Interview with Book and Marketing Coach-Judy Cullins - Part 1

To know what to do at the right time in book writing, publishing, or Internet marketing, consult a coaching expert who has lived it all for 20 years–Judy Cullins.

Q 1- Would you say there is a difference in marketing tactics for different genres? If so, what kind of promotion would you suggest for, say, authors of children’s books, mystery/romance, or non-fiction? If there is no discernible difference, what do you see as the best method of book promotion?

A 1- The best promotion is a natural promotion–that authors will actually do. They can either write or speak. 20 years ago I was a speaker, thinking I didn’t know how to write. When the demand came for my health and personal growth how to books, I stepped up and started writing. Dan Poynter inspired me with his idea we can all write non-fiction by reframing the ideas around us in our own unique format. Since then, I have put out 10 print and eBooks on writing, self-publishing and marketing, especially online.

Do you like to speak? Then schedule at least 4 talks a month. When you speak for organizations, you will get paid and may sell books too. Consider no charge talks such as with libraries, service or business organizations.

Arouse Your Short Story And See It Published

Are you ready to abandon your short stories? Before you toss your newest story in the trash, revisit it using many of the same guidelines editors keep in mind when they review your work. If you follow these guidelines, you will be many steps closer to placing your short story in a well-known literary journal.

You can make submissions on your own, or hire some help. Every story, on average, must be submitted to 100 markets before it is accepted. For short story authors, these numbers are sad, but true. Even the best stories must cover a lot of territory before they appear on the printed page. A reputable author’s submission service may offer you more time to write while they take care of the submissions. Remember that a good submission service screens potential writers for quality work. They don’t take everyone.

Once your story has passed the following tests, it’s time to send it out into the world.

1. Is there an opening hook that grabs the reader? Does it surprise/amuse/intrigue? Does it establish the mood of the story?

2. Are the characters interesting to read about? Are their interactions with each other believable? Are they properly motivated? Do they each have flaws as well as virtues? (Or vice-versa in Horror stories.)

How To Publish Your Own Highly Demand Ezine

Ezine is an electronic newsletter that is published through internet. As a home based business owner, it is important for you to have your own ezine.

You might ask ‘Why do I need an ezine?’

There are many reasons why you need it. But the main reason is that your own ezine can build your credibility as industry expert. Your customer and subscriber will think highly of you. So, when they trust you, it is easier to sell them almost anything.

The next question is ‘How do I publish an ezine?’

Let’s go through step by step:

Step 1:Determine your main content

This is the most important step. Normally, you main content depends on your business category. For example, if you sell health supplement, you might want to choose your ezine main content as health tips and if you sell shoes, your ezine might be about shoe care or foot care. You get the idea right? Make this your first priority before continuing to the next step.

Step 2: Determine your ezine layout

Most ezines have three parts:

1.Header - This is where you put your Ezine’s title

How to Use Free Articles to Explode Your Internet Business!

In this article I will show you how to use articles to explode your internet business. Writing articles and posting them on the internet can pull in a flood of traffic to your web site.

You may be asking yourself "how can writing a simple article impact my business"?

It is quite simple! There are numerous article directories listed on the internet to post your articles on. This is one of the best online marketing tools ? and it’s 100% Free.

I have listed a few Article Directories below:

1. www.articlecentral.com

2. www.ideamarketers.com

3. www.goarticles.com

4. www.ezinearticles.com

By submitting to various article directories, you will be able to get your article posted on popular websites around the world. This will not only give you exposure but will also improve your link popularity with search engines allowing people to locate your website!

So how does this impact my website?

Each article you post has what’s called a "Resource Box". The "Resource Box" is located at the bottom of your article and it contains your name and a brief add with a link to your web page. Image, having hundreds even thousands of postings to some of the top web sites with your article pointing readers to your web site for further information!

How To Write Thank You Letters With Class

When I first started tracking the information preferences of people visiting my Writing Help Central Web site I was surprised to find how many folks were seeking information on how to write thank you letters. In fact, “thank you letter” information and sample templates are the third ranked destinations at that Web site.

However, I caution you to be careful if you conduct a “thank you letter” keyword search using an engine such as google or yahoo. Those top 10 or 20 search results will definitely give you the wrong idea about thank you letters in the broad sense. Looking at those results alone you’ll find that the vast majority of so-called experts seem to think that there is essentially only one kind of thank you letter - one written after a job interview.

In reality, this is a very narrow view that fails to recognize the literally dozens of situations for which thank you letters are often warranted. I believe that this proliferation of references to employment-related thank you letters is simply a reflection of the massive number of Web-based businesses involved in the online career and job hunting services industry.

