Getting Real Interviews at Career Fairs
Six critical steps to prepare for a Job Fair
Continue Reading January 18th, 2010
Posts filed under 'Bookstuff'
How to Market Your Unsold Books on the Internet: It’s Easy
How to Market Your Unsold Books on the Internet: It’s Easy Judy Cullins c. 2005
Your book expresses your wondrous information, your creativity, your genius. It’s your dream come true. Or is it? You have already tried a few venues–maybe an expo, book signings, press releases, book reviews, distributors, wholesalers, speaking and book tours.
Now, there is a new way to market those unsold books. Use the Internet. And you don’t even have to have your own Web site or spend money.
Get ready to create a continuous, passive income. Be ready for those checks and credit card charges coming your way often!
What Kind of Books Can I Market?
Depending on your passion, your willingness to learn a new way, and putting energy into your campaign, you can market any kind of book: how-to, non-fiction, fiction, short special reports, booklets, training manuals, workbooks, poetry, short stories, articles.
Sell your Print Books and Create New eBooks
If you already have a print book, you can still sell it Online. One way to draw attention to it is to write a short eBook on the same subject. This won’t take long.
Make this eBook around 10-25 pages. You can take the information right from your print book. Just copy and paste information on one topic, perhaps one chapter. Reduce the number of stories to keep it short. Then add a new introduction and conclusion. People on the Net want straight-to-the point information.
Put your eBook into Word and Portable Document Format.Use your Word file to update and edit and use your PDF file to send your book by email or from your Web site.
Who will Buy?
You can sell your short eBook for 6.95-$19.95, depending on how much your audience wants it and how well you write your sales copy. You can also give this book away to stimulate your audience to want the whole story–the print book.
Online audiences read all kinds of books. Many will want the shorter electronic version and be perfectly willing to print it. Others only want a book they can hold and enjoy on their nightstand a long time.They will buy the print version.
To publicize your books start writing short articles, anywhere from 300-1200 words on your book’s topics. When you submit to Online Publishers, Web masters and ezine owners, each article will be seen by thousands, even hundreds of thousands of Online readers. They are hungry for information. That’s why they go to the Web. After a few months, your articles will be listed on maybe 1000 other Web sites with a link back to where you sell your book. This number grows as your submissions. Your bookcoach now listed on over 123,000
At the bottom of the ezine, add a signature file that gives your title, tag line, book title, free offer, phone numbers, and e and Web addresses.
While your title may impress some, your tag line is far more important. What major benefit do you bring potential buyers? For example, “Helps professionals make money on their books through the Internet.” Offer a free report or a free ezine to seal the deal. You please your audience by giving free information which may lead them to check out your book sales copy–even buy your book.
When they visit your site, they may subscribe to your ezine or order a free special report. Here, you collect their email and can use it later for more announcements. This is permission marketing.
Divide and conquer. Use your one book as a spring board for many others and catapult your sales.Knowing that at least 10% of book sales come from the Internet, check it out.
January 11th, 2010
Reflection for Personal and Professional Development
Whatever you can do,
Or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
REFLECTION
Reflection IS a personal and a professional development activity.
I consider myself a “reflectologist”, a term I created during one of my reflection sessions. A reflectologist believes in the importance of reflection for growth and change. A reflectologist takes the time to build reflection into all activities. Reflectologists spread the word about the importance of taking time to reflect. Reflectologists use reflection to bring direction, peace, and understanding to life. I’m proud to consider myself a reflectologist both personally and professionally.
Effective and meaningful reflection is done deliberately. It is done with a conscious effort. You don’t accidentally reflect on something about which you are very interested. Positive change does not occur without deliberate reflection.
I have coined a phrase - RaW Stems - that is useful in understanding the power of reflection. A RaW Stem refers to an open-ended statement or question that leads your mind to reflecting on the past, in the present and/or for the future. The ‘R’ stands for reflective; the ‘a’ stands for and; the ‘W’ stands for writing. A Reflection and Writing Stem is like a sentence completion or question which allows you to fill in your thoughts.
RaW Stems are useful. It is very important that you both reflect on something and make some written notes as well. The writing is the doing part of thinking. Writing is important because it allows the mind to continue to work on things after you have stopped deliberately thinking about them. Writing allows you to return to your train of thought picking up where you left off.
Reflection without writing can be frustrating. Many a great idea has been lost because it wasn’t recorded, in detail, when it was first conceived. Writing is the initial doing part of action based on reflection. Writing is a trigger for the subconscious mind to begin working. Writing leads to more reflection. It is a record of previous thoughts and the starting point for new considerations.
Here are some Raw Stems of a general nature to help you understand the concept. The better you become at creating your own stems for the topic you wish to pursue the better off you will be. It will focus your reflective process, generate ideas, and bring results sooner.
