Fiction Writing

Let's try to write it

Fiction Writing - Let's try to write it

London’s Best Speciality Publishing Houses

London has a wide range of world renowned publishing houses including some of the biggest brands known but it is also home to a range of historically important yet smaller, specialist publishing houses. As the capital of England you’d expect a wide range of publishing houses and book purchasing opportunities but it is astounding the range of specialist options available too which should not be forgotten about.

A little different to your regular London shopping guide below we’re taking a closer look at some of the specialist publishing houses in London and the products they create.

Roli Books

Founded in 1978 Roli Books specialises in Indian-themed books which allow a range of authors who wouldn’t otherwise be known in the UK to have a voice. It also allows for text books printed in colour to be available in India, providing new experiences and education to Indian children. As they have grown over the years, they’ve even opened a bookstore in New Delhi.

Hotshoe

Hotshoe is the UK’s leading contemporary photography magazine yet has also ventured into book publishing. It is now one of the most popular European photography magazines across all the genres.

Adlard Coles Nautical

This brand is Europe’s leading publisher of nautical themed books on—you guessed it—sailing, navigation and motor boating. They’re specialists in the field and are one of the few companies worldwide succeeding in this particular niche.

Elwin Street Productions

One of the smaller publishing houses in London they offer a range of practical yet lively non-fiction books. Their range includes books which are both useful in the real-world and enjoyable and could even be considered gift books.

N.G. Art Books

As the name suggests, this publishing house specialise in art books on different types of art including architecture, sculpture and painting. They also produce a range of children’s books.

Klett Languages London

With offices in other locations, too, Klett Languages are one of the leading European publishes of foreign language materials and offer a huge variety of course materials, dictionaries and self-study products that may be needed in the classroom.

Rough Guides

A world-renowned brand with more than 300 specialist travel guides on the market as well as maps and reference titles. The guides cover all subjects and are so well known in their genre that London is proud to have their publishing house in their midst. No traveller should leave home without them!

Kogan Page Ltd

Kogan Page specialise in academic books in business, finance, careers, training, logistics and management. They have over 130 titles in their collection covering a great range of topics.

There are hundreds of publishing houses and companies in London and these are just a small example of the many different companies available. The range of these businesses just further serves to show how diverse and interesting London is for visitors and residents alike, and how unique the niche publishing industry really is. During your stay no doubt you will pick up a magazine or book by one of these publishers.

Ursula Jones is a specialist writer on the topic of shopping in various cities throughout the world. Here she covered the niche of publishing in London, for more London shopping guides see http://www.shopikon.com/

Become a better reader, become a better writer.

become a better writer.If there’s one surefire way to become a better writer, it’s learning how to become a better reader. After all, reading the masters is as close to studying with them as you can get… And a love of reading is a prerequisite for writers. Here are some writing tips we can glean from closely reading Ernest Hemingway’s short stories and books.

In his novels, especially For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms and short stories, including “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” American writer Ernest Hemingway explored themes like restlessness, war, loss and death in an inimitable style. In the process, he became an enormous influence on modern literature. Writers of all genres and styles can learn a great deal from reading the works of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Hemingway is famous for his classic novels and his minimalist style of writing. Here are three tips we, as writers, can take away from Hemingway’s work.

1. Make every word count.

That doesn’t mean you have to write in the concise, clipped style of Hemingway. It does mean that every word needs to count, regardless of your writing style. The words that make up lush, poetic sentences are still required to do their jobs along the way, and having an elaborate style is no excuse for filler. As you revise your work, make your sentences as tight as you can – even if they do go on for half a page.

2. What you don’t say is at least as important as what you do say.

One of Hemingway’s most famous stories is “Hills Like White Elephants” in which a couple discusses an abortion without ever mentioning the word. It’s a masterpiece of subtlety and an excellent lesson in how to write about emotive experiences without succumbing to melodrama. Hemingway’s use of the objective point of view in which we as readers are never permitted inside the characters’ heads also provides an interesting lesson in how to use dialogue, imagery and the actions of the characters to convey plot and meaning. The story is a powerful illustration of the writing adage to show, don’t tell.

