1. You have a great online presence. You have built a strong online presence. You have a regular following on your blog. Your current readers will either buy your book or they will be willing to promote it.
2. You have well defined goals. You know what goals you plan to achieve from your book. You have a timeline for completing your book and you know what professional goals you wish to achieve. If it is not a written goal, it will continue to be a wish.
3. You dream about holding your book at a press release. You can visualize how it will feel to be a published author. If you can visualize the feeling you will be more likely to find a way to do it.
4. You have the money to invest. You have determined that benefits to your business and professional status are greater than the cost of publishing. Most authors don’t a big profit on book sales. The money is made from the opportunities that result from being a published author.  
5. Your desire to write your book has moved to the top 5 things you must accomplish in the next year. If you have a burning desire to write a book it will be easier to complete it. Your passion will be conveyed in your book. Your readers will feel your passion for the topic. 
6. You have defined your niche market. There are new books added to the bookshelves everyday. Yours will need to stand out to get noticed. If your book sounds like 2000 others it will not make any difference how intriguing you think the book is it wont get noticed. You must first define your niche market before beginning your book.
7. You have a marketing plan. You have an idea of how you are going to market your book. You already have an online presence but you have ways to promote your book when it is published.
8. You want to be seen as an expert in your field. Published authors are seen as more credible than their unpublished peers.
9. You have made a daily practice of writing. Setting aside time to write daily will make the process easier.
10. You have a great head shot for the back of the book. If good hair days are infrequent, it could be a sign that you are almost ready.

Are you ready?

Can you think of other ways to know you are ready to write and publish a book?

Journaling is one of the best ways to develop a daily habit of writing.  Journaling can have positive impact on your life now and for reflection in the future. It is a good way to look back at your life and see how you have grown emotionally. You can reflect on the blessings and challenges that life has thrown in your path.

I journal almost daily and it has had an amazing impact on my stress level. By writing my fears, hopes and gratitudes, I gain a better perspective on my life.  Expressing my thoughts on paper, allows me to uncover my deepest feelings. When I begin writing I can feel myself relax and soon the challenges seem smaller. Sometimes I cry the entire time I write and other times I laugh. Whatever emotion journaling evokes, you will feel a sense of wellbeing when you are finished. 

We recently had a comment from one of our readers that she never intended to write a book, but her daily habit of journaling evolved into a book. I have several little books that will result from my journal. They may ultimately not be for the public, but they will be in a book format.

If you have trouble thinking of topics to write in your journal you should check out The Reflective Writer. Judy Stone-Goldman always writes a reflective post and then gives a writing prompt. I often use her prompts to get me started.

What do you write in your journal?

What writing prompts do you use?

What tips would you have for someone that is just beginning to journal?

What benefits have you seen from journaling?

Via Flickr Ayan Khasnabis

I decided to take a break from writing to share a few great articles that I read this past week related to the publishing field. If you are thinking of or are involved in publishing your own book, these are definitely worth a look.

8 Reasons Self Publishing is Entering The Golden Age, by Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer. Joel shares his perspective on the future of self publishing and for anyone thinking of self publishing, this is a great read.     

If you want to layout your own book you will want to read a recent post by duolit, 7 Tips for Great Layout Design. In the post, she reviews 7 essential steps to creating a professional book design.     

Ezra Barany of Barany Video Marketing, just recently posted a series of posts on book trailers. If you have a book or are working on a book, a book trailer is a must.

What Makes a Good Book Trailer Part 1

What Makes a Good Book Trailer Part 2

What makes a Good Book Trailer Part 3 

Candace C Davenport of Our Little Books loves words. She is the creator of the Our Little Books Word of the Day. Check out her popular post, Words! What are They Good For? 

Lizbeth Tanz dispels the misconception about the impact of duplicate content on search engines.  The Myth of Duplicate Content discusses how you can have our content out there without being punished by the search engine gods.

Sit back and enjoy!

Jumping in turned out to be the best decision to accomplish our goals. We are very excited with the results. So what benefits resulted from participating in the challenge? Could participating in a Blog Challenge help you and your business? We definitely think so.

