I’ve always loved WD. Here’s another reason to love them:

17th Annual Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book Awards
Co-sponsored by Book Marketing Works, LLC

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ENTRY DEADLINE:  May 01, 2009

Win $3,000 in cash! Gain international exposure for your book! Catch the attention of prospective editors and publishers!

Writer’s Digest is searching for the best self-published books of the past few years. Whether you’re a professional writer, part-time freelancer, or a self-starting student, here’s your chance to enter the only competition exclusively for self-published books!

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Go to this page to learn all about my 90-minute webinar, “The Simple Secret To Writing A Non-Fiction Book!” – to be held 6 PM PST/9 PM EST this Thursday, 2/26. After the webinar, you will be able to:

* Name your book so that people will want to pick it up
* Create a complete plan for your book—much more than an outline—in just a few hours
* Write astonishingly quickly and well—completing a book in 90, 60, 30 days, or even less!
* Get your cover designed — inexpensively and quickly
* Get your book published — inexpensively and quickly!

Attendees will receive a free copy of my latest book. Join me!

Have you seen PersonalBrain? It’s a fascinating application that runs under Windows, OS X, and Linux. It lets you organize “thoughts” — and a “thought” can be a file, a shortcut, a copy of a file, a link to a website, or its own entity — into an unlimited network.

What makes PersonalBrain (PB) different from, say, a file manager, is that a thought can be connected to any number of other thoughts. So you can connect people to other people from the same company, but also connect the same people to other people in their family, as well as to clubs or sports teams to which they may belong.

Everything can be labeled. Everything can be tagged. Links can also be labeled, tagged, and customized in terms of thickness and color.

You can drag pictures into your Brain(s).

There is a fast and powerful search function, that can reach out beyond PB to find stuff on the web.

You can export Brains as functional html pages. You can zip them up and move them around. You can have enterprise-level Brains that interact with personal Brains.

I’ve been tracking the unfolding of this product for many years. It has now reached a point of maturity where I think it will add a lot to my personal organization toolkit.

There is nothing like it for organizing information for your book. You can actually do clustering/mindmapping within it, and link to sources and other stuff.

An amazing product. Check it out at thebrain.com.

Social networks give you access to everyone, and that includes your target audience — even if you are not sure exactly who they are. What’s special about Twitter is that results are just about instantaneous.

Here are a couple of ways to use Twitter to help you get focus on your book topic:

• Monitor the Twitter stream. What are people tweeting about, especially in areas that are of interest to you?
• Ask! Tweeps tend to be wonderfully responsive to honest and authentic questions. The more specific you are, the better your answers will be. If you want responses that are more than 140 characters long, tell people how to reach you.
• Remember: This is not oracular. It’s just a useful source of ideas and information. But a great one!

Your thoughts?

Sometimes you get stuck. Even using my BookProgram approach, you may find yourself without a clue as to how to write this next segment.

Peter Elbow, in “Writing With Power,” offers a number of excellent techniques.

But here’s one that is so obvious you may not have thought of it: Read some good writing, and use its patterns to say what you want to say.

Pick up any well-written magazine — I like Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Field & Stream — and read a couple of articles. Ask yourself: “What would it sound like if this author wrote my opening paragraph?” Then do it. Emulate. Model. (Don’t plagiarize, of course.)

Pattern imitation is a time-honored training approach; watch student painters copying paintings in museums. It’ll work for you, too.

As reported in this blog, I set out on January 11, 2009 to write a book in 30 days in public. (Go to my Facebook group to see it.)

I chose the topic, showing how I did it. I laid out the structure, in detail; then I began to write.

I wrote for 45-90 minutes every day except Saturdays. By the 24th day, the manuscript was done.

And by the 30th day, you could actually buy a bound or PDF copy here.

My point in doing this was NOT to show off. It was to show you how simple the process is; how in 30 days, one hour a day (on average), you can have a published book.

Let’s say I’m 3 times as efficient as you, or that you only have 20 minutes a day, 6 days a week, to devote to your book. So you’ll be done in 3 months.

What’s not to like?

You can do this! And I am here to help you.

At a business networking meeting this morning, my friend and colleague Anne gave me a referral slip with a name and phone number. “This young man’s story is amazing! I told him he should turn it into a book, and that you could help him!”

I called the number and had an interesting conversation with the gentleman. He told me he had come here about 9 years ago seeking political asylum, and that he had a harrowing tale — of the political asylum situation; of people who died; of how he made it. “But,” he said, “my English isn’t good enough to write this up.”

His story deserves to be told, and heard by many. I suggested he post an ad on Craig’s List (free) for a writing partner — perhaps an English or journalism student, who would undertake to partner with him in the creation of the book.

I mentioned low-cost publishing alternatives like Lulu.com.

He asked if I thought he might first do a screenplay. I suggested that he work on the book first. “Getting a screenplay written from a book is a well-defined task,” I said. “A book serves many purposes, and can be sold and presented in different ways. A screenplay has only one function, and it is not an easy task to sell one.” (What do you think, dear reader?)

If you have a book inside you, there is a way to get it out — whether or not you can write.

I attended a paid webinar ($79) with Jane Friedman, editor of Writer’s Digest, on non-fiction book publishing last week. If the recording becomes available, I will let you know. It was chock-full of useful info for aspiring non-fiction writers.

I was just sent a list of questions and answers that Jane did not have time for during the event. I think I can share one with violating copyright:

Q:  How do authors make money?

A:  In the most basic terms, authors make money when a publisher pays them an advance against
royalties for a book project. Then once the book starts to sell in the marketplace, the author has
the potential to earn more money (based on a royalty percentage specified in the book contract)
after the advance is earned out.

Most books do not earn out their advances, so usually the advance is the only money you’ll see
from a book project unless you are very good at marketing, promoting, and selling your own
work.

All of the information was at this level of directness. Hope they make the recording available; it was very powerful.

My friend and mentor Kevin Nations said, “Why don’t you not only produce a manuscript in 30 days, but actually have it available for sale by then? All you need is some quick editing, a cover, and maybe an ISBN!” Right on, Kevin! So that’s what I’m going to focus on today. As always, today’s post is viewable on Facebook, in “Joel’s book-writing mastermind group.”