Logical Expressions Blog

Since we are no longer publishing a newsletter, we’ve rebranded our former Publishize Newsletter archive site as The Book Consultant.

It still has all the great content you’ve come to know and love and we’ve been writing a lot of new articles lately.

So without further ado, here are the latest articles we’ve put online in the last month or so:

10 Ways You Can Use a Web Site to Promote Your Book
After your book is done and out in the world, use your Web site to promote it.

How to Break Out of a Funk
The best method to extricate yourself from a bad mood depends depends on what the funk is related to in the first place

Why Do You Do What You Do?
The next time you are feeling a little lost in your business, consider reconnecting with the core reasons WHY you started the business in the first place

Woo Woo and Buddies Aren't Enough; You Have to Work Too
Don't fall for pie-in-the-sky promises that skip over details like doing the work of operating your business.

How to Use Filter Rules and Labels in GMail to Manage Your Groups and Newsletters
Avoid getting overwhelmed with email from an active discussion group.

Rejection, Quality, and Book Publishing Misconceptions
The real reasons publishers reject books and quality misconceptions about self-publishing vs. traditional publishing

Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places?
Not all marketing techniques are a good idea. Avoid bad online neighborhoods and loser partners that make you look bad

7 Free Things You Can Do With Your Brand New Kindle
Seven free things you can do with your brand new Kindle that also help you learn how it works

How to Return to a Book That Has Been Shelved
Picking up a project that you have set aside is more difficult than it may seem; you need to face your fears and start again

Creative Differences: Cultivate and Respect Your Best Writing Times
Your creativity fluctuates throughout the day, so take advantage of your best (and worst) writing times

Outsourcing Fears: Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
Whether you are the freelancer being hired or the employer, the experience of outsourcing is jam-packed with fear

Lift and Separate: Why Support Matters
When a mastermind group works, it lifts people up and they separate, take action and report back

Bottom Feeder or Hero? You Decide.
Ethics are a matter of opinion; trust your intution and don't partner with people whose goals aren't in alignment with yours

Blasting Though Writer's Block - How to Get Back Into the Writing Groove
Once you stop writing, it’s difficult to get yourself to start back up again. These tips can help you get back in the groove

As an aside, we also updated the Logical Expressions home page with all of our Web sites. If you’ve ever wondered just how many sites we really have out there, now you know.

A friend of mine told me that January 13 is "Make Your Dreams Come True day." I checked multiple Web sites and it seems to be for real.

According to Holiday Insights, on this day you should:

"Do something, anything to move in the direction of achieving your dreams."

What a great idea for a holiday!

One of my dreams was always to write a book. If you're like most people, maybe you've shared that dream at one time or another.

But then you thought...

• "I don't know how."
• "Where do I even start?"
• "I don't think I have enough time."
• "It's just too hard."

And so on. (You get the idea.)

The thing is, even when your "logical brain" tells you all the reasons why you can't accomplish something, often the dream persists.

A few years ago, I was there and I know how it feels. Unfulfilled dreams have a way of wrapping themselves around your heart. In my case, it took me 10 years to finally publish my first book. (I don't recommend that!)

If you know deep inside that you really want to write a book, I have good news for you.

Yesterday ironically enough on January 13, just in time for Make Your Dreams Come True Day, we put the finishing touches on a new program called:

Write and Publish Your Dream Book

You can read all the details on this page:
http://www.selfpubu.com/overview.aspx

We've put together ten courses that are carefully constructed to take you seamlessly from one step in the book writing and publishing process to the next. You get access to a new course each month of the program. And when you complete the program, you still get lifetime access to the courses.

In addition to the courses, when you enroll, you get access to our private discussion areas, twice-monthly mastermind Q&A calls with me, audios, and a whole lot more.

I'll be honest here. Ten or even five years ago, I would have killed for this program. I can't even begin to calculate the amount of time it would have saved me. Please do check it out. I'm really proud of what we've put together here.

If you are interested in realizing your dream of becoming a published author, please spend some time looking over the Web site. I think you'll be glad you did!

http://www.SelfPubU.com

Here's to making all YOUR dreams come true!

If last year stunk for you writing-wise, it may have been for one or more of these reasons: lack of ideas, lack of motivation, lack of time.