Here are six actual results that helped me personally as a blogger and, as a result, also helped Our Little Books as a business:

• Accountability - I seem to need the accountability. It was like having a goal buddy. I don’t really think anyone would have reprimanded me if I had missed one day, but I felt accountable to the group. Everyone in the group was taking the challenge so I didn’t want to let them down.  
• Established a habit - I usually write in my journal daily but I had not disciplined myself to write a post daily. It actually was easier to plan a post daily than it was to plan 2-3 a week. I didn’t write all of the posts myself. I asked for guest posts and I was more proactive about telling them when I need the post. 
• Lead by Example - We tell authors the benefits of blogging to develop their online platform. We can’t expect someone to do something we are not willing to do. How can I tell someone the benefits of blogging if I don’t take it seriously?
• Relationships - I met some great people. I established relationships that will result in joint ventures in the future. We had an increase in requests for our Free e-book on the benefits of having a little book for you business and also in people wanting to learn more about Our Little Books from our newsletter. People read the posts and wanted to know more!
• Alexa Ranking - In an Alexa ranking, your site is ranked against other sites in the world and in the US. On August 1^st, we ranked 957,489 in the world and today (31 days later) we rank 417,189 (the lower the number the better). On August 1^st , we ranked 133,000 in the US and today we rank 54,590. We more than surpassed the goal for the month! 
• Site Traffic Statistics - Do you know your site traffic numbers? The traffic statistics are something we should all be checking. In August, we almost doubled our numbers!

Unique Visitors:          July   1901       August   3631
Number of Visits:        July   4230       August   8008

We love numbers! The fact that all of the numbers increased significant really gets us excited. We know the numbers are not as good as the big bloggers, but they have been blogging daily much longer than we have. Can you imagine what our numbers will look like in 3 months, or 1 year? But, as exciting as the numbers look, I am most excited about the relationships I built and the habit I formed by participating.

I don’t want the momentum to slow down so I have already started another Blog Challenge. 31 Days of Blogging Challenge is more about building a better blog. You can still sign up. It started on August 23^rd and we don’t have assignments on the weekend. You would only have 7 days to make up.

If you have the opportunity to participate in a blog challenge you, and your business, will not regret it.

We have received submissions from people who wrote their poems back in the '70s and '80s while in college. We have received poems from people who have never thought to share their poetry with anyone before. We have received poems from people who have dreamed of being a published poet. Whatever your reason, share your poems with the world. Who knows who you may inspire! Your poem may be the poem that changes someone's life. Now, how cool would that be?

Even if you don't have a poem, if you know anyone that loves to write poetry and would love to be published, please pass this information along. They will thank you profusely!

To get you in the mood I thought I would include my favorite inspirational poem. 

The Road Not Taken 


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that the passing there 
Had worn them really about the same, 

And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference. 

By 

Robert Frost 

This is one of my favorite poems of all times. It continues to inspire me today. It reminds me that we are free to choose our destiny. You can choose your path by living deliberately or you can live by default.

What does the poem say to you? Do you have a favorite poem?

It is interesting to think about the ebb and flow of a language and how words come and go depending on the times. As you know, in order to support the writers of the little books we publish, our blog readers, and our followers, Our Little Books puts out a Word of the Day on our facebook business page. These daily words are sometimes unusual. They are sometimes educational. They can also be commonplace or just downright silly. We do the Word of the Day because we work with words as a business and words are what make up the beauty of any language. But they can also get you into trouble.

Take the word niggardly for example. It is an adjective meaning stingy or cheap and unfortunately, phonetically very close to the racial “N word” slur. Although both words are completely unrelated etymologically, still the use of niggardly has caused several controversies over the past few years.

In 1999, David Howard, a white aide to the black mayor of Washington DC, used the word niggardly when he referred to the budget. One of his black co-workers became insulted and filed a complaint leading to Mr. Howard’s resignation. The gay community became outraged (Mr. Howard was gay) which then resulted in Mr. Howard being re-instated to another job. Interestingly enough, although he had used the word correctly, Mr. Howard felt he had learned from the whole situation stating, “I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind. That’s naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person can't afford to be colorblind. They don't have to think about race every day. An African American does.” 

