Intellectual Property Will Soon Be History

Intellectual Property Will Soon Be History
 by: John Tello

It is not too risky to affirm that intellectual property will soon be History.

Rules designed for the paper era are not useful, enforceable and cost-economic in the Web era.

Here are a few reasons:

1) Intellectual property is not designed for the Web times

I strongly believe that intellectual property will soon be history, not because Anarchism will succeed over Capitalism, but because the Net Economy will find new ways to control ownership of words and patents.

Words alone are mostly worthless. Nobody is able to make money out of them anymore.

Let’s take someone whose words are unique and valuable: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for instance. He collects some royalties from his writings, except for:

- the 50% cut that makes his publisher

- the 40% lost to piracy

- the 5% cut from the book physical maker

- 3% from government taxes

- 1% from his agent, lawyer and accountant

So, the Paper Economy offers him 1% of the potential profit from his words.

On the other hand, what happens when you write for the Web?

How to Write a Direct Mail Fundraising Letter (Four Tips for Fund Raising Success)

1. Address your reader as a friend, not as "Friend."

When was the last time you received a letter from someone dear to you, addressing you as "Dear Friend?" Never, right? The days of the Dear Friend letter are dead. I heard recently of a chairman of the board of a national charity who has given his charity millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of his time, yet he still receives fundraising appeals from this charity addressing him as "Dear Friend." Ouch.

2. Arrest attention with an opening that resonates with your donors.

Assume your reader is standing over a trash can with a stack of today’s mail, reading the opening sentence of each letter before deciding its fate. You have only a few seconds to grab the reader’s interest. So make it a zinger. Here are two openings for the same non-profit. Which one grabs your attention and makes you want to read on?

Opening 1: "I am writing to you to ask if you would like to support a low-income housing building project in your neighbourhood."

Opening 2: "If I invited you to walk over to your neighbour’s house with a bundle of roof shingles under your arm as a gift, what would you do?"

Word Frequency Analysis as a means to improve writing quality

Word Frequency Analysis as a means to improve writing quality
 by: John Tello

In the old times of Windows 1.0 back in the 1980’s there was a tool called Word

Frequency that came with the MS Word distribution package. As someone who uses English

as a second language I used it heavily, because it helped me to improve my vocabulary

and to correct misspellings beyond the capacity of the available spelling checkers.

That MS Word add-on created a list of all the words in a document, ordered by

frequency. It made it easy to detect overuse and/or abuse of a certain word or

expression. The little used words were also of help, because sometimes I wrote Thomson

instead of Thompson, car instead of cart, or similar errors that the spelling checker

does not detect.

Frequency analysis can also be used as a means to establish the “signature” of a

certain author, the cultural level of the writer, its use of slang or technical

jargon, and other writing features. It is possible to extrapolate the number of words

Your Writing Anxiety - 10 Ways to Bring Relief

Anxiety, apprehension, cold feet, consternation, dismay, distress, dread, fear, fright, horror, nervousness, panic, scare, strain, stress, tension, terror, trepidation, unease or uneasiness: whatever it’s called, you’ve got it.

And the reason is … you’ve got to write an article!

Writing anxiety or ‘writer’s block’ happens to all writers at some point in their writing lives. It may be that you don’t know what to write about or, with your topic firmly in place, you don’t know where to start.

At this point, procrastination sets in.

Doing anything, rather than actually writing, seems a whole lot better than putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard. Even walking the dog, in pouring rain and gale-force winds, has higher priority!

Try some of these ways to restore your writing equilibrium:

1. Avoid starting with a blank page. There’s nothing more daunting than beginning from nothing. Work with a template. This will help you to stay focused on your topic. Download and print out some appropriate free graphic organizers from the Internet or use graphic organizer software, like NotateIt, that will help you to rearrange and organise your thoughts in freestyle format.

How To Snag That Freelance Writing Job

How To Snag That Freelance Writing Job
 by: Amber McNaught

So, you want to be a freelance writer. You’ve scoured the Internet for the best paying writing jobs, and now you’re ready to apply for some of them. There’s just one problem: so are a few hundred other freelance writers, many of whom have a lot more experience than you do. How on earth are you supposed to make sure you stand out from the crowd?

Here’s how:

1. Make sure you read the advert properly

This is an easy way to make your query stand out, because amazingly, the vast majority of queries we receive are from people who haven’t read our requirements properly. We get proofreaders applying for copywriting jobs, people with no writing experience applying for projects which state “experience required” - you name it, we get it. An email from a writer who has read our requirements and taken the time to explain how they can meet them is a rarity - and will always get a response.

