Published on August 22, 2012
Writing about real estate opens many potential markets: big city, small city and suburban newspapers as well as consumer and trade magazines. Magazine markets may be local, regional or national in their coverage. Occasionally, a real estate subject such as the rise of World Trade Center 1 (the Freedom Tower), on Ground Zero of the World Trade Center, is national news, resulting in syndicated newspaper articles. Additional research can turn a subject that starts as a one-off local story, such as covering a local warehouse roof with solar panels to generate electricity, can also be written as a national trend story.
Published on August 22, 2012
We’ve all heard that old axiom before: the only way to write is to sit down at the computer and type away. Yet that discipline had me feeling all tapped out. Ideas no longer flowed from my brain, to my hands, to the paper. What little I did manage to write seemed dull and lifeless. No wonder. I was dull and lifeless. Clearly, it was time for me to get away from the computer.
Published on August 15, 2012
Frank’s friend, Caleb, who has been part of the family for years, is visiting for two weeks and we are having a blast!
Published on August 15, 2012
complaints, Complaints about specific publishers, lulu, pod complaints
We’ve previously covered the numerous complaints posted about Lulu.com to their own forums by their own authors. The complaints are about customer service, quality, costs, and much more, including the fact that it’s difficult for authors to get a response out of them.
But, savvy Lulu authors have figured out how to bypass regular email. They’re posting complaints directly to Lulu’s Twitter account. Here are a few snippets posted just in the past two weeks…
Published on August 15, 2012
In the July 25 edition of WritersWeekly, someone asked you how your covers could be so inexpensive and what he’d get for his money. My answer??? A GREAT cover. When I self-published the first edition of my book, I paid a “professional” cover designer $2000. I told her EXACTLY what I wanted in terms of fonts, images, etc., and trusted she would put it all together into something great. When she seemed to misunderstand, I actually found some photos and put together a “sample” in Photoshop. She absolutely refused to give me ANYTHING like what I wanted–finally coming up with a Picasso-esque mess that I would have been embarrassed to use. She claimed she had created a cover and, despite the fact that I couldn’t use it, she got paid in full.
My son took my “sample”–tweaked it in Illustrator–and that’s the cover I finally used on the book.
For the second edition, I went with BookLocker.com and Todd did my cover. I sent him the cover of the first edition and told him what I’d like (essentially, the same thing I told the original designer). He came up with exactly what I wanted on the first try! In about two days! We tweaked the colors a bit and he even found me a couple of images that I loved for next to nothing.
So, to the guy who asked the question…what you will get (from BookLocker) is an extremely professional and talented cover designer who should be making a LOT more…but I’m sure glad he works for BookLocker!
Thanks,
Judy Yero
Teaching in Mind: How Teacher Thinking Shapes Education
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
See examples of BookLocker’s cover HERE.
Click on each cover to see the entire cover (front, back and spine).
Todd’s covers are only $200 because we send him so much business. Of course, we pass that savings on to authors. 🙂
Published on August 15, 2012
“Can you tell me how much it costs to take out an ad at your site?” asked a publisher in Arizona back in April.
Unfortunately, like many bloggers who blog as a labor of love, I never gave serious consideration to earning pay for my say. Not until then.
Published on August 15, 2012
I recently collaborated with a much-published and widely read author to edit one of her pending publications. We discussed my literary life, too. She indicates I should get an agent to market my newest manuscript. What do you think?
Published on August 15, 2012
book marketing
We were planning a vacation to (and travel story on) Spain anyway. Adding a book event to the visit was a great way of mixing business with pleasure – and it proved to be an effective way to sell books and create some buzz with a new readership.
Published on August 8, 2012
It seems all we’ve done since we moved into our new (circa. 1969 – so it’s new to US) home in Florida is spend money on repairs. Now that the leaky part of the roof is fixed and the plumbing no longer backs up, we’re getting some work done on the outside…
Published on August 8, 2012
legal
Ug! It happened again! We were contacted last week by a woman claiming to be the daughter of one of our authors. After logging into his author account, she posted a note, saying he’d died last month and she wanted his future royalty checks mailed to her. I checked the author’s contract and – UH OH. In the beneficiary clause, the author had assigned his copyrights, control of his author account, and all future royalties to someone else (a female friend / associate), not to his daughter.