3. Draw on personal experience.

Hemingway had a fascinating life that included enlisting as an ambulance driver during World War I and a stint as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway’s life and travels included safaris to Africa and time spent among other writers and artists in Paris and provided the backdrop for many of his stories. It isn’t necessary, however, to live such a life in order to compellingly write what you know. Every life is rife with powerful experiences, strong emotions and compelling people and relationships, and you can draw on those experiences to add depth to your fiction.

Regardless of how helpful Hemingway is as a writing teacher, he’s still a controversial figure in writing circles. His writing style is sometimes parodied as stilted and flat, and some of his attitudes towards women (in his fiction) and extremely masculine pursuits like big game hunting have made him more than a few enemies. That said, his fiction has stood the test of time and critical scrutiny.

What authors have taught you how to be a better reader… and writer?

Bridget McNulty is a published author and the co-founder of Now Novel, an online novel-writing course (www.nownovel.com).

The Mechanics Of Selling Ebooks Online

One of the most profitable business models on the internet is writing and selling your own ebooks. As it costs nothing to actually send a copy of your ebook to your customers, every sale is almost 100% profit. The only deductions being the cost of your payment processor and/or digital download software.

It’s even possible to quickly and easily set up your own affiliate program so that other websites can recommend your ebooks and earn a commission for every sale that they generate. Equally, you get to benefit from additional sales yet only pay out a commission when a sale it made. In many ways it’s the perfect, risk-free business model.

However creating your ebook in the first place is the easy part. Indeed, many people find that the real difficulties come in trying to figure out how to actually sell your ebook.

After all, if you’re new to the process it’s easy to become lost when discussing payment processors, affiliate software and digital download software, not to mention trying to get all these systems working together successfully.

So let’s take a walk through the wonderful world of ebook selling and discuss the main parts of the puzzle that you’ll want to put in place in order to make your ebook a best-seller.

How To Accept Credit Cards

While many people recommend that you set up a merchant account in order to accept credit cards online in many ways this is a needlessly difficult and expensive way to accept online payments. Arguably the best solution is instead to use one of the many third party payment processors on the market.

Examples of these processors include Clickbank, Click2Sell and 2CheckOut are all possible solutions though be aware of my own horror story of using Paypal should you consider them as an option.

The reason why these third party processors are the best way to get set up online is because the application and set up procedure is both quick and simple. There are no arduous forms or drawn-out application processes. Many people find themselves able to accept credit cards within a matter of days of applying – and sometimes even sooner.

Depending on the provider that you select the absolute maximum set-up fee you should expect is around $50 and several providers actually offer free setup.

Furthermore, once you’ve gained your account then actually integrating it with your website is simplicity itself. Simply log into your payment processing account, provide some basic details about your ebook (price, title etc.) and you’ll be given a link for your order page.

Simply paste this into your website and when a visitor clicks the link they’ll arrive on your secure order page where they can enter their credit card details and, upon approval, gain instant access to your ebook.

How To Protect Your Download Pages

Some people are obsessed about protecting their ebook download pages while other people worry far less about it. The most basic solution is simply to create a download page with an address that is very difficult to guess and isn’t linked to from anywhere else.

When you set up your payment processing account you simply enter in the details of this page, and when your customers have completed their purchase they’ll be sent straight to this page to access their product.

While this method is free and simple, it doesn’t get around the fact that some customers of yours may choose to share this download page with their friends – potentially leading to fraudulent downloads.

While some very successful ebook sellers consider this a price of selling online and don’t worry too much about it, others opt to use digital download protection software to ensure that only paid customers can access your download page.

Examples of popular solutions include DLGuard and eJunkie and they operate on a simple concept; that when a customer pays for your ebook they are then sent to a dynamic webpage that only lasts for a short period of time. In this way, even if a link to your download page is shared, it’ll stop functioning either after a pre-defined period of time or after a specific number of downloads that you select.

This provides a far more secure download area for your products, but consider carefully the costs involved and whether you think these make business sense or instead whether you should go down the first route discussed.

