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If you were unable to attend the first Publishing Coach Weekly call, the replay is posted here.

Questions answered on this call:

• “What is the first step in writing a book?”
• “What are some good strategies for determining market interest as well as gaps in the existing book market?”
• “When you’re building a platform, how do you step it up and get noticed by a publisher? An acquisitions editor said earlier this year
  I don’t have a big enough platform. When can you go back and say look at what I am working on? What kind of information do they want?”

The Tip of the Call built on the answers to those three questions, and talked about how to survey to find out what your market wants.

There are also some great resources thatcome with this call, including a free Special Report that is a case study about “Surveying for a Winning Title.”

These calls are your opportunity to get in on some no-cost coaching, so please ask your question and listen to the calls! You can ask a question any time at www.askyourbookpublishingcoach.com.

Just a quick reminder that today is the first Publishing Coach Weekly class! I hope you can join me as I talk about how to connect
with your market to find out what THEY want to know from you.

Plus I’ll answer questions. We have some great ones!

To ask a question now, go to www.askyourbookpublishingcoach.com. (This will be the Ask page you can always go to for Publishing Coach Weekly teleseminars.)

For the teleseminar, you will have your choice of listening on the phone, or via the Web. You may also ask more questions right online, during the
call, via a form you fill out. (Cool, huh?)

Here’s the call-in information:

DATE: Thursday, August 28, 2008
TIME: 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern
CALL-IN NUMBER: 218-486-3696
Use Conference ID: 821610#

To attend on the Web, get your Action Guide, ask your question during the call (if there’s time), go here. Fro the replay afterward, go to www.publishingcoachweekly.com.

You are invited to the very first of many Publishing Coach Weekly teleseminars.

Each week I’ll cover a tip, questions submitted both live and prior to the call, and a resource … all designed to speed you on the path to becoming a successful author!

The teleseminar will be held on Thursdays at 10 a.m. Pacific, 12 noon Central, and 1 p.m. Eastern. They’ll only be 30-45 minutes long, so I’m hoping you can take a lunch or other break and join me.

But if not, you will be able to listen and even download the audio recording from my new site, http://www.publishingcoachweekly.com.

On that new site, you will get an article of the week, the teleseminar recording, and a recommended resource. I hope you will come back regularly!

For this week’s teleseminar, I have something very special planned.

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I have a follow-up to the (very popular) post on which is better, XSite Pro site or a WordPress blog ?

I have to say, for me (as a non-techie person who doesn’t WANT to mess around with figuring out how, for instance, to upgrade a blog)–hands down, it’s XSite Pro (version 2) .

As far as I can tell, XSP can do anything a WP blog can do with the WP plug-ins that are available. Yes, some of those plug-ins are very cool, as I learned from Cathy Perkins, the WordPress Wizard .

Last week, using the HeadSpace plug-in, I posted a blog and optimized it and in a few seconds, when I checked Google for the keywords “best self-publishing company,” my site came up #4 on page 1!

However, it didn’t stay there. I have no idea why. And, I had to add keywords in around 3 places to optimize the site.

But the clincher for me was what happened when

(more…)

I was talking to an acquisitions editor the other day.

“What do you look for most in a publishable author?” I asked.

“Platform,” was his quick answer. “It’s all about platform.”

Platform is industry speak for an audience. People who are already in your “tribe.” People who are already following you.

That’s what publishers look for, first and foremost.

“Do you look for authors who have self-published and are already successful?” I asked.

“Usually those authors don’t need us,” he answered. “But if they are successful and they want us to publish them, we’d certainly consider it.”

So there you go. If you’re an aspiring author seeking a publisher, (more…)

Best-selling author Robert Allen is writing a new book. And he has a way of not only getting his audience notified, but also involved in the actual writing of the book.

For years, Bob has been doing mentoring calls every Wednesday morning called “Breakfast with Bob.” During these calls, he focuses on “inner wealth” issues. I appreciate his spiritual approach.

This summer, he has been letting his listeners in on how he’s developing the content for his new book, coauthored with Mark Victor Hansen. The working title is The Last-Minute Millionaire.

Bob has been sharing some of the exercises in the book, asking us to do them and give him feedback. On this past week’s call, he asked those of us who did the exercise from the week before to comment on what it was like for us. (It was excellent, by the way. Check out the 8/13/08 class.)

As he listened carefully, you could tell he was taking notes. In fact, he really liked something I said, and asked for my name, so maybe he’ll quote me! (That would be the 8/20/08 class. All classes are downloadable.)

It strikes me that this is a (more…)

Devon Plumberg just interviewed me for her Blog Talk Radio “Gutzy Gab” show.

We talked about …

• my writing and publishing journey.
• how I became an author.
• how I got into publishing (despite people telling me how difficult it is to land a job in publishing).
• how I found my “calling” as a publishing coach/consultant.
• how to deal with “doubt spasms” and keep others from killing your dream.
• how to find that unique constellation of experience, gifts, talents, and passions that add up to your unique destiny and contribution to the world.

I think you might find it inspiring. (It’s 30 minutes long.)

“Who do you generally consider the best self-publishing company across the board?”

“How do you find a publishing company you can trust?”

“How do I choose the right publishing company to professionally edit, print and market my novel? There are many scams out there and I don’t know who to choose. Who is legit?”

These are a few of the questions submitted for the recent Virtual Book Tour I did with Mark Levine on self-publishing and how to choose a good self-publishing company. (Ask your question or listen to the replay.)

Happily, I have an answer!

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The replay is ready from the Virtual Book Tour with Mark Levine.

We had a lot of great questions and Mark shared a lot of important information.

Here are just a few of the questions he answered:

• “What exactly do we mean by self-publishing and self-publishing companies?”
• “How is a self-publishing company such as you analyze in your book different from a ‘vanity publisher’-or

(more…)

If you noticed this blog over the past few days, the header didn’t look right for a while.

That’s because my site was hacked again, and I had to have that fixed and then upgrade to the latest version of WordPress.

I don’t know what I would have done without Cathy Perkins, “the WordPress Wizard,” to help me. One of her weekly teleseminars gave us a “preflight checklist” to go through before upgrading. I followed that, but neglected one significant kind of backup and my header got messed up. Cathy helped me get it back, as you can see.

Cathy does blog audits to show you how to optimize your blog, weekly free teleseminars that are extremely useful (two of my friends thanked me profusely for telling them about this resource), and she’s about to start a new course on “Blogging with WordPress in a Web 2.0 World.”

If you want to get the most out of your blog, I highly recommend you take this course. I’m going to–can’t wait!

Check it out now, because the first 24 people get $100 off, and I just heard, it’s filling up.