Successful Blog

To Publish or Not to Publish? That is the Question…

by

By Tiffany Matthews

To be or not to be: that is the question…

One of the most well-known lines in literature, this phrase opens a young man’s soliloquy in Hamlet, the tragic play by William Shakespeare. The young man in question, who happens to be titular character, ponders on the meaning of life–whether it is worth it or not to stay alive when your life is filled with one hardship after another.

“To be or not to be” remains a timeless question that will drive you into introspection if you are still unsure of your writing path–to be or not to be a writer? If you’ve decided to follow your heart and become a wordsmith, you then ponder on the next big question, “To publish or not to publish?”

The Publishing Dream

For many writers, the dream of publishing their own book is an elusive one. Becoming an author doesn’t happen overnight. Just like when you become a writer, you need to read a lot and write a lot before you can become a competent writer. To be an author, it’s gonna take courage, tenacity, hard work, self-confidence and optimism. If you’re determined to get published, the next question to consider is which type would you choose–traditional publishing or self-publishing?

Traditional Publishing

The path to getting published is riddled with grammar, thousands of words, many rewrites, and brutal rejections, especially when you opt for the traditional route. It can take years before manuscripts are turned into books and some don’t even get to see the light of publishing day. You will have to send multiple pitches to not just one but to several publishing houses and even that isn’t a guarantee it will be picked up. If you can afford to wait a few years, use that time to work on your writing, hone your submissions and learn more about the publishing business.

Don’t be discouraged by rejections. Author Stephen King went through many rejection slips before he got published. But he didn’t let that stop him. He remained optimistic and continued writing. As time went by, the rejection letters became a little more encouraging, with one telling him he had talent and that he should submit again. A decade or so later, he finally published his first novel, Carrie, and the rest is history.

Self-Publishing

If your attempts at publishing traditionally take you to a dead end, you can consider your second option, self-publishing. While this choice can narrow the time it takes to get published, it means more work than when you publish traditionally. First of all, you need to have considerable knowledge of what publishing entails like designing the book, editing, illustrating and even the marketing, promotional and sales aspects. You’ll also need a good dose of self-confidence, hammered by years of experience in the writing industry. You should also set a reasonable time frame to accomplish everything, like one year.

One thing you should remember is that when you self-publish, you are considered to be the publisher of your book and thus, must embrace whatever legal responsibilities that come with it. If you are on a budget, you can get affordable prepaid legal services to help you whenever you encounter legal issues during publishing.

Books Don’t Appear By Magic…

Another thing you must keep in mind is that books aren’t made overnight. Your first manuscript will go through several edits, rewrites and fine-tuning before you can pitch it to traditional publishing houses. If you decide to self-publish, you will have to do the brunt of the work, including tirelessly promoting your book online and local bookstores in your area. But if your story is worth sharing, word-of-mouth recommendations and glowing book reviews might just land you a deal with traditional publishing house.

If you haven’t started writing that book you want to publish, today is a good day to start. Don’t let fear of failure stop you from accomplishing your publishing dream. You can make your dream come true if you try. Be empowered by what Stephen King said in his book, On Writing,

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

Author’s Bio: Based in San Diego, California, Tiffany Matthews writes about travel, fashion and anything under sun at wordbaristas.com. You can find her on Twitter as
@TiffyCat87.

How I Unclog a Case of Writer’s Block

by

By Stacey Thompson

Writer’s block. It happens to the best of us. You may have had a good night’s sleep, a comfortable chair, the right resources, and a topic… and yet, your writing muscles refuse to flex, and you are left staring at the flickering prompt at the upper left side of a mostly-empty screen, or driving a hole into your pad with a pen.

Do a Google search and you’ll find that many writers have their own ways of dealing with this creative blockage. It’s not exactly a one-size-fits-all proposition, so it’s a good idea to get as many ideas as possible. Utilizing those bits of wisdom, concoct your own anti-writer’s-block remedies. Hopefully, one or more of them work.

Let me enumerate mine, and see if any of them work for you:

Unfamiliar Ground

Find a new place to ply your craft. Stand up, pack your mobile writing implements (paper notepad, notebook computer, restaurant receipts, toilet paper, human flesh scroll, etc.) and wander. In my case, I pack my tablet (equipped with a cover/keyboard, because I can’t type fast on a touch screen), some loose change for coffee, and a Taser pistol (you can never be too careful).

The new sights and sounds definitely help me get out of the funk, and for as long as I find a comfortable spot to whip out my tablet and type away, I’ll be able to get some paragraphs out.

