TelluWriter hosted by Telluride Inside and Out

YourBookBiz -- Building Your Web Site

Your book's presence on the Internet is essential. The world is changing at an embarrassing rate. How we get and use information is driving the bus. The web can produce richer content, better targeted, up to date data, totally interactive, with faster access than the local brick and mortar book store. The fact the information tool fits easily in the palm of your hand is the final trump card in a perfect deck. Doom-sayers for the paper book industry speculate that the bound books of the future will only be purchased as "souvenirs" while our species will turn increasingly to the digital world for their information and entertainment. As authors we must approach the world wide web as a farmer approaches his garden. We want the most production and return for the least amount of hard work. The art is in knowing what are the common sense rules that work and what ones don't.

Your web page is an adventure you need to embrace. Establish your learning curve as a down payment on book publishing success. Planting the seeds for your future garden of writing related enterprises should be a pretty heady experience. As in all of our Community Publishing 101 components we have to insure that we aim for a high quality, user friendly, information rich site that draws customers and other writers back. We must compete at a global scale. As you transition your thinking into the fact that you are a writer and have every reason to expect to earn a living, also think of your website as a place to grow the other opportunities for you to make a buck using the skills you have as a writer: editing, copy editing, design, articles, speaking engagements, mentoring, etc. Your website becomes your one location office for your future earnings.

YourBookBiz -- Second Free Community Publishing 101 Seminar At Wilkinson

[click "Play" to hear R. J. Rubadeau describe Wednesday's seminar]

Community Publishing 101 is BACK to take on the basics of book marketing, and the most effective way to establish a web presence for yourself and your book. The second of four, free, one-hour  seminars will be held at the Wilkinson Public Library on Wednesday evening, February 3, at 6 p.m. at the Program Room. Nearly fifty local writers and book lovers attended the Kick-Off seminar last month and came away with a much better understanding of what happens to your book once the writing is finished. R. J. Rubadeau, seminar leader and Community Publishing 101 pilot project author, reports that many of our local writers have returned to their works-in-progress with a renewed enthusiasm and with a clear, easily followed, straightforward path in place towards eventual publication.

YourBookBiz/Community Publishing 101 is receiving a growing buzz in the national book industry. Our locally designed partnership, including the public library, the local book store, the writing community, our homegrown webzine, and a local small publisher, is a unique format for success that could be duplicated in many communities across the country. Our effort to preserve regional voices in our country's literarture by promoting and supporting local writers, and by "branding" our community led publication process with high quality, content integrity, and a truly professional finished product. This experiment is attracting attention on blogs and social networks dealing with writers, editors, publishers and the books they produce. Join this Telluride led revolution for better books and a growing, vibrant local writing community connected in a single positive effort.

Community Publishing 101/ Wednesday Feb. 3rd at 6 p.m. /Program Room/ Wilkinson Library /Telluride

YourBookBiz -- Your Profile is For Your Mother

Writing is a very lonely endeavor and not designed to comfort your mother. Those not afflicted with this peculiar passion call what we do narcissistic and antisocial. Writers’ explanations on why they write are usually loaded with confusing metaphors, dangling participles, and first-person hooptedoodle. As punishment for our ability to spend so much time happily alone with our thoughts, we are, by the standards of decent hardworking non-writers, expected to do our deeds behind closed doors and to wash our hands afterwards. At the end of the writing, says Joseph Heller, “Success and Failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success comes drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis, and suicide. With failure comes failure.” I guess we have all signed our pact with the devil and opt for the success regardless.

It takes a certain skill set to open a vein onto the page, but very few of those attributes are transferable to the real world. Our book biz marketing strategy begins with you introducing yourself to your customers, making a first impression, so that you can eventually ask their permission to try and sell them your book. This very important effort to blow your own horn with hyperbole and flowery prose I call hooptedoodle. Most of us are committed to keeping the hooptedoodle at a minimum in our writing. Our latent tendency to take flights of literary fancy and use words like “illuminating”, “provocative”, and “soul fulfilling” is rusty. So dust off those rose-colored Lolita shades and get ready to meet the person even your mother would admit had their act together. Hey mom, that's me.

YourBookBiz - Forming Your Own Publishing Company

Naming your book business. 

One of the first tasks on our Tasks and Timelines chart is to start your own book business. Decide on a name. Be conscious that your company’s name will appear in numerous places related to your book. Choose a name that reflects the serious nature or unique quality of your product(s). Think past your first book because you don’t want to change names once you start branding your work and your business. 

I chose Sirius Publications because my former business was known as Dog Star Consulting and Sirius is the name of the star, the brightest in the heavens, that carries that nickname. I thought Publications was a better add on descriptor than Books, Press, or Publishing House because of the number of articles and other writing projects I do alongside my books. 

Creating a web based business.

DON'T go to Godaddy.com or any other domain name registrar to see if the domain name (Youcompanyname.com) for your new company is available until you are ready to buy the rights.