Bad Contract Terms

Another great blog on literary contracts. This one gives a bunch of words to look out for in contracts. They should not be accepted.

Publishing Contract (Negotiating Book Contracts, Legal Forms for Publishers, Book Publishing Contract, Author-Publisher Agreement, Book Contract)

Publishing Contract (Negotiating Book Contracts, Legal Forms for Publishers, Book Publishing Contract, Author-Publisher Agreement, Book Contract)

Great article on Publishing contracts. Has links to other articles. A must reference for authors.

How to get more ReTweets

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Headline Basics

From Copyblogger:
You have to promise something valuable:

• What pressing problem do you solve? 
• What pain do you remove? 
• What value do you add? 
• What pleasure do you create? 
• What freedom do you permit? 
• What connection do you allow?

You can easily create valuable content that also communicates big promises like:

• Yes, there is an answer to the problem that’s been bothering you
• You’re not alone
• It’s not as hard as you think
• You’re one of a select group/village/tribe
• The success you’ve been looking for is finally about to be yours
• It’s not your fault
• People worse off than you have conquered this problem

A game plan to “work” any room in-person

A game plan to “work” any room in-person: (from "No More Cold Calling" here)

• RSVP and say, “yes” to meetings, conferences, gatherings, fund-raisers, and business mixers.
• Do due diligence and prepare. Check out websites, Google, or Bing names of sponsors, members, speakers, and attendees.
• Prepare a seven- to nine-second self-introduction that is an engaging pleasantry.
• Read the news: online or in print. Read both local and national coverage so that you can be knowledgeable and conversant. (This includes sports, entertainment, book reviews, and restaurant/food features).
• Prepare three to five topics of conversation in case you get stuck for subjects of interest.
• Leave your Bluetooth, gizmos, and gadgets out of sight.
• Approach those alone or groups of three or more who sound and look like they are having a good time.
• Let people know what you need/results you seek.
• LISTEN to what others say they need and OFFER to help.
• Go to have a good time, and you will.

Build Relationships with Key People

From: Rise to the Top

1. Mention them in your blog or video (best);do a book report video 
2. send them a link to it. Give them something free: 
3. Thank them

Romancing Your Readers

From: Writers Village by John Yeoman

Pattern your protagonist upon your target reader - not as they really are but as they (your reader) would like to be.


How can you do this? Mentally picture the person you are writing for.

If yours is a ‘genre’ story, draw up a profile of the typical reader of, say, romance, sci-fi, paranormal mystery, crime (of every flavour), historicals and the like. And examine their tastes. For example, a Google search along the lines of ‘historical fiction readers demographics’ can be highly revealing.

Works in conversations, too.

Long Form Journalism

Here's a great blog on long content articles: Here
It has lots and lots of other content and links. It's worth a full read. Here's a sample of the key nugget though:

The New Yorker is the authority when it comes to long-form journalism. That’s why Tumblr invoked their name when advertising for freelance writers.

But what can they teach you about business-to-business content marketing? What can they teach us about using epic content to build the value of your brand?

Fortunately, a lot.

• Solve business objectives — Your costumers are probably not looking to kill time with a seven-thousand word essay on Taylor Swift’s teenage angst empire (New Yorker customers are, however). Your customers want to know how to generate more traffic, leads and sales. Use epic content to do that.
• Educate with stories — Dig into the history of your company or customer testimonials. Begin with a meaningful conflict, agitate the pain and then trot in your solution. As The New Yorker has demonstrated, people like in-depth stories. It makes learning fun. Give it to them.
• Diversify your content — Think blogs, email white papers and ebooks. The more vehicles in which you communicate your message the more people you will reach and the more effective you will be. Warning: Keep your message consistent across mediums.
• Use social media — Unless you’ve got a huge audience already, your epic content will be DOA if you don’t use the power of social media to gain exposure. And don’t forget to make Google+ a strong component of your content marketing strategy.
• Invest in quality writers — Great content is hard to create. And you can’t fake it. Gone are the days of keywords stuffing or outsourced content farms. Only superior content will build your influence with your target audience and Google. There’s no way around it (even if you are Tumblr).
• Speak their language — When you answer their questions, alleviate their fears and encourage their desires you will write effectively for both people and search engines.
• Create a schedule — A giant publication like The New Yorker knows six months out what content it will create—and when it will publish. Create and manage an editorial calendar, using tools like the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin.

