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Here's what I love about writing ebooks: you write them once, and they keep on selling forever.
I know several writers who've taken to the Kindle platform like the proverbial ducks to water. One writer friend turns out a new Kindle ebook every month, like clockwork. The last time we spoke, she had 11 ebooks selling -- and her income is rising month by month.
Another writer friend mixes writing her own ebooks, with writing ebooks for others. Currently she's been commissioned to write a biography, and a family history, for the same client. She's finding it huge fun, and she's making more money than she's ever made.
The benefit of writing and selling ebooks is that once written, they can keep on selling forever. Would you trade eight hours for an income stream?
Whatever your current income from your writing, you can make more, much more. But first you need to know what's possible, and you need to be aware that the easy advertised writing "opportunities" are quicksand.
In my new Writing For The Web: Make Money Today program, I discuss what pays the most in Web writing, and what pays YOU the most. I explain why, if you're charging just $40 an hour, you're not making enough to survive.
Discover why writing for the Web is the best thing that's ever happened to me... and to you.
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“My approach is visual rather than storytelling—I am a documentary rather than a journalistic photographer,” he said. “I have always had a habit of seeing and looking.”
"Seeing and looking" is what writers do, too.
Look at the image at the above link.
What do you see? What do you feel?
Today, see, and really LOOK. What are you feeling?
Write.
The more you can feel, and convey that in your writing, the more powerful your writing will be. Art is emotion.
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If you're looking for writing gigs, you'll have seen that many businesses advertise for bloggers. Unfortunately, the businesses which advertise are all doing so because they're looking for cheap content.
You can do much better.
You can find clients who don't advertise, but who pay well for blogging. Did you know that experienced professional bloggers charge their clients a minimum of $1000 per month, per blog? Consider that if a blogger's working for 20 clients, that's $20,000 a month.
reader asked whether blogging is "dead."
Huh? Yeah, right... Not in my or your lifetime.
Before 2004, businesses had no idea what blogging was. Since then, blogging has become mainstream. Hundreds of thousands of bloggers make full-time incomes. Savvy businesses blog for one reason: it's ongoing advertising.
Every week or two someone announces that blogging is dead. They just do it to get attention and stir up controversy. And there's nothing wrong with that.
You can make a very nice, full-time income from blogging for businesses. But you need to choose the right businesses to approach. Stay away from companies which advertise for bloggers. Get your own clients; the best gigs are never, ever advertised.
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I'm a real sucker for cowboy books. I'll read almost any book with horses in it. Consent to Love by Abby Wood ticked all the boxes: cowboy, check; horses, check; romance, check.
It was a great light read, but sadly, too short. I enjoyed the characters, and with a little development of the secondary characters, a longer book would have held my attention for sure.
Ana Reynold is a 24-year-old part-time barmaid and cleaner in a tiny town, population: 348. Ana wears second-hand clothes and yearns for something better. Her dream is to be a cook. In her spare time, she paints and draws. There's a hint of mysticism: she sketched the Native American hero, Kane, months before she meets him.
Ana and Kane meet when the community builds a new barn; her junker car won't start, and she spends some time with him. There's an instant attraction; Ana can't believe it's real.
Kane raises and trains horses. In winter, he makes saddles. When Ana visits him on the reservation, he's worried. He had a bad experience with another woman, but Ana assures him that she doesn't want a longterm relationship, she's happy with what they have in the moment.
After Kane and Ana spend a weekend together, she realizes she wants more, and feels used. She decides to do her best to forget Kane, but of course she can't.
Both Kane and Ana change and grow throughout the book. Kane gives Ana confidence in her painting. He gives a painting she was about to throw away to a dealer, who sells it for a lot of money, and asks for more. Ana gives Kane peace, and a better understanding of himself.
The book was a page-turner; I read it in one sitting. As I've said, it was too short. There's another in the series, and I'm looking forward to reading that.
In short, what I liked about the book: engrossing, great sense of place, with characters I liked, because both have goals.
What I didn't like: it was too short.
Disclosure: I received a copy for review.
