Seventeen-year-old Katherine asks, “Exactly what does it take to get published?”

First-time author Kevin sends me his manuscript and wants me to edit it so it can be publishable.

My response to all three people is, “The best thing to do right now is to create a blog and see if anyone is interested in what you have to say and the way you say it.”

Listen carefully, please: Being an author is not what it used to be!

It doesn’t have to necessarily mean having a print book. Not anymore.

Now it means establishing your authority in a credible way and gathering a following.

You can best do that, these days, by having a blog. One that you write regularly for. One that you drive eyeballs to through other means, such as Twitter, Facebook, articles, teleseminars, the media, and a myriad of other kinds of online and offline connections.

With a blog, you can publish for free.  Sorry, Kelsey, there is no such thing as publishing a book for free. Even if you get a publisher to pay you to publish, as in traditional publishing where they pay the publishing costs and give you an advance against royalties, you will have to invest something sometime in marketing and promotion. And it’s extremely difficult for first-time authors to get published in this way–unless they have a platform, that is, a following. So now we’re back to, How do you get a following? Answer: Create a very successful blog.

You can figure out how to create a decent blog by watching how others do it, and a couple I recommend are Jimmy D. Brown, Seth Godin, Michael Hyatt and Alex Mandossian.  If you have no idea how to start a good blog and want expert help, then I highly suggest you take the Wordpress Workshop with Cathy Perkins, The Wordpress Wizard. It starts TODAY, but sessions will be recorded. Cathy will actually give you a student blog to work on during the course, so by the time you’re done, you will have the kind of blog that will establish your credibility.

When you sign up for the workshop, you’ll get two great bonuses from me: the “How to Choose Your Bestselling Title” Special Report (to help you title your blog and book), and a free 30-minute consultation at the end of the course to make sure your blog is also the most effective it can be for an author. Details and signup here.

Blogging is free, it’s a way to test your market and establish your authority. As I said in previous blog posts, it may be THE current way to become an author.

So get a blog, and get published! (Just remember, “author” is no longer limited to “publishing a print book.”)

You also get to ask Cathy or me a question, before and during the teleseminar.

Just go here at noon Central (1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific)for details and to ask a question.

In addition to answering questions, Cathy will give you a taste of her upcoming Wordpress Workshop–which I highly recommend. I’ve taken Cathy’s other courses before, and she is always very thorough and clear.

If you want a sneak preview of the workshop, which is limited because of the personal attention you’ll get, go here.

I do hope you’ll join us! This is your chance to find out more about one of the pillars of being a successful author. Blogs are the main way the main way that authors and would-be authors can create a following.

In fact, someone wrote me just today about how she had been in contact with several agents about her book, and how nearly all of them emphasize how important it is that an author have a website for their book.

You know I tout two kinds of websites, and Wordpress blogs are one of them. It has one advantage over the other kind, and that’s that people can comment on your blog. There can be a dialogue, and that’s hugely important. With Wordpress, you can also have your Twitter tweets posted, and so much more.

Every author needs a blog! And the best kind of blog to have is a Wordpress blog.

Find out tomorrow why. Noon central, here. Ask your question right now, okay?

How?

By blogging.

Blogging is nearly as popular as having a phone–only you get to talk to and with a worldwide audience about anything you want!

Have you seen the movie Julie and Julia?

Julie–in real life–became a published author AND has this hit movie out about her BECAUSE she blogged about Julia Child and cultivated a huge, huge, HUGE following on her blog!

So what do you want to blog about!?

And if you don’t have your blog yet, you are in the right place at the right time, because my friend and award-winning colleague, Cathy Perkins, aka The WordPress Wizard, is about to launch her very personal, hands-on, interactive course — The Wordpress Workshop!

Find out what The WordPress WorkShop is all about on Thursday, January 14 at Noon Central, 1PM Eastern (the usual Publishing Coach Weekly teleseminar time) when I interview Cathy for you–about WordPress.

You’ll find out how you can use your WordPress site as your complete Website Platform–not just a place to blog.

In fact, you can use your WordPress site to develop your entire Content Management System–which Google adores for SEO– Search Engine
Optimization.

Oh–there’s so much I want to share with you! Because WordPress isn’t just a blog anymore!

That’s why I urge you to put this on your calendar now!

And I’ll be posting the dial-in details as we get closer to the call.

However, it can’t be just any blog.

Someone contacted me this past weekend about doing a Virtual Book Tour. His book is about to be published, he has a blog and is doing a lot of things right.

However, his blog is hosted on Wordpress.com, rather than his own site. I learned from my blogging coach, Cathy Perkins a.k.a. the Wordpress Wizard, exactly why you don’t want your blog hosted on that site or blogger.com or any site that isn’t your own.