This article explores a few possible solutions to these problems, based on my experience:

Blasting Though Writer's Block - How to Get Back Into the Writing Groove

Let us all hope that it is the first of many more articles to come.

Enjoy!

It’s almost Thanksgiving and I was thinking about all the things I’m thankful for this year. In the spirit of the Facebook “25 Random Things” genre, I thought I’d post mine here. Sure none of it is earth-shattering stuff, but it’s all true.

1. My husband. The most supportive, smart, and wonderful person I have ever met.

2. My sister. Who puts up with almost daily rants and whines via email and even usually understands because of our shared history.

3. The Internet. Which makes it possible for me to earn a living from the middle of nowhere.

4. My critters. The five dogs and two cats who make me laugh and offer unconditional love, even when I probably don’t deserve it.

5. The Monday Mastermind Ladies. Who offer accountability, support, and make me smile every week.

6. My business coaches and mentors. You know who you are and you rock.

7. My clients. Who entrust me with one of their most important creative works: a book.

8. My veterinarian. The best in North Idaho. (If only I could find a doctor I like as much.)

9. My local friends who get me out of the house every once in a while.

10. My online buddies, some of whom I’ve been emailing since I first got online in 1995.

12. My health. Yeah, eating right and exercising helps, but I don’t discount the “luck” factor either.

13. My teeth. I like food and I’m flossing the teeth I want to keep.

14. My parents and family, who mostly get what I do and why I do it.

15. My house and property. Our log home and 40 acres of forest remain a sanctuary.

16. People saving homeless pets like the members of the National Association of Pet Rescue Professionals. There are a lot of unsung heroes out there helping animals.

17. Our productive garden and all the great food we preserved from it.

18. James taking up artisan bread baking and homemade tofu making. (I can seriously support my husband’s food-related hobbies.)

19. My computer and automobile for lasting longer than they probably should without any major problems.

20. The ability to pay our bills on time, even during one of the worst economic down-turns ever.

21. Chocolate. What if chocolate had never been invented?! A world without chocolate would be a less happy place for me.

22. The people who read our books, blogs, articles and newsletters and take the time to contact us and say nice things.

23. Sandpoint/North Idaho. I’m grateful to live in such an amazingly beautiful place.

24. Information access. It’s so easy to research anything online or at a library. I’m thankful that knowledge is at my fingertips and I have the ability to read it.

25. Clean water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. Every time we lose power, I remember how much I love modern conveniences.

There you have it, my 25 Thankful Things.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Like a lot of people I’ve submitted my articles to free article sites in an effort to drive traffic. I’ve never thought it was a particularly good idea for a number of reasons, so only about 10 of my articles are out there on these free sites.

Now I’m even MORE glad I never really bought into article marketing.

The other day I looked through my spam filter and discovered a PayPal invoice. I retrieved it from spam land and discovered that one free article site has decided that he’s paying too much for bandwidth so now he’s going to BILL people for the privilege of having their articles on his site.

Here’s what the invoice said. I’m changing the name of the site, since I don’t want to give this loser any traffic. The typos are his:

****

Thank you for posting your articles and your use of our website [ScumArticleSite.com] Because of you we are growing a LOT and our server useage and the benefits you gain by using our service are benefiting you. So much so that we are forced to ask you to donate for a lifetime membership to keep using our site for free and submitting all of the great articles that you do. Please find a paypal bill for the small amount of $7.99 for your lifetime fee for using [ScumArticleSite.com] - thank you. This will help offset the increased server costs and keep advertising off the site. Thanks so much in advance for your support. Sincerely [ScumArticleSite.com]

****

I went into PayPal and cancelled the invoice and sent him a message saying that he had a lot of nerve billing ME when I was letting him use my content for free.

(As an aside, the part about “keeping advertising off the site” is a huge lie; it’s riddled with banner ads.)

He actually wrote back and said (again the English problems are his):

I don't use your article - I provide you a service where you benefit by posting your articles.

Give me a gigantic break! Without the articles, this guy HAS NO SITE. I’ve certainly seen no benefit from having my articles there and I told him to take them off. I don’t deal with lying scum.