Drop It Like It’s Hot

When the first remedy doesn’t yield any positive result, I just stop trying for the meanwhile and distract my mind with something else entirely. This should be easy for most of us, as the modern world is rife with distractions. You could live your entire life distracted, in fact. Those closest I have come to that is a three hour Fruit Ninja binge on the tablet. Made my fingers hurt, too.

Time out from writing gives the mind some time to recharge and recuperate. Unfortunately, we who write for a living don’t have the luxury of too much off-time, so this solution may not be the best course of action to take when writing projects are restricted by a deadline.

Get Physical

Corollary to the tip above, go engage in an activity that requires the least synaptic activity. This ranges from sports and fitness-related stuff, to exposing your mind to slapstick, lowbrow, and even outright pornographic stimulation. Nothing is taboo (except if it’s against the laws of the land, of course)!

Too much of anything can be detrimental, so be sure to set limits to your physical fun-time distractions.

Nothing

Well, not absolutely nothing. Meditation, yoga, drinking tea, isolating yourself in a dark room, or even a light nap are ways you can calm your tempestuous mind and rejuvenate your creative juices. Find a place you can be undisturbed for hours at a time, and proceed with the refilling.

Yeah, it means you have to put away your tablet and other mobile devices.

I hope one of these tips will be the proverbial plunger that will help unclog your creative pipeline!

Author’s Bio: Stacey Thompson (@RedHotStacey) is a professional writer, marketer, entrepreneur, and a lover of weird little animals. She is based in San Diego, California, and is definitely not beyond seeking expert advice from competent and highly professional consultancy firms like MyCorporation. Stacey and her gang have a blog, Word Baristas.

The Power of Stupid-Simple Business Building

by

Marina

The following article is written by our good friend Wendy Piersall.

Last year, my husband Dave left his 12 year career at Xerox to pursue his dream of starting a boat repair shop up by the Chain O’ Lakes. Since his background is corporate sales, his previous career was built on taking care of his customers’ every need, even if that meant helping a print shop meet it’s deadline on a Saturday afternoon. His customers were so loyal to him that some still call him for advice when they need to buy new machines.

It might have seemed a little insane for him to start a new business, in a new industry, with three kids and looming college tuition bills mere months away. I was… um… “skeptical”. Coming from the marketing & blogging world, I was thinking that once he got a name, a website, and started establishing his brand with some advertising, he could start fixing boats on the side for a few months to ramp things up before we let go of his income. I guess I was thinking small. Because before he had a name, website nor even a shop to rent, he was filling up our yard with boats to fix. I promptly lost the battle to hang onto his income. And he’s been growing consistently ever since, while established marinas all over the area have been closing down.

I had wanted to talk to you about how he pulled this off in this post. He only advertised on Craigslist and one single local online forum for boaters, and got listed on all the local directory sites such as Yelp, Yellow Pages and Yahoo & Google local. That’s it.

But I realized that there was a much more important story to tell – and it’s about how he as a sales person and I as a marketer approached starting a business so very differently. As if I don’t already sound a little foolish, I can unequivocally state that I underestimated him and the power of thinking like a salesperson. While I was designing pretty logos, contemplating my business mission, and choosing WordPress templates, he was literally out pounding the pavement introducing himself to local business owners and calling our boat-owning friends to ask for referrals.

Only now can I see I was allowing myself to get caught up in the formalities of starting a business, instead of focusing on what was most important of all: customers. In my world, sales come after I’ve been able to craft and hone my “marketing message”. In Dave’s world, marketing is something he does in his down time when he isn’t closing deals.

When I asked him his thoughts on what has made him successful, it was a list of things you would expect to hear: following up with leads, acting confident even when he didn’t feel it, asking for referrals, and finding an underserved niche in his field. But the starkest difference between he and I was how he approached communicating with his customers: Dave has no marketing message he relies on. He finds out what is important to his prospects before he ever pitches a thing.

In short, he listens before he speaks.

And before you say to yourself, “Well DUH,” let me remind you that I’ve built 4 successful businesses in my lifetime, and I’m starting again on my fifth. The reason I forgot something so easy and so basic is just that: I dismissed it as easy and basic. And you might hear things at SOBCon that sound easy and basic – but please don’t make the same mistake that I did. The presenters at this event are freaking brilliant. If they bring up something ‘basic’, it might just be the most important thing you hear all weekend.

One Year Lived – A Story and a Challenge

by

Get out there. Meet people. See places. Eat street food. Take a class or teach one. Inform yourself about the world and inform the world about you. Choose your own adventure.