Simply:

You don’t own the content, and you can’t sell anything.

Read the Terms of Use carefully, if you have your blog hosted on wordpress.com or blogger.com.

In some cases, you can’t sell anything. They retain the right to shut you down, without warning, if you sell anything on the site. (Now, it may take them a while to find out. But if/when they do, they can shut you down.)

Also, you don’t necessarily own the content on your blog when you let them host it. If you’re an author or aspiring author, your content is what you have to sell. You MUST own it.

Do you want to be shut down and lose all your content? It’s worth the $5-10 or so a month to get hosted, and the $10 or so per year to get your own domain name.

Solution: Get your own domain name, host it at a good hosting company, install a Wordpress blog (it only takes a couple of minutes if you host here). If you have a blog now, you can import it, and you’re all set.

Your content is too valuable not to own it and protect it. And, of course you want the freedom to sell whatever you want on your site. A blog can help you “be well heard and well paid for what you know and love to do”–but only if you do it right.

To learn how to not only “do it right” but also ENJOY it and not get bogged down with technical roadblocks, I suggest you check out the WordPress Workshop that is coming up next week. Cathy is my blogging coach and I recommend her to you, too. You want complete control over your blog and your content, and this course will give you everything you need to know to do that.

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.

Carol’s question:

“I understand the difference between a website and a blog. Is XSite Pro for a static website or can it be used as a blog? You said you use Word Press for your blog. If I purchase XSite Pro, can I use it as a blog to post and update frequently?”

My answer:

XSite Pro web design software is not something you can use with or as a blog. A blog is a completely different kind of software platform. XSite Pro creates stand-alone web sites that you can make as small or large as you like.

I have just been looking at XSP V2, and I like it better than a blog in many ways.

The features are very powerful and easy to use (great documentation, with screen captures to walk you through each segment). A lot of what XSP does, you can do with WP plug-ins, I think–if you know how to get them and use them. If you tend to be techy, you might prefer WP blogs. My techy friend likes finding all these cool plug-ins. Me–I prefer to click a few buttons and let the program do it for me.

(By the way, their support is great, too. Fast turnaround, and clear instructions. I tested this recently because I just got a new computer, and needed to know how to get my stuff from old computer to new and integrated with V2.)

The ability to easily update content is one of the main attractions of blogs, and that’s why search engines love blogs. However, if you have a “static” web site where you can easily update content, you have the same search engine advantage.

With XSite Pro web design software, it’s extremely easy to update content AND optimize it for search engines at the same time. It’s just like typing something in Word, and then you click the Publish button and it’s on your site. But better–you have complete control over the keywords and page descriptions. With WP (which I like and do use), I have to trust that the search engines are picking up on the right keywords. Or, I use a plug-in (I think it’s called Header2 and there’s also one called SEO pack), but I have to go back and put the keywords in. I posted on both my blog and site last night, and with XSP it was much faster and easier to do. I find that XSP saves a lot of time.

Also, there are ways to add content automatically to your site, through RSS feeds and other ways I’m just learning about, with XSP. You can do that same thing with WP, I understand–again, IF you know the plug-ins and where to go. With XSP, it’s all in one place, there’s a manual to consult, and once you learn it, you get it working on all your sites.

Another thing that I like better about XSP is the control you can have over each page of your site. For instance, if you have an opt-in or squeeze page, you can make one page be that. With a blog, you likely need a whole new url to point to that squeeze page. And it’s another site to maintain, rather than a page over which you have complete control in XSP.

WordPress is good, and I have several WP blogs myself (this is one of them!). It just requires more techy skill and it seems like there are always upgrades and things you have to know. I listen to Cathy Perkins’s Wizard Weekly teleseminars on WP, and don’t know where I’d be without her help. I just learned I have to do all these things to my blogs before I upgrade to the new version so the sites won’t “break.” Yikes! And of course, I should upgrade because otherwise, something terrible might happen (what, I’m not sure. Something about security). So–I like  much better for all these reasons.

If you’re not sure about whether XSitePro web design software is for you, why not attend one of the upcoming webinars? No cost, and you’ll get a feel for the features. You can sign up here. http://www.wordstoprofit.com/xspweb.html Dates are July 2,4, 8, so do it now if you’re interested.

I just upgraded to XSP V2 and so am just exploring the new features, but so far I’m liking what I see very much! I was just reading about adding a “site search” for visitors. Very cool. I have one on my blog, but my site actually has more content, and I want people to be able to search it.

(My full review of XSite Pro is here, if you care to learn more about my perspective, having used V1 for some 4 years now.)