This one word which led to this incident, then led to a huge national debate over the correctness of whether to shun a valid word over being politically correct on racial sensitivities. What was interesting was that the majority of people, including Julian Bond, the head of the NAACP, supported the use of the word. In fact, while pointing out where people were on issues of race, Mr. Bond said, “(s)eems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on this issue.” In this incident, the dictionary won out over racial sensitivities.

There have been several other incidents surrounding the word niggardly, mostly by teachers, where a student considered their teacher racist for using the word niggardly in the classroom. Although most of the complaints stemmed from people quick to take offense and ignorant of the word’s true meaning, in most of these incidents, the teachers were chastised for their lack of sensitivity.

Should you use such a word as niggardly if that word makes people uncomfortable? Should people just chill out when it comes to a correct word in the English language that has no etymological connection what so ever to a trigger word?  Both good questions.  But whether you believe that no one should be restrained from using any word correctly or that you should be more reserved and sensitive to sensibilities and therefore choose not to use such a word, the bottom line is that words are powerful no matter which way you believe. As can be seen here, just one simple word can have the ability to stir up an entire nation and create a national debate.   

The English language is a magnificent vehicle. Words are beautiful and words are important. As a writer, how you choose to use a word can make all the difference. So when you are writing, do think about your words and the impact they have on your reader. In fact, I think there once was a song that said: “Words. What are they good for? Absolutely everything”. And that pretty much says it all.

I came across this video by James Patterson on his book Cross. It is just him in front of a camera talking about his book. If James Patterson thinks he needs to do a YouTube video then everyone should be doing a video to promote their book and business. Patterson certainly has the money to hire someone to make a great video but he decided to let his readers get to know him. What is stopping you from video marketing?

In the previous post I discussed the importance of using online video to market your business which can help both online and offline industries

Now, I wanted to help those who upload videos to social video sites like YouTube get the most possible exposure and get it noticed by people in Youtube.  To get the most out of your videos, you have to take more consideration than uploading it plain.  Uploading it effectively involves fairly easy techniques which optimizes the video for searches.

 The first advice that I suggest is to select keywords that people would use to search for your type of business which also relates to the video.  Once you find a few keywords that you think people would search for, you have to optimize the video title, description, and include tags with the targeted keywords.

All too often, I see someone upload their video and the title says something like ck6.wmv which is the file name that they saved it on their computer as.  This is an actual video that I found on Youtube by the way.  It also had no description, no tags, and only about 35 views total after almost a year online when the average video on Youtube probably gets a few thousand views in the same amount of time.

The image below shows you a screenshot of where to include your keywords.  Make sure you type in a descriptive title, description, and place multiple tags.  As you can see, Youtube automatically includes the title as your videos filename.  All you need to do is erase it and type in the title you want.

The second advice that I have is to place your website link into the description area within the first few words or else it will not be shown as easy.  If you place it more than a few words away, the url may not be seen unless the person clicks the drop down button to get more information about the video.  The easier the link is seen, the more likely people will click on it to go onto your site.  

Another tip to go along with this is to make sure you type in http:// before the whole URL or else it will not be clickable.  I see a lot of people make this mistake also.  So if I were to type in “www.videoemailmarketingclub.com” the link will not show and just be the text.  So make sure you type in the URL like this: “http://www.videoemailmarketingclub.com” with the http:// in front.  I know its simple but a lot of people seriously don’t understand why some links are clickable and others aren’t. 

This was a guest post provided by Eric Woolf explaining some of his introductory techniques to social video marketing based from his video marketing production and optimization services.  If you have a question for him please leave a comment below or contact him at his video and email marketing website. 

