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From the Publisher’s Desk: How Book Publishing looks from the Other Side (book publishing) Many writers aspire to writing books. Writing a book is a long, involved, difficult process. Book publishing is harder. A writer may submit his book time and time again only to be turned down again and again. He may eventually be successful. Wouldn’t it have been easier to have just gotten published the first time? Is that possible? You can improve your chances if you understand a little bit more about what happens at the publisher’s desk. Book publishers are busy people with several projects crossing their desks every day. They must make fast decisions about what will sell. They must also delegate their time efficiently in order to keep the business running. Only occasionally do publishers actually seek out work. Maybe understanding the work day of a publisher will help you to get a book published. Persistence Has a New Meaning You all know that writers must be persistent. Regardless of how many times you get shot down and your ideas are thrown in the trash, you have to keep going back for more discouragement. The idea is that eventually you’ll make it in the door. If you can get all the way through, you will finally get to the place where more of your work is accepted than declined. When working with the book publishing world, the rule is the same. If you have a book that you know will sell, you can’t give up on getting it onto the publisher’s desk again and again. You probably won’t be sending the entire book, but excerpts from it. As you continually send your manuscript again and again to publisher after publisher, you should try to market it in different ways. Publishers are looking for a particular kind of writing and will dismiss anything that doesn’t look like what they are looking for. Variation in your marketing techniques may turn a rejected book into an accepted book. The Right Stuff Book publishing is a strange area of business. The people’s tastes are somewhat fickle and a book publisher has to keep up with what kinds of books will sell. It seems that technically written mysteries will always have a place on the bookshelves, but it is unclear how many authors readers are willing to get to know. That market may be tied up until Crichton and Grisham are finished. That is just one example from one genre of books though. Publishers have to keep track of what is selling in all areas of literature. The best way for you to get your work noticed is to make it look like the other writing that is selling. Be careful not to imitate style or voice of another author. Write with your own unique words while imitating the use of popular public opinion. Another way to improve your chances of getting your work onto the right publisher’s desk is to find out who’s publishing what. Are You Barking Up the Right Tree? Some publishers specialize in a certain kind of writing. If you are writing a novel, it won’t do you any good to send it to the people who publish technical manuals. How do you find out who is the most likely candidate to publish your work? There are reference manuals at your library that will tell you the kinds of book publishing that is happening. It will contain valuable information leading you to children’s book publishers, novel publishers and textbook publishers. If the handbook at your library is not quite up to date, your next option is to check out the new release and best seller rack at the book store. Buy a few books and read them. You’ll have a much better feel for the market if you are a consumer. Book publishing is a difficult field to break into. It can be helpful to approach the issue from the direction of the publisher. Before you send out your manuscript again, there are things you can do to improve your chances. Change your marketing style so that you just may grab some better attention. Make sure that you are a book consumer yourself. You’ll get a better feel for what’s selling and therefore what a publisher will buy. You’ll also find out who is publishing which types of books. Finally, by buying the product you are trying to sell, you will improve the book economy all together. Publishers need to see people buying books before they can commit to publishing more.