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Five Ways to Increase Your Reading Speed
1. Make Fewer Eye Stops
Minimize the number of stops your eyes make as you read a line of print, and the amount of time you spend during each stop. A stop takes a fraction of a second, but when you stop several times per line, the lost time becomes quite significant in slowing your reading speed.
Over the years, I've trained myself to be a fast reader. I did a couple of speed-reading courses in the 1980s, and they helped.
Nowadays, when I'm reading for entertainment, I can read an average-length novel (90,00 words) in a couple of hours, completely without strain. I'm not trying to read fast, I just do.
Before the Kindle, this was annoying... I was always running out of books to read. :-)
Training yourself to read faster isn't easy. Indeed, when I did the speed reading courses, I thought I was a failure at them. However, the strategies -- trying to take in and comprehend more of the page at a glance, and completely eliminating subvocalization, stayed with me. All these years later, this is just the way I read.
So, if you try to learn to speed read, and it seems as if you'll never be able to do it, relax. The techniques become completely automatic over time.
Reading quickly helps your writing, too.
Not only can you get up to speed in a topic because you read research material more quickly, you'll find you retain more of what you read. And of course, when you're reading your own writing, you can get through drafts very quickly, which speeds up the writing process.
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Would you be surprised if I told you that every negative review I’ve responded to that resulted in a dialogue with the reader ended with them 1) deleting their review altogether; 2) amending their review with more favorable language; 3) Increasing their rating at least one “star,” but more typically by two, three, or even four?
Read the above post; it's fascinating.
If you're open to the concept, your idea of what to do about bad reviews just might change.
I used to give blanket advice: "if you can't handle bad reviews, don't read any reviews."
In the days of newspaper reviews, that made perfect sense.
These days however, considering Amazon, if you think about negative reviews as being customer service complaints, that changes everything.
How could you NOT respond? You can respond quickly to any negative reviews, and with any luck, mitigate the damage.
So of course you need to respond, but you also need to keep your head, and you need to understand where a customer's coming from.
Be kind, and be professional. Walk away from the computer until you can respond without being defensive or snarky.
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If you’re constantly hunting for writing jobs, I know you’re missing out, because as I’ve said many times, the best writing jobs are never advertised. Indeed, the best writing jobs are offered to you by clients you’ve approached, or when your name is passed on by someone else.
via www.fabfreelancewriting.com
I've had several questions about writing jobs this week.
Important tip: the best writing jobs are never advertised. Seriously. Over the past 30 years, I never went looking for the best gigs I ever got. They came to me, always when someone passed my name on to someone else.
So how do you get these unadvertised jobs?
You communicate. You introduce yourself. You follow up with past clients. You become interested in the world around you. You write stuff, even if you're not sure when and how you'll sell it.
And...
You pay attention to dumb and boring stuff, like updating your blog and website. Become visible. They can't hire you if they don't know you exist.
Most importantly...
You do kind things for others with no ulterior motive. My "best" jobs arrived when I least expected it, from totally unexpected areas. Karma? Maybe. :-)
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I’m writing a series of romances, and I’ll be publishing the first in the series via KDP towards the end of the year. (Unless I chicken out and decide to go with a publisher. :-))
Here’s what I’m doing: I’m focusing on writing reviews of other authors’ ebooks, for now. By the time I release the first book in my series, I want to build up a solid bank of goodwill.
via angelabooth.com
This works on the "do unto others" principle... I'd only suggest it if you love reading, and read anyway in the genre in which you're writing.
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“Australia is a particularly ripe area for the e-book market to develop,” said Jo Henry, director of Bowker Market Research. “There’s a long tradition of early adoption of technology and a wired population, with few barriers to downloading digital material.”
There's a reason we love ebooks: no waiting, and no high postage costs. Postage can double the price of a book. Not to mention that Australia has weird book pricing, which can triple the cost of books you buy in the bookstore.
So ebooks. What's not to like? See it, get it, read it... :-)
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Thinking like a kid helped introverts the most, because they're typically more inhibited.
Zabelina advocates applying a childlike mind-set to our daily lives. "It's about giving yourself permission to explore and free time to play. It would not just increase your creativity—it would also motivate you to create."
Want to be more creative and motivated?
Turn your work into play.
List five ways in which you could develop a playful mindset for your writing chores. (Tip: stop thinking of them as "chores.")