Skeptical. That was my original approach to this enthralling book by Adam Shepard. Adam’s first book, Scratch Beginnings, was featured widely in the national media and thenceforth chosen on the curriculum or as a common read at over ninety colleges and universities across the United States. His newest book, One Year Lived, recounts the year he spent out in the world: seventeen countries, four continents, and one haunting encounter with a savage bull.

You may think you know what it’s about at first glance. Overprivileged kid has head filled with idealistic claptrap, wants to “find himself” on a year long adventure around the world…

But no.

From the second sentence or so, I was utterly charmed and drawn into Adam’s story. Because it’s not about a quest to find himself, it’s about a quest to see what happens when you commit to something huge, and then follow through on it.

Perhaps you find out things you didn’t even intend to find out.

And how does this relate to your business?

You are made up of the particles of people you encounter. The richness of your experience and breadth of your connections will inform every last bit of your business, if you’re doing it right.

By seeking adventure, seeking to do difficult, crazy things, you get better at doing the every day things. Better at delighting people, knowing people, serving people. By simply meeting more people.

Adam graciously allowed us to offer this book for free, for readers of this blog. To get your free copy of the e-book, simply comment here and let me know where in the world you’d choose to visit first.

Read the book, enjoy, and plan your own life-changing adventure.

Then come back and please tell us all about it!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

More information (and a picture of the mullet that Adam grew on the trip) are available at www.OneYearLived.com.

When Is the Right Time to Leave Your Job?

by

Life will oftentimes throw curves at you when you least expect them.

As an example, say you are doing a great job at your company position and then you get the call. You know that call, the one where the boss or your immediate manager asks you to come into their office for a ‘chat’ that will just be a minute or two.

In some instances, that ‘chat’ can be a good thing, perhaps a raise. In many other cases, however, that ‘chat’ can mean a pink slip. Chances are most people reading this piece have been down that road at one time or another. As most will tell you, it isn’t a road they want to travel all that often.

While you may get that call to ‘chat’ with your manager or the company owner, there are some cases where you can initiate the discussion, not being put in the situation where the bad news is delivered to you.

As more and more Americans have found out in recent years, a sluggish economy has led to many workers having to undergo that trip to the boss’ office. Oftentimes, the dreaded news they were expecting is in fact delivered.

According to a 2012 report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, millions of Americans were taking on the challenge of running their own small companies, via independent contracting or direct selling. A Gallup poll noted that 61 percent of Americans had indicated that they lean towards the preference of being their own bosses. Much of that comes from a decreased lack of job security in many different industries.

 

Know Your Game Plan Before Initiating a Move

So, what if 2013 is the year that you initiate the discussion by leaving your current job and opening your own business? Yes, scary as that may sound, the opportunities could be endless.

Before you go initiate that ‘chat’ with your boss, consider these factors:

* Always have a game plan – You may have wanted to open your own business for a number of years now, but are you financially prepared to? Keep in mind that you will need to not only replace your steady workplace income, but also account for expenses to get your business rolling, including money for advertising and marketing, supplies, potential office space, and maybe even an employee or two. In many cases, it is best financially to start your small business part-time while maintaining your full-time income under someone else. If you have a good health insurance package with someone, also consider how losing that could impact you financially;

* Expect your life to change – In the event you are leaving your full-time job to start your own small business, expect some changes to come your way. While some people think it is nice to get out of the 9 to 5 routine, working for yourself will likely mean more hours and more work. The bottom line is all the decisions that need to be made rest with you, something by itself that can overwhelm some individuals. If you have a family, they will need to adjust also to your new hours. There will be some days where you will think it will never end, that being meeting customer orders, doing your own financial paperwork, promoting your company in a variety of ways. This is another reason why it is sometimes better to start your business on a part-time business so that you can ease into it, not be thrust full throttle into it;

* Plan to succeed, be prepared for failure – Statistics don’t lie; many have come across data showing that more than half of all American small businesses go out of business in the first five years (Small Business Administration). With that being the case, what is your Plan B? While you may not be in love with your current job, and while you may have always wanted to hang an ‘open’ sign out in front of your very own business, you still need enough money coming in to support you and/or a family. Make sure you have a ‘rainy day’ fund set aside so that you can withstand a dry spell or two if your small business hits a rut or does not take off right away. If you don’t, you may end up regretting having left your full-time job in the first place.

Maybe 2013 is the year that you take those dreams of opening up your very own business to fruition.