This turned out this way because…
If I were doing it over again I would…
I want my actions to be my best effort always so…
I truly believe…
The practicalities of this are…
When I’m done I hope that…
Others have said that…
I realize now that…
I’m really good at…
Next time, I’ll…
The learning curve this time…
I’ve learned in the past that…
I’ve always wondered…
It seems reasonable to me that…
Reflection is a skill. As a skill it can be learned. We can teach ourselves and others to make reflection time an integral part of both the personal and professional sides of our lives. Reflection should be a daily occurrence but not in a haphazard fashion.
We can teach ourselves the techniques of good reflection. We can develop our own “best practices” for effective reflection. We can allow ourselves to embrace reflection as a necessity in our lives.
Consider the concept of reflection in terms of time. There are past, present and future tenses of reflection. You can reflect ON THE PAST in terms of what has already taken place and that can’t be changed. This is past tense reflection.
You can also reflect IN THE PRESENT as you are in the process of doing something. This present tense reflection allows changes to be made as you go along.
And, of course, there is also a future tense of reflection FOR THE FUTURE .This could be called many things including dreaming, goal setting, aspiring…
Reflection time gives you total control of the past, present and future. Reflection implies doing something. Reflection without doing is a waste of time. There is doing and not doing, there is no such thing as trying. You have already done something, are currently doing something, or will be doing something.
We can set aside time specifically for reflection. Never feel guilty about physically doing nothing while you are mentally engaged.
Effective use of reflection time is made effective only if actions are taken. Ideas born out of reflection that do not lead to action render the ideas inert and of little or no value to anyone, least of all you.
The tenses of reflection are:
REFLECTION ON THE PAST
REFLECTION IN THE PRESENT
REFLECTION FOR THE FUTURE
WISDOM FROM REFLECTION
“Without reflection, experience is not cumulative.” - Unknown
Reflection plays a major role in acquiring wisdom. Wisdom comes with knowledge and experience with enough reflection to create your own personal brand of wisdom unique to you. No two people bring the same wisdom to a situation. Wisdom is unique to the individual.
Consider the following equations:
INFORMATION + EXPERIENCE = KNOWLEDGE
KNOWLEDGE + EXPERIENCE + REFLECTION = WISDOM
When learning anything for the first time you need information in terms of data, vocabulary, facts, information, skills, attitudes in order to learn to do something which then becomes your experience and yours alone. Knowledge is the result of information plus experience. You accumulate knowledge in a variety of ways and in many aspects of life. But knowledge by itself isn’t wisdom.
Wisdom comes from the knowledge you have gained through previous experiences. As you attempt more difficult tasks and activities using your acquired knowledge you gain wisdom. Wisdom requires reflection on top of experience and knowledge. It’s the reflective process that allows you to use the knowledge to solve bigger problems, to analyze and synthesize, create, imagine, explore… With wisdom born of reflection you are able to contribute more, teach others, inspire individuals, provide a new point of view or perspective, combine disparate ideas/concepts to produce new ideas, give new direction to old pathways, influence others, attract disciples, be seen as an innovator… leave a legacy.
Do yourself a favour! Set aside time for reflection. And don’t feel guilty about it!
© 2005 Paul Jackson
Paul Jackson is a retired educator with wide-ranging experience in self-help workshops for educators. His new-found passion of eBook authoring allows him to apply his reflective philosophy to the process of authoring an eBook. At http://www.ebookwritingandpublishing.com Paul uses his philosophy of “Helping people help themselves” to assist individuals in reaching his/her dream of authoring an eBook.
January 5th, 2010
Here Is a Type of Furniture: Part One
A Barrister’s bookcase is a traditional book shelve that comes from n Great England. Its distinguishing feature is a transparent field glass front end. This glass front end is hinged at the upper lip allowing someone effortless access to volumes and other legal papers plainly by opening the glass door. A barrister bookcase is ideal for just about anything. Barrister bookcases were frequently used by attorneys since it was necessary for them to keep on moving. Nowadays, they are very handy, peculiarly if one is constantly moving. This is because the bookcase is closed by use of doors.. This signifies they can be moved while full.
These antique book shelves
Solid Barrister’s Oak Book cases avoid the use of the normal sidewise opening doors and use doors that have the up and over opening mechanism. A scissor device when used inside the barrister shelves control the moving doors do it in a parallel way without having the doors jammed or tipped in the process. One benefit of utilising the barrister bookcase and shelves is the ability to have many of these units group together. When done well, these bookcases give the feeling of an appealing cabinet. They can be made out of a number of materials Whether madeutilising wood or glass, these bookcases give an elgance to a room.
This special kind of shelves, despite many benifits,can be rather costly. Luckily, their many rewards have moved some producers to start making replica editions and some in modern versions at very reasonable prices. Many editions have simple looks. These can fit any style.They can also be trimmed and made into customized storage units at little cost.They can be stacked together allowing them to be easily used to create very interesting unit placements. Some can be used to create sofa tables, breakfronts or even dinning tables.
April 24th, 2009