How To Set Up An Affiliate Program

One final element that you may want to consider is setting up an affiliate program for your ebook so that other website owners can promote it for you. Despite the concept sounding complicated, as with so many other ecommerce services online there are simple solutions to your problems.

For example, of the payment processors mentioned earlier, both Clickbank and Click2Sell come complete with affiliate software built in. All you need to do is promote your affiliate program but you won’t need to buy any additional software or learn how to install it on your website.

Of course other solutions exist with JVZoo and Warrior Plus being popular options, especially for those who choose to accept payments via their Paypal account.

As you can see, while the initial prospects of selling ebooks online seems scary, once you know the services that you need you’ll find that the actual set-up process in order to be able to sell ebooks is actually very simple indeed.

These days, with my payment accounts and affiliate software set up, I can now set up an ordering system for a new ebook in less than an hour. All you need to do is spend a little time learning the ropes the very first time and thereafter you’ll find the whole process very simple indeed.

This is a guest post by Richard Adams who blogs about lifestyle design and creating online businesses here.

Web Content Writers Keep Things Fresh

Having a beautiful website isn’t enough to get noticed or draw in the virtual crowds. Everyone wants substance and beauty together. If you run a blog then the information you share there must be thoughtful, helpful or interesting and the blog must be appealing to view. If you have on online storefront then that too must interesting and informative, if you are just jamming product in people’s faces you aren’t going to sell much. A great way to get the substance you are looking for is by using web content writers. You might think to yourself – Hey, I can write whatever needs to be written and save myself a few dollars! But can you? Writing paragraph after paragraph on the same or similar topics can be daunting and difficult to keep fresh. Similarly, as a blogger, your point-of-view can become stagnant of you don’t mix it up every now and then.

Web content writers are skilled at creating blog entries about any topic imaginable from their own unique perspective. This can help infuse your blog with some fresh ideas and even help relieve the burden on you to produce daily posts or topics of conversation. Blogging requires a lot of dedication and hard work – it’s not surprising that bloggers get burnt-out or overwhelmed regularly.

Websites, depending on the type, can pose a unique writing challenge. Often they are a mixture of promotional and informative writing. Many times, the informative writing is easiest to produce because it is fact based but the promotional aspects of the website are largely based on opinion, reviews, hype or gimmicks. Promotional writing can be very arduous. It requires a lot of repetition of ideas and themes but you have to avoid consistently writing from the same angle or saying the same things in general. Simply copying, pasting and tweaking each piece slightly makes all your copy redundant and boring. This is where you may find web content writers to be the most helpful. As a business owner you are biased toward your product and are ingrained with the ideas and messages you think should be conveyed on your website. Without a doubt, certain facts about a product should be highlighted in your promotional copy but it can’t be just straight facts –that’s boring. Web content writers can provide you with the flair and interest you’ve been missing.

Writing for a virtual audience is unlike any other type of writing. Online viewers and shoppers are harsh and quite shrewd. They will not hesitate to leave your site if they don’t like it and they will not hesitate to write a bad review about it somewhere. The anonymity provided by the internet makes simple for consumers to say, behave and act as they wish they could in public. When you are hounded by a salesperson you smile and nod and “no thank you” before milling around and leaving without a single person – online, if you enter a site, don’t find it helpful or easy to use, people just leave. No pleasantries about it. Web content writers help to make your site inviting and useful while still promoting your business and discussing your products.

The information on your website or your blog needs to be freshened up quite regularly in order to keep your business current for search engines. Web content writers are an invaluable tool in this respect because as a business owner, who has time to be writing new content constantly for their website? It’s impractical to think you can do so. Websites are fluid, organic things that need to be tended to consistently – it’s not as easy as building it and walking away. At the same time, a tangible business needs just as much attention and maintenance, can you do both 100%?

Whatever your reasons for deciding to use web content writers on your website or your blog, you won’t be disappointed. Your online business will routinely be displaying new information, your customers will have something informative to read about your products or services and you’ll have the free time you need to grow your business. Web content writers are a sure-fire way to freshen up content, provide new prospective and liven up a topic that may have grown stale or zapped your creative energy. Remember, content writers are an asset, a versatile tool and they work for and with you to produce content that you can feel proud to display on your website.