If it is, make sure you know the game plan before you begin to play.

Photo credit: learndirect.co.uk

About the author: With 23 years of experience as a writer, Dave Thomas covers a wide array of business topics, including business VoIP service.

What makes @shersteve come back to #SOBCon over and over?

by

Phil Gerbyshak & Steve SherlockThis episode brings you one of my favorite people, and one of the most interesting SOBCon testimonials yet, Steve Sherlock. Steve isn’t your traditional businessperson attending this conference. He’s got a much more varied background – and will show you the diverse audience we have at SOBCon each year. Enjoy!

Phil Gerbyshak: Who are you – and what is your business focus?

Steve Sherlock: My name is Steve Sherlock. I am frequently seen with a tri-corner hat. I reside in Franklin, MA which is the first town to have been named for Ben Franklin. I first wore the tri-corner at the Welcome/Registration Desk for PodCamp Boston 2 and it has become part of my brand since then. I volunteer on many organizing committees for unconferences in New England; PodCampWesternMass, PodCamp Connecticut, NewBCamp, WhereCamp, and JobSearchJamSessions to name a few of them.

My focus is to use social media for social good. I started as a citizen journalist for Franklin Matters and have evolved to assume the title of “Community Information Director”. In that role, I do full and live reporting from as many Town Council and other Franklin meetings and events as I can to share the information about our budget and the business of Franklin to create an informed voter. I have helped some of the local non-profits set up their websites, blogs, etc. while training some of their folks to carry on their communications. I am currently leading the Board of Directors for the Franklin Food Pantry as we re-brand ourselves to be “a community resource for food and more.”

I am fully employed in an IT Security role and all that I do on the social media front is in the off hours to give back to my community.

PG: When did you attend your first SOBCon – why did you sign up – and what did you expect to get out of it?

SS: Phil, you and I have talked frequently about “taking the blog off the blog.” SOBCon is room full of great folks to meet and learn from. Having missed the first one in 2007, I came to the second SOBCon in 2008 and have been fortunate to make every event since then. To meet in real life, folks who had been participating in online conversations over the years bring everlasting value.

SOBCon 2008 - Joyful Jubilant Learning Reunion

For example; you, Terry, and I had been active in the Joyful Jubilant Learning community, we got to meet Joanna Patterson, who had come all the way from the UK for SOBCon 2008.

PG: Did you get what you expected (or more or less or just different) from your first SOBCon?

SS: Yes, the learning opportunities within the mastermind table setup is worth it. I have made some lasting friendships and connections from actively participating around these tables.

PG: How many additional SOBCon events have you been to?

SS: As mentioned earlier, I have been fortunate to have only missed the first one. As long as I can, I do plan on returning. The business around social media is continuing to evolve. You can come and find enough information and knowledge to go your own way, or if you are fortunate enough to have this as part of your personal learning network (which is what I do), I return each year to learn the latest from the best.

PG: What keeps you coming back for more SOBCon?

SS: You can’t stand pat. You need to be learning all the time or you will fall behind. Life is continuing to evolve and each year when I come here, I have had a slightly different focus. My citizen journalism for Franklin Matters is still going strong. I still am finding non-profits in Franklin who want to learn and put social media to use to help themselves. The Franklin Food Pantry is really putting social media to social good as we go through our re-branding and strategic planning effort. Where else can you in a couple of days learn as much in a meaningful way as at SOBCon?

PG: What advice would you give someone thinking of attending SOBCon for the first time?

SS: Come with a problem statement in mind and use that to help focus your discussions during the mastermind sessions. Having such focus will enable the meaningful discussions and internalization of the ideas and concepts from the speakers into what you need to take away to accomplish what you need to do. You can adjust it slightly while here, or even after you leave. The knowledge may just provide enough insight to realize that you would be more successful doing what you need to in a different way.

PG: What advice would you give someone thinking of attending SOBCon for a second (or more) time?

SS: I’d use the same focus as for the first timers, but then look to connect with those you had at your mastermind sessions for at least one of the two days and then switch. There are so many good folks in the room, after you get a lay of the land day one, adjusting your tablemates for day 2 is okay and likely will be beneficial.

PG: Anything else you’d like to share about the event or anything else?

SS: On the one hand, don’t be bashful, yet on the other, don’t be overwhelmed by the star quality of the room. We all come to SOBCon to learn and share with each other. The serendipity of the connections is open for those who are ready to take advantage.

PG: Thanks Steve. You’re a star, and I can’t to see you again VERY soon!