2. Check your spelling

10 Newsletter Ideas to Write Articles for Your Newsletter

Since you publish your newsletter on a regular basis, sometimes it’s difficult to find newsletter ideas for your next issue’s content. You sit in front of your monitor and stare at the white screen where the typing cursor is blinking… but your mind doesn’t seem to come up with any ideas.

Here are 10 tips to help you find good article ideas…

#1. Make an Ideas List

If you’ve been writing articles for a while, you know your brightest ideas don’t usually come to your mind when you need them. Actually, you usually get the best ideas when you’re doing something else and thinking about another thing.

But everything changes when you decide to sit and write an article… you get the writer’s block. You really need a good idea for your next issue… but your mind doesn’t help a bit.

The solution is creating an idea list. Whenever you get a bright idea, just add it to your list. After a short time, you’ll have a list full of creative ideas for your next 20 issues at least. So whenever you want to write an article, you simply take a look at your list and choose an idea you feel like writing about.

A Publisher Wants My Book! Now What?

A Publisher Wants My Book! Now What?
 by: Shalla de Guzman

SHALLA CHATS with author Michele Scott

“A Publisher wants my Book! Now what?”

First off, who’s Michele?

Michele Scott writes two new mystery series coming soon to your local book stores, the Wine Lover’s and the Quarter Horse Mystery Series. She started writing seriously in 1991 and after 12 years and almost as many manuscripts, finally got the call.

She majored in journalism at USC but always knew from the time she was a little girl that she wanted to write fiction. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three children. She grew up in San Diego where her family raises Quarter Horses and she worked in the wine industry for a period, all the time working on her writing.

Shalla: Michele got the call last year and now her first book, MURDER UNCORKED, comes out May.

Hi Michele, do you mind if we jump straight into the technicalities?

Michele: Not at all.

Shalla: Great. We like to know about agent-house negotiations like How much time before things worked out and contracts were signed?

Achieving Success with Ezine Advertising

Achieving success is clearly up to you, not to anybody else. In fact is a simple equation involving tools, work and goals.

Assuming that the goal have been set and you are ready for a hard work, let’s talk a little about tools. Not about all tools, but ezine advertising.

Ezine advertising is the most affordable way of net advertising. There are about half million of ezines all around and the number is still increasing. If there are plenty of opportunities, doesn’t mean it is an easy thing to do. On the contrary, you may choose ezine advertising only if you have good writing skills or if you afford to hire somebody to handle with your ads.

What will be next? Let’s se step-by-step

First you must have clear in your mind the concept you want to promote. By ‘concept’ I mean not only the product/service but also things like market needs, target people, strong points, week points, opportunities and so on.

Best Sellers Aren?t Written ? They?re Made - It?s All About Promotion

Writing a book is becoming more and more of a trend these days. In fact, an estimated 5,000 mystery books were published last year in the United States alone, and that number is expected to grow. With so much competition, making the best-seller list is no easy task. So how is it that out of the thousands of mysteries published each year, some become best-sellers while others never get past the publisher’s front door? The answer is simple ? promotion.

Strategy is Key

Many authors are so confident that their book will sell itself, but unfortunately, that simply isn’t the case. To hit the best-seller lists, you need to devote a lot of time to marketing. Promotion is important, because even if you think your book is destined to be a best-seller, no one will buy the book if you don’t market it and set up the appropriate distribution outlets.

At this point many authors proclaim: "But my publisher is supposed to market my book, not me." That’s not entirely true. While the publisher does want your book to sell (that is, after all, how they make money), with all the books a publisher represents, their PR department can’t possibly give your book the attention it deserves. They’re often promoting multiple books at once and must spread out their time and resources fairly between everyone.

How Your $2-an-Article Ghostwriter is Like a Cheap Pair of Pants

Web marketers: have you figured out that article marketing is the secret to your success on the web?

And did you realize that the more web articles you put into circulation, the more of a web celebrity you’ll become, and the more money will come pouring in?

So what did you do after you figured this out? Let me guess: You went on Elance.com searching from someone to write your web articles cheap.

Do you hear a faint wailing sound in the distance? That’s me, weeping for you. You’re on the path to failure, and it makes me want to cry.

If you’re running to Elance.com for help, you’re missing the main point of article marketing.

Your articles must not only be well-written, but they should be highly targeted. An article that’s highly targeted speaks to ONE audience, isolates exactly what they need, and then positions your company as delivering the goods. An entire article CAMPAIGN does this to the Nth degree.

If you hire someone who agrees to write your articles for $2 apiece, you’re basically giving up that golden opportunity to power-drive your article campaign to all the right people and bring in big business.

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