Craigslist a Great Place to Find Free Stuff – While Exercising Caution of Course Craig Newmark of San Francisco founded Craigslist in 1999. Craigslist is a web page that offers anybody to sell or by articles virtually free of charge. Some of the categories such as job ads in some of the major cities have a charge, which is the funding for all the other private, free ads on Craigslist. Currently the web page is available in approximately 450 cities all over the world. IT serves more than nine billion viewers per months and therefore gives the web page a ninth place in the rankings for most frequently used web sites in the United States. The web sites offer over thirty million new postings and classifieds each month. Categories for classifieds and advertisement range from job and housing postings over traditional buy and sell classifieds all the way to community events and personal ads. Since Craigslist offers so many different ads and classifieds each month, it is also a great place to find free stuff. Many people that are about to move or have top give up a hobby due to whatever reason often times offer things for free on this web page. Generally ads and classifieds are divided by categories and then listed on the pages depending on the proximity to a major city. Many major cities in the United States have their own Craigslist. Classifieds that are posted on a city site generally are from somewhere in the proximity of the city. Often time’s sellers expect the buyer to pick up the merchandise. Therefore, it is not unusual to find car ads, fitness equipment, baby clothing and items, furniture and more on the web site. Posting is for most classifieds free and there are also no fees for anything else. In contrast to some other pages, posting a used children’s toy, a piece of furniture or similar as well as anything else is completely free. The seller has the possibility to stay anonymous till shortly before the sale, when the seller decides to hand out his or her telephone number or address for sale purposes only. Of course such classifieds and advertisements can also be cons and need to always be handled carefully. Generally a good judgment of the price and offer helps to prevent from falling for fraudulent classifieds. Even though there are measures from the creators of the website to prevent fraud such as official statements and more, there is no guaranty that a fraudulent add will be taken off in time to prevent any trouble. So whenever buying or selling on Craigslist do it with caution. Craigslist offers classifieds for anything. Community, housing, personals, jobs, for sale, services, gigs and even discussion forums are all part of the web site. On this website anybody can post anything. Therefore it might take some time to find the right ad. It might even be possible that the chosen product cannot be found. Craigslist works like an online yard sale or a flea market. Therefore finding the exact product may be hard. But sometimes getting lucky is all that it takes and then the seeker is united with the product of desire. This web page should be used and supported by anybody and everybody. Whatever there is for sale, it should be put up on Craigslist, so that other people can male good use of a product that might be a good product for someone else for a few more years. Even jobs can be found on Craigslist. In cities such as New York, this web page’s jobs are one of the most important sources for job hunters and therefore are not free of charge for the employers that are posting in some of the bigger cities.

Working on Your Own Time: It’s What Freelancing is About (freelance jobs) Do you have a busy life? Do you wish that you could schedule your work around the rest of your priorities? You work to make money so that you can live. You have no choice but to pay for housing and food and other life necessities. Because you need the money, work tends to creep up to the top of the priority list. Other things are more important though. Freelance jobs allow you to put work where it belongs on the list of priorities. You can play with your kids when they’re home, enjoy doing the things you enjoy outdoors while it’s daytime and spend your Sunday mornings at church instead of behind a counter. The work still needs to get done, but you can do it when you have time instead of from nine to five, Monday through Friday or worse, whenever you’re put on the schedule. Kinds of Freelance Jobs Do you have the appropriate skills and abilities to work at freelance jobs? There are many, many different kinds available. Those with professional degrees can consult. While the jobs that result from extensive education generally lead to many hours working for a good salary, your education can lead you in another direction. If you can manage to find the clients, you can work by appointment only, guiding those who do not have the experience or education that you have. If you are not a professional, you may still have the appropriate talents that will get you into freelance jobs. Writing is a very popular freelance opportunity. You live in a world that relies on the written word. You do not go through a single day without reading a considerable amount of text. Someone needs to do all of that writing, and much of it is hired out to freelancers. Actually, any skill that you possess may be suited to freelance work. Check out a few job boards and find out who’s hiring. Tips of the Trade Freelance jobs are out there, but so is the competition. To get yourself to the top of the hiring list, there are a few things you can do. First, use any experience you have to your advantage. Even if a previous job was short term or didn’t seem significant to you, you gained experience there. Let the employers know about everything you can do. Another thing you must do as a freelancer is to be very consistent and organized. An employer will be much more likely to rehire you if you turn out a good product. Everything you turn in should be clear and professional. Always meet deadlines. While most of the freelance jobs are extremely flexible, allowing you to work at your convenience, there are still deadlines. The work needs to be finished when the employer asks for it. Most of the qualities that will get you more freelance jobs only require common sense and a good work ethic. Living on Sparse Paychecks One downside of freelance jobs is that they are not necessarily consistent. Especially if you jump from one job to another, working for different companies, you will not have any guarantee about how much you will get paid each month. The flexibility may or may not be worth the uncertainty of freelancing to you. If you can manage to save effectively, the distance between paychecks won’t matter. If you do get frustrated about always wondering where the next paycheck is coming from, just remind yourself that the trade off is getting to enjoy more precious time not tied to a desk. There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to freelancing. You just need to decide how important it is to you to prioritize your life around what really matters to you.