This article was written by Theresa Rowley an editor of I’m Write, providing SEO copywriting and web content writing for SEO firms.

Freelance writing online – Getting Your First Published Clips

So, you’ve decided that writing is the career you’d like to pursue and you’ve got your office all set up with all the necessary writing tools and you’re ready to start applying for writing gigs. Wait – they all want writing clips! Now what? How do you show potential employers published clips when you don’t have any?

Blog!

One of the most obvious things you can do is start a blog and write about things you are passionate about and the things you would be interested in writing about for money. Keep in mind – a blog is not a diary (at least not in this case). It has focus and intent. It is clean and professional looking and shows viewers that you are able to portray a thought or an opinion or an experience or facts with your words.

There are an unlimited amount of topics that you can blog about. Do you like to teach people how to do things? Then you might want to consider writing a how-to blog with either a variety of explanatory articles in several fields or explanatory articles that are focused on one topic (example: how to cook Chinese food, how to make scrumptious desserts, how to cook without a recipe – could all be titles for a great cooking blog).

Treat your blog like you are already writing for pay and it will make a great place to send editors when they are interested in your work.

Article Directories

Article directories such as Ezine Articles, Bukisa, InfoBarrel and others give you exposure and give you the opportunity to earn some casual income at the same time. You can showcase your skills as a writer, make valuable networking relationships, and learn new interesting topics. You can also direct people back to other work you have on the Internet.

Write for Free

This is not something I would suggest on a regular basis but writing for free – for a reputable publisher – can be an excellent source of credits. Keep in mind that a non-reputable publisher may not hold very much weight and may hold very little value; however, if you can find a website that has a good reputation in its field that it allows contributions this can give you a more solid background as a writer.  Guest blogging is one of the instances when you can write for free and find value.  If you choose the blogs that you are going to guest post on carefully, you can get access to a targeted audience.

Get Published Online

In order to get paying jobs you’ll need to have some samples. Getting your name under some articles is critical to your start as a freelance writer so use one or more of these tools to forward your career.

Danielle McGaw is a freelance writer with 8 years of experience.  She recently released her ebook, Freelance Writing Tips for New Writers, so that other can learn from her experiences.

How to Be a Book Reviewer?

How to Be a Book Reviewer?

The better question is, “Why do you want to be a book reviewer?” You need a reason to be a book reviewer. Money isn’t a good reason either.

If you are at all like George Orwell, it might be better not to be a book reviewer:

“Do I seem to exaggerate? I ask any regular reviewer–anyone who reviews, say, a minimum of 100 books a year–whether he can deny in honesty that his habits and character are such as I have described. Every writer, in any case, is rather that kind of person, but the prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash–though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment–but constantly INVENTING reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever. The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time.”

There two main reasons people usually be book reviewers. Usually they are writers and want to improve their writing. Improving their writing is the main reasons they want to cut open and dissect someone else’s work. It allows them to do the same to their book and learn more about style, structure and plot than they could alone. The other reason people review is because they want to share. Sharing your knowledge of books can be fun and enjoyable. There are probably some other reasons to write book reviews, but they are less prevalent.

It is easy to be a book reviewer. You only need 3 things that are readily available to you. First is internet access. Second is a book. Third is a place to write. If you don’t have the first one you might think about moving cities or towns. If you don’t have a book, you are a sad individual…

Where can you write? Well that depends on your goals. Becoming a book reviewer for fun is good with blogger.com, wordpress.com, or even tumblr.com. They are easy to setup and fun. If you want to write for to improve your own writing you should create your own separate site on wordpress.org. It lets you control the property of the site and its content.  It does cost a bit of money though. Control is good since you can put your books on, create pages, and control your readers contact info better.  Think of an original name and maybe think of an original theme. Think of something you would want to share like: “Book Love.” Everyone likes books and love.