I encourage you to pay close attention to your PayPal statements. If you see invoices you don’t recognize, be sure to cancel them.

Please pass this on to anyone you know who has articles posted on second- and third-tier kinda cruddy free article sites. When you use services like Article Marketer that distribute articles for you, they can end up in questionable cyber-neighborhoods.

We've been quiet this fall because we've been busy working on our newest project.

Over the last couple of years, so many people have asked us questions about how we managed to write and publish our 10 books that we decided to distill everything we know down into easy-to-digest modular "chunks."

The result is a series of training courses at our newest Web site http://www.SelfPubU.com. Our beta testers have given us great feedback and now we're finally ready to share SelfPubU with the world.

Learning how to publish books used to be time-consuming at best and downright confusing at worst. Not anymore. This is the training I wish I'd had when I started down my own book publishing path.

Although we're still working on additional courses at SelfPubU.com, these classes are live right now:

• How to Turn Your Blog Into a Book
• How to Turn Your Book Idea Into a Marketable Book
• How to Come Up with a Marketable Title for Your Book
• How to Create an Outline for Your Nonfiction Book
• How to Create a Strategic Writing Plan and (Really!) Finish Your Book
• How to Find and Select an Editor for Your Book
• How to Get an ISBN for Your Book

For more information, you can check out our Press release "New Book Publishing Courses Offer First Online Training for Aspiring Self-Publishers” or visit the Web site at http://www.SelfPubU.com

We often get questions from authors who are concerned about book and e-book piracy. They hear about how the big publishers are struggling with this issue, and they wonder how they can possibly protect their intellectual property if the big boys are having so much difficulty.

Our Authors Should Fight Obscurity, Not Piracy article addresses these concerns. The article explains why:

• Fighting doesn't work
• You have the advantage in the marketplace
• Pirates may be doing you a favor

If you have concerns about piracy, you should read the article and gain some peace of mind. As always, your feedback is welcome whether you agree or disagree.

If you're like me, you never cared much for the idea of those "free writing" exercises that have you keep a journal or set a timer and write "anything" for a period of time. If you are going to spend time writing, you want to be something you can use in an article or book.

But free writing doesn't have to produce useless content. You can use the "Self Interview" free writing exercise to warm up your writing muscles and produce usable content at the same time.

The Self Interview free writing exercise is simple:

• Envision your reader
• Ask your reader for a pressing question
• Engage in a conversation

Interested in learning more about this technique? Read my How to Produce Usable Content with Free Writing article on the Publishize Newsletter site.

I posted an article to our Publishize Newsletter site this week titled 3 Reasons Why You Should Release Your E-Book with Your Print Book. I wrote the article because I think self publishers should not follow the lead of traditional publishers and release electronic editions of their e-books after releasing the print version.

In the article, I cover three reasons why self publishers are better served by releasing as many forms of their book as possible in the launch of the title:

• It makes your readers happy
• You save money in production costs
• You get more out of your marketing efforts

If you are having difficulty deciding upon whether your book should be published in print form, digital form, or both, read the article to find out why "both" is the right answer.

One of the benefits of putting on the Self-Publishers Online Conference, is that we get to hear publishing advice from the other experts who speak at the event. Like attendees, we're still learning everything we can about book publishing and marketing.

After this year's conference, we sat down and mapped out a plan for our next book, based on what we learned at SPOC. Instead of writing books and then publishing a blog or article site, we're doing the articles and blog first. Today, I'm pleased to say, we have the first glimmers of our upcoming TechnoHomesteaders book.

• The article site - http://www.technohomesteading.com
• The blog - http://www.technohomesteaders.com

The next step is to create the Web site for the book itself, and of course, to add content to the blog and article sites. It's all a work in progress, so we'll see how it goes. Stay tuned!

Here are two articles, both written by James:

Aventures with Smashwords Part 3 - Getting Premium Distribution
On our blog, James explains why you want your ebook in the Smashwords Premium Catalog and how to do it. Read more...

How to Sell Your Book to Everyone
On the Publishize newsletter site, you'll find out why trying to sell your book to "everyone" is doomed to fail. The secret to marketing to everyone is to start by marketing to someone.  Read more...