LogLine Tips

From Rachelle Gardner

What the LogLine should include:
→ A character or two
→ Their choice, conflict, or goal
→ What’s at stake (may be implied)
→ Action that will get them to the goal
→ Setting (if important)

Tips:
→ Keep it simple. One plotline, 1 or 2 characters.
→ Use the strongest nouns, verbs and adjectives.
→ Make the conflict clear but you don’t have to hint at the solution.

Tell what happens, not a theme

Here is Nathan Bransford’s simplified formula for a one-sentence pitch: “When [opening conflict] happens to [character(s)], they must [overcome conflict] to [complete their quest].”

10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

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5 Ways to Get People to Actually Listen to You

5 Ways to Get People to Actually Listen to You

By Maria Tabaka

Your audience must be able to feel and experience your communications.


1. Keep your mouth shut--for a couple of moments.

Don't say anything substantive until you have an audience connection. Note that their first impression is visual, not verbal. . You can gain command by the way you carry yourself, before you even open your mouth. The body speaks before the mouth is open. Avoid rocking, looking down, and fidgeting. Stand and walk with confidence.

2. Get your audience engaged.

Get the eyeballs looking up before you say anything. Move with quiet confidence and smile, inviting people to look up and pay attention. Invite your audience to engage on the emotional level by offering a warm greeting. You might even ask them a question that prompts a response. It can be simple, as in: "How is everybody doing today?"

3. Grab their attention to make it memorable.

People remember the very first substantive that you say. Once you have their attention, jump right in to the most important thing you have to say.

4. Use verbal cues.

Use attention-provoking signals when you move from one part of the speech to the next. For instance, you might verbally number your key points or use other verbal signals like "Let's move on" or "My next topic is..."  Always give the audience verbal cues to look up at you.

5. Recap what matters.

Take all of the substantive points from your talk and group them all together at the very end of the presentation. Remember your provoking signal and say something like, "In summary," then recap everything from your presentation that matters the most.

10 Brainy Tips for Hooking Your Reader

10 Brainy Tips for Hooking Your Reader from Psychology Today by Susan K Perry, Ph.D.

1. Something must be at stake for the protagonist from the first page, and your reader must be aware of what it is. Something must be happening right away so the reader wants to know what will happen next.

2. Focus is crucial, meaning the writer must make clear what the protagonist has to overcome internally to accomplish her goal.

3. Write what you know emotionally. Tap into what you know about human nature to make your story feel real. Does your protagonist feel shame? Surely you have at one time too.

4. Write character bios, but focus it on their messy flaws, without allowing them any privacy. Aim to find their motivation, to learn (and have your characters learn) what really causes them to do what they do,

5. Avoid too many sensory details. There has to be a reason for each detail, and the reader has to be able to figure it out.

6. Intrigue matters. "If we don't know there's intrigue afoot, then there is no intrigue afoot." Readers enjoy going back to reconsider hints and events in the light of a twist or "reveal," but not if there are hidden things that have been going on all along that are not at least hinted at.

7. Beware of misplaced digressions, whether small or large. Digressions should provide what a reader needs to know at that moment. "Can you answer the 'And so?' to everything in the story? Flashbacks stop the action and must only be used to provide needed information the reader needs now

8. Back off whenever the conflict peaks, so the reader can process it. Use subplots for this. This point and the previous one may seem to conflict, but they don't. A subplot after an intense plot point should eventually come back to join the story and help the reader make more sense of it.

9. Escalate the trouble. Make sure everything that can go wrong does.

10. Your protagonist must suffer embarrassment and other untidy emotions, even if you'd rather protect her. By protecting her, you may be trying to protect yourself, fearing readers will be alerted to the fact that you know more about the dark side than you want them to suspect.

Workaholics

“Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up," -Jason Fried and David Hasson in Rework

45 Ways to an Enchanting Blog that Sells

See: http://www.blueglass.com/blog/enchanting-blog-creation/

Really great information!

Content Matrix

Click here for the full-sized infographic.
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How to Be a Copywriting Genius: The Brilliantly Sneaky Trick You Must Learn | Copyblogger

How to Be a Copywriting Genius: The Brilliantly Sneaky Trick You Must Learn | Copyblogger:

Decide what action you want readers to take. Ask them to take that action. Ask them clearly, succinctly and unmistakably.
Put at least one unambiguous call to action into every piece of persuasive writing you create. You’ll see results.


