.

Great titles sell books.

Back in the beginning of the 20th century, Emmanuel Halderman-Julius sold more than 100 million “little blue books”-and he advertised by
title alone, no sales copy.

What if your title were so dynamic that just mentioning the title sold the book?

This week’s article looks at the 5 characteristics of best-selling titles. Read it, or at least download it, now, okay?

I hope it will stimulate questions for you. If so, you can ask me, and I will answer on an upcoming teleseminar, plus on my blog. Get all the details when you read the article.

Please don’t miss this one. I am putting much research into these articles, and this is a crucial topic. I KNOW my own books would have
sold much better had I had better titles. (Wait until you read about one title my publisher was going to use. I shudder still!)

Picking a Best-Selling Title–A Scientific Tool?

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

I’m writing an article (will actually end up as an ebook, I think) on how to title a book so it’s a best-seller.

Came across this tool: the Lulu Titlescorer.

It’s supposed to tell you what chance your book title has of becoming a best seller.

Note: This is supposed to be for novels, so keep that in mind as you read on.

Of course, I put the two titles of two of my books in: Abundant Gifts, and MotherStyles.

Got a score of 10.2 percent for each. :-(

However, then I put in “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

Guess what? That too got a score of 10.2%! Phew!

Now you couldn’t stop me.

“Think and Grow Rich” — 20.1%!

Okay, so let’s go to fiction, just to be fair.

“Left Behind,” one of the best-selling fiction series in the world (before Harry Potter)–20.2%.

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” … drumroll, please … 14.6 percent! (ALL the Harry Potter books got this score, by the way.)

“The First Hundred Million” was a book that sold 100 million copies at the beginning of the 20th century. The author advertised it by title alone.

Its Lulu score? Let’s just say there’s hope for my books after all!