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In a list of supplies that every serious pencil sharpener should have in his “toolkit,” he includes tweezers for collecting shavings. “It’s not hard,” he remarks, “to come by a good pair of tweezers; I use the ones my wife left behind when she moved out.”
“How to Sharpen Pencils” sounds like a wonderful book, judging by the above quote. It's going on my reading list... :-)
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“Believe in your idea, trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to fail. It took me two years from the time I had the idea for Spanx until the time I had a product in hand ready to sell into stores. I must have heard the word “no” a thousand times. If you believe in your idea 100%, don’t let anyone stop you! Not being afraid to fail is a key part of the success of Spanx.”
via www.forbes.com
The above quote is from Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx.
I'd love to have it engraved on a card to give to all writers.
You don't need to have a big belief; it can be just an inkling. It's enough. It will help you to be creative, and prolific.
And if you're not bothered by failure -- if you welcome it -- your writing's success is inevitable.
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Writing things down literally puts them in black and white. We can clearly see everything we are dealing with rather than trying to keep certain things in memory while using other aspects of our mind to work things out.
I'm big on using paper journals and notebooks. For a while, I tried the "paperless" office thing, but for me, it just doesn't work.
Nowadays I understand that I just think better with a pen in my hand; I get more written, and I'm less stressed.
Hilary Mantel, one of my favorite authors works this way too. She writes big, complex historical novels, and says: "I do extensive longhand preparation, which usually includes my notes on the facts behind each episode, my references and sources, and a few tentative drafts of each scene. Then I work from my files onto the screen."
What about you? Are you using paper and feeling mildly guilty about it?
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As part of Seth's publishing experiment, I began working with Derek Sivers to edit, publish, and market his book. Through this experience, I become intimately familiar with his "Hell Yeah" approach to decision making. It's stuck with me since and has proved to be a productive go-to framework for making things happen.
How good are you at making decisions?
I have to admit, I dither at times.
Love the #1 -- it really cuts through the mental fog.
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Before you rush away and write your first blog post, think about your goals. You can have as many goals as you like, but focus on one clear goal for your blog and create a plan to achieve that goal.
If your goal is to turn your blog into a home business, do a little research online and see how others are doing it. There’s lots of advice online, from people who’ve been doing what you want to do — learn from their experience.
via www.fabfreelancewriting.com
Blogging's easy and fun. Hundreds of thousands of people are making great money blogging. Your blog can become a real home business.
I have many blogs, so I'm constantly asked how to write blogs for money. I wrote the above post a couple of years ago, and it sums up what you need to know.
Pay attention to #4. Decorating your blog may be fun, but when you're just starting out, it's like hanging wallpaper in your house before the house has a roof. Or plumbing, or... I've stretched this analogy as far as it will go. You get the idea.
Start your blog. Your life will change in three months.
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Make a list of everything that needs to be done and then mark what someone other than yourself can do. This usually means any type of task that you can explain quickly or describe once and someone can repeat many times. Then you can hire someone on a project basis, such as a virtual assistant, by getting a referral or searching online channels like odesk.com, elance.com, and craigslist.org. Or you can bring on an intern who can get class credit for the experience.
via the99percent.com
Are you making money from your writing? If you are, here's a secret: you can't do it all yourself -- only do what only you can do.
Writing is hard work. After four hours of writing, I'm wrung out. My brain is tired. I'm sure that you feel the same way, but...
That's too bad, because if writing is your business, there are many things you need to do beyond writing, although your writing comes first.
As soon as possible, get help. Build a team. Some members of your team may be paid. Others help you because you help them.
Read the above article, and stop thinking that you can do it all yourself. You can't. It's foolish to try.
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Writing jobs are everywhere. If you want to make $5 for writing 500 words, you can get these jobs all day long. No searching necessary. These gigs are plentiful because the Web's built on words. If you can string a few words together, you can make money.
I've got nothing against these jobs. Sadly however, there are two major challenges with these kinds of gigs: you'll burn out, and they're a dead end...
You can write less than you're writing now, and get paid much more. Get the dream writing jobs you want, at top rates.
Want to sell your writing services? Here's how. Everything you need to know to get started today.
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