• You are not ready to take the time. Writing a book can be a monumental task, particularly if you are not accustomed to writing. It takes time and dedication. If you do not have the time it takes and you still want to write a book read How Busy People Find Time to Write.
• You may just not be ready to tackle such a large task. If you don’t want to work that hard you will not be successful. You should wait until you have a burning desire to write a book.
• You don’t have a niche market. There are lots of books on the shelves. How will your book be different? Do you have a unique message? If you want to write a book on parenting tips for preschoolers you may not get noticed. But if you narrowed your topic to parenting a preschool child with autism you may have a niche market that would be of value.
• You don’t know your topic well enough to write about it. If you are not well versed on a topic then you should wait until you do more research or gain more experience in your field.
• You don’t have an audience. Many authors write and publish a book and then try to market the book. Although a book can improve your credibility, if you don’t already have a following you won’t have any interest in your book. It is important to have an online presence before you write your book. If your followers like your blog and think the information you provide is valuable then they are likely to be interested in your book. If you are already well known in your field and speak to a live audience then you have a market for your book. After you establish an audience then writing and publishing your book is the next step.
• You don’t have a plan for your book. You must have well defined goals before you begin your book. If you have no plan to complete the book once you have started it, most likely it will remain an idea or at best, an outline on your computer.
• You don’t have any money to write your book. It would be great if you had a big publisher pay you upfront royalties for your book. In reality, the book will cost you money upfront. You need to pay for book editing, copy design, book cover design, and printing. You will have to weigh the benefits of being a published author with the cost of publishing a book.

Many doors can be opened for a published author, but with anything you need to be ready before venturing into the project. It can be fun if you are prepared.

If you are not ready now, what do you need to do to get ready? What obstacles do you need to overcome?

Photo via Flickr enriqueburgosgarcia's photostream

Today we have an interview with the Lynette Chandler, the team leader, at BlogEnergizer.com. They offered to write any blog an exclusive interview. I found good information on their site and felt they may have some valuable insights for our readers. If  you find the information helpful don’t forget to vote for this interview. The person with the most votes will be recognized on their site and will win valuable blogging tips.

Question 1: What advise would you give to a small business owner that is starting to blog for the first time?

A blog can play an effective part in your marketing mix but you need to be aware as you go into this that it is not a set, forget and watch the traffic or business come in sort of thing. Blogs need updating. It doesn't have to be couple of times a day or even daily but you have to plan in into your budget and also your time. It helps if you can plan out your posts ahead and schedule them. If you have a team you could make it a joint effort and allow each team member the permission to update it to spread the work load.

Make sure you have it on your own domain. Don't blog for other people's domain, preserve your brand.

Question 2: Why is it important for an author to establish a web presence with a blog?

Because it can be a great way to get connected with your readers. You can have a real conversation and begin a relationship with them. While you are doing that, you will be amazed at the type of input they will give you. These are things that don't always come up when you ask them to submit a feedback form. These are things that are either spontaneous, or they aren't conscious is interesting/important to you when you work on your story. It can be very insightful. 

Also, blogs allow you to pre-sell your upcoming work and promote current work too. I've seen authors offer chapters on their blogs either as one or two samples or as a download. 

Question 3: Can you explain the importance of commenting on other blogs to improve your web presence?

The idea is, to choose blogs where your audience is likely to visit and who have a decent flow of traffic. You add a good or useful comment and you will get the opportunity to enter your website URL. It actually started off as a way to get search engines to consider that as part of the page linking back to you and hence improve your ranking but depending on how the other person's blog is set up, this may or may not be the case anymore. 

Personally, when I comment, it is not for search engines. It is to interact and begin a conversation which could build into a deeper relationship later on. But to do that you also have to be regular. If you visit once or twice people won't notice you. Neither would the blogger. It's a lot like helping out or participating in forums. Log in to a forum you are part of. You know right off the bat who are the active ones, what they do and so on. 

Since that could take quite a bit of time and effort, unless you can hire it out, I would pick a handful of blogs to be a regular commenter on. 

Question 4: What is your favorite way to promote a blog?

Guest blogging. I'm doing it now too :). That's because it is so easy and coming up with content isn't always a challenge for me - hey we come up with so many for bloggers weekly and monthly. I also like it because it allows me to 'meet' and interact with people who are new. It is like getting invited to a group's dinner party. Fun. Coming in close to that would be accepting interviews either on a blog like what we are doing now, or a recorded or live one. 

Question 5: What was the favorite contest you promoted on your blog?

That would have to be an Egg Hunt. I put a small egg graphic in a spot that was visible but not glaringly obviously on the blog. People would have to find it and post a comment to tell me where. The prize sponsors helped by notifying their list it was a nice traffic bump, helped people get acquainted and explore the blog and I had a lot of fun interacting with new people. 

So what's next? If you like the interview, let us and Julia know by voting for it at http://blogenergizer.com/teip-vote/