Now the three step system. Read, write, promote, rinse and repeat. Read a book. Choose a book you expect to like and write some notes along the way. Think about what was good and bad about it. Judge it based on some of your favourite books and if you would recommend it to a friend. Write the review on your blog site using some links to the author.  Next promote, promote, promote. Put it on twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Let the author know. Tell your friends in an email. Find other blogs who reviewed the same book and comment on their post. Find a book group discussion on Goodreads about the book and put your comments and a link to your blog. Tell your Mom, tell your Aunt, tell everyone. Then you need to rinse it all out and repeat the process again.

Good luck and I’m glad you want to be a book reviewer. It is a slow process to get popular, but bare with it.

Some Great Information on Self-Publishing

Recently, I have been following the Creative Penn by  Joanna Penn. Her blog continually gives really great ideas for everyone self-publishing while helping people experience the pain she went through to self-publish.

She gives great information on publishing, writing, marketing, and more. She updates her blog regularly as well.

One of my recent favorites was the 7 worst mistakes of indie authors 

I highly recommend checking it out.

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/

Know any other great sites? Let me know what I should check out.

Bookkus Publishing

Recently, a new type of publisher has opened its doors. I think all authors need to have a look at it. 

 

It incorporates traditional publishers marketing your books and the ability to use groups of people to choose your book. Instead of needing an agent, who then sends your book to a publisher, then the publisher trying to find your book buried beneath a pile of manuscripts this new company utilizes a community of people to review books and judge whether they are good or not.

Their slogan is ‘you choose the books, we publish them’. Bookkus also generates a full marketing package when they publish your book which takes the burden out of your hands as well.

http://www.bookkus.com/

 

I recommend that if you have a manuscript you want to submit, that you check them out and decide if it is for you.

How to choose keywords for your website?

How to choose keywords for your website?

Great question. Well why choose keywords at all? Won’t people find your site regardless? Maybe, but probably not. The web is huge and you want quality web traffic.  For example, my dad has a short story on his website about a cruise ship, and there is a picture of a cruise ship sinking. Most of his traffic comes to the website because of the cruise ship sinking picture and not the content we want of ‘great ebooks’ firefighter ebooks’ etc.

If you haven’t chosen about 10 keywords to focus on you really need to start. These keywords should be used about 1-3% of the time on your website. More than that Google doesn’t like, less than that they won’t be noticed. These should also be the ‘anchor text‘ of your links to your site.

Here are the linking website tips.

First, your website keywords should relate to your content. Focusing on the right keywords is very important.  So choose about 30 words you think relate to your content to use with the thought of narrowing it down to 10 phrases (not individual words). Or pay an SEO company to do keyword research for you. You can find this for $500 or less form reputable companies. More if you want a good company.

Second, research (if you didn’t pay someone). Make an account on Google Adwords and use their tools to find the best and least competitive keywords. Start putting these words into phrases. You don’t want to use individual words as they are highly competitive and you will probably lose.

Third, add these keywords to your site 1-3% of the time. Then make all incoming links use these keywords.

Use this html code: <a title=”best low price kindle books” href=”http://www.yatscoffbooks.com/” target=”_blank”>best low price kindle ebooks</a>

which looks like this: best low price kindle ebooks

This is a simple tip, and can be far more complicate. It definitely works on Goodreads, so use it.

 

 

Best way to link to your website

As an author you may not know the best way to link to your website. There are two main ways to link your website.

First is to insert the html  like this: http//www.yatscoffbooks.com. <– this sucks. When google searches through webpages it sees that your site is linked via http://www.yatscoffbooks.com.  So it relates this with peoples queries. So if people search ‘yatscoff books’ it will be great!! BUT no one searches that… So try number two.

Second is to insert this: <a title=”Great eBooks” href=”http://www.yatscoffbooks.com”> Great eBooks</a> Which looks like this when finished: Great eBooks. This means google will relate ‘great ebooks’ with your website instead of the name of your website.

First you should choose some keywords. These keywords are what you should use to relate to your website. For example: fiction ebooks, great ebooks, (genre) + ebook, (Genre) + (best)+ ebook. I’ll post about keyword choices soon.

 

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