'via Blog this'

Changing the City with the Gospel Takes a Movement

Changing the City with the Gospel Takes a Movement

Obamacare in One Sentence

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/09/15576-video-illinois-state-senate-candidate-sums-up-obamacare-in-one-sentence/http://www.ijreview.com/2012/09/15576-video-illinois-state-senate-candidate-sums-up-obamacare-in-one-sentence/

Favorite Quotations Update

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."
-L P Hartley, The Go-Between


‎"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
- Oscar Wilde


"Affection is best communicated by touch"
- Me

"Instead of playing a game you can’t win, change the game."
- Corbett Barr Unique Selling Propositions
- and Captain Kirk on the Kobayashi Maru Test


"People don't buy "what" you do. They buy "why" you do it."
- Simon Sinek


"Don't get it right.  Get it written"
 - James Thurber

"Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort. Exercise is not a thing we do to fix a problem - it is a thing we must do anyway, a thing without which there will always be problems"
- Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength

"Put some chalk on it and get back on the bar"
- Alex Pearson

"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

“Plan your work and work your plan.”
- Vince Lombardi

"There's no kill switch on awesome."
- Dilbert

"If we want everything to stay as it is, everything will have to change." - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lamedusa, The Leopard

"Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes
- Unknown

"Your child will tell you that you do not have to come to their games and performances. You MUST attend, and watch, and sit in the corner, and wear beige."
- Dr Ralph Plagman, Washington HS Principal, to the parents of incoming freshmen.

"You ALWAYS have a choice"
- Bob Westfall

"It's not flying if you are not upside down at least once in the flight."
- Me

"The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s eleven-thirty."
- Lorne Michaels, producer at Saturday Night Live

"It is the policy of the Government that the Opposition remain in opposition in perpetuity."
- attributed to Margret Thatcher

"The probability of a win is greatly reduced by a no-bid decision"
- Jack Cosgrove

“Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” — Lewis Carroll

"Championships are won in the off-season."
- Charles Daugherty quoting a t-shirt

"The [obvious] issue is never the [real] issue"
- Kim Pagel

"Be slow to attribute to malice or guile, that which can be explained by ignorance, incompetence, or muddling through."
 - My modification of Hanlon's Razor, stolen from Heinlein's Razor, stolen from Napoleon.

"If you are going to shoot, shoot. Don't talk"
-Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Anything by Lazarus Long. e.g "Never try to teach a pig to sing- it wastes your time and annoys the pig." and "A motion to adjourn is always in order."

"The product is Service. You only sell hardware to provide installed base."
- Probably from Barb Gatti

"My ancestors did not fight and claw their way to the top of the food chain so I could eat tofu and bean sprouts."
- motto of PETA [People Eating Tasty Animals]

"Eighty percent of success is showing up"
- Woody Allen

"If you can't fix it, then feature it!"
- Gnarly old Collins Program Manager [probably Jim Lockwood]

"The worst case is [simultaneously] being out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas...unless you add inverted."
- Old pilot's aphorism

"The last red pen always wins."
- Me

"The markets can be irrational longer than you can be solvent."
- JM Keynes

"In the long run, we are all dead."
- JM Keynes

"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
- Dilbert

"Don't ask the question if you cannot stand the answer."
-unknown

"I never saw an emergency that was improved by screaming"
- an ER doctor

"Maintain control, analyze the situation, take the proper action
- Air Force basic flight manual

"When playing poker, if you cannot tell who the mark is...it's you." - Bob Sevier

"You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other Allied Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her Armed Forces."
- Roosevelt to Eisenhower. An example of a proper command from political authority to the military. Then get out of the way.

"Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgment."
- Will Rogers

"Government spending does not have a multiplier effect on the economy. It is at best neutral. What creates growth is private investment, increases in productivity, and increases in population. That's it. Tax increases have a negative multiplier."
- John Mauldin

The Secret to Selling Yourself

You need a very different approach to selling yourself than the one you intuitively take, because your intuitions are probably wrong. People are much more impressed, whether they realize it or not, by your potential than by your track record. It would be wise to start focusing your pitch on your future, as an individual or as a company, rather than on your past — even if that past is very impressive indeed. It's what you could be that makes people sit up and take notice — learn to use the power of potential to your advantage.

From HBR