WHEN TO SAY THANK YOU IN WRITING

10 Tips for Tech-Writers

Tech-writing is a tricky business. It’s not a very high profile industry, so there’s not much support around. Follow these 10 quick tips, and you’ll be well on your way to a satisfying tech-writing career.

1) Follow a sensible career path?

• STEP 1: Start in a team
• STEP 2: Stay only just long enough
• STEP 3: Manage yourself
• STEP 4: Manage a team
• STEP 5: Go contracting (depends on the market)

2) Knowledge is your lifeblood ? learn the politics of your company. Know who knows what. Find someone who consistently gives you timely, reliable, technically accurate answers, and get their name tattooed on your shoulder! Every company has at least one. And they may not be in the project manager/product manager/customer/programmer roles. They are generally the people who’ve used the product in the real world, and dealt with real world customers.

3) Communicate WITH, not AT. Tech-writers don’t have enough power to get away with communicating at.

4) Track stuff (take spreadsheet printout and write it up on the board).

5) Develop good product and domain knowledge ? The more you can figure out for yourself, the better off you’ll be (and the more respect you’ll get from the techies).

6 Tricks To Squeeze Your Letters Onto One Page

Anyone who has read any of my articles on the subject of letter writing or resume writing will know how important I believe it is to minimize the number of pages, preferably limiting them to one page whenever possible.

And, we all know how tacky it looks when we put the finishing touches on a letter and it overflows onto the second page by one or two lines. Very unprofessional!

So, there are a number of handy little tricks that I’ve used over the years that can help “squeeze” a letter or other document onto one page without it being noticed by the average reader. These tricks can be applied using any standard word processing software program.

I’m not sure whether a purist at a secretarial school would approve of some of my methods since they may deviate from certain technical standards, but I have used them hundreds of times and nobody has ever been the wiser. The main point being that I was able to keep a letter on one page when the first version overflowed by a few lines onto a second page.

Below are my “page compression tips”, listed in the order in which I suggest you apply them:

Go With The Flow: Write With Transition Words and Phrases

One of the most common weaknesses I see in day-to-day writing is poor logical flow from one idea or point to the next. This usually takes the form of a bunch of seemingly unrelated phrases thrown together with little or no sense of sequence, continuity, or relativity.

Although the overall subject may be obvious, the words to describe it seem to be scattered on the page like an almost random set of unconnected thoughts. On a regular basis, I see letters and reports in which each phrase seems to be independent of the one before and the one after, when in reality, there is an actual sequential and/or logical flow.

Consider the following three sentence example:

1. The entire building had to be searched.

2. They started the search on the third floor.

3. It took three hours to complete the search.

Notice that the three separate statements are all valid sentences. They convey the bare essential facts of the situation, but nothing more. In fact, they raise almost more questions than they answer. For example:

- Was it a serious incident?

- Had it ever happened before?

Write Your Slice of Life: 6 Quick and Easy Steps to Writing a Personal Essay

Do you know why the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series is so popular? Aside from terrific marketing and unequaled publicity, readers love the stories and personal essays. They are short, personal and teach a lesson or moral. If you would like to be a better writer of the personal essay, opinion pieces, reports and letters to the editor just follow the suggestions listed below:

1. Be brief. Many written reports or stories are 500 words or less. However, there is a general rule that an essay is between two and twenty typed, double-spaced pages. The most important criteria to remember is that a good piece needs to be an unbroken reading experience. The reader will lose interest if it is too long or wordy.

2. Tell a story. A personal essay is a story that has happened to you or that you know about firsthand. The reader assumes that it is nonfiction and that it will contain details and descriptions with which we are familiar. Structure your story around examples, using a pencil as your paintbrush to evoke images and paint a picture in the reader’s mind.

Resignation Letters: Dont Let Yours Backfire On You…

It turns out that “tips and templates on how to write resignation letters” is the third most sought-after information at my Writing Help Central Web site.

So, when I looked into the subject more closely, I was surprised to find that there is not a lot of guidance available in guide book form on how to write a proper and appropriate resignation letter. In fact, a recent visit to the world’s largest bookstore www.amazon.com revealed that there are no “how to” books available there that deal with the art of writing resignation letters.

Surprising, but true.

This is interesting, because when you really look into it, you realize that whether you leave a job gracefully and appropriately will almost certainly have career and personal implications, and can be almost as important as writing a resume/cv or a cover letter.

THE EMOTIONS BEHIND RESIGNATION LETTERS

A resignation letter will be one of the most emotionally- charged business letters that you will ever write. The sentiments behind it are invariably volatile because of what it represents. In fact, studies have found that leaving a job can be almost as stressful as the breakup of a marriage.

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