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Hub You - Get a Copyright First... Right? 5 Big Myths About Getting Published
“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.” - Paul SamuelsonInvesting can be a tricky endeavor but even for the beginner it can be both a financially and emotionally rewarding experience. Before you invest make sure you have protected all your risks. Make sure you have the proper insurance for you and your family.This includes health insurance to cover medical bills from unexpected accidents or illnesses, disability in case you can not work, property insurance, and life insurance. Life insurance is particularly important for your family who count on your income. Insurance is actually an extremely safe place to put your money because it can not be touched if you are sued and found liable.If you have a 401k at your work make sure you are investing in it. Companies will often match the amount of money placed in a 401k. This can be extremely useful in establishing enough money to build an investment portfolio. Mutual fund companies will offer an automatic withdrawal feature for their investors. Money is tak
If an agent asks for "reading fees" or other fees other than itemized postage costs, the agent is likely a scam agent. If an agent can make money with reading fees, what incentive is there to actually sell your book?
If a publisher offers to publish your manuscript for a fee, that publisher is a subsidy publisher, known more commonly as a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers accept anything that comes at them. They are little more than a glorified printing service, with one important difference: the imprint on the book and the ownership of the ISBN number belong to them, not to you.<
Most business people feel that Non Profits are highly inefficient like government agencies. Few would deny that government agencies are inefficient, yet many hold short when criticizing non-profits; why is this? Well we know from watching disaster response that many non-profit groups operating on a shoestring get the job done. They are often much more efficient than government throwing huge amounts of money at each problem.Are all non-profits inefficient or just the large organizations? Are non-profit groups inefficient in all nations? One business management consultant recently spoke of the situation in Canada; Rather, I have seen governmental and non-profit agencies around us here in Canada that are wasteful and inefficient.That happens everywhere bureaucracy is. So, NGOs, Government and the largest non-profits are always having this problem. But on the flip side look at GM, IBM, etc. Corporations also are often inefficient; even cheat to hide that fact to keep up shareholders equity and quarterly profits by calling in favors from government regulators, switcheroos on book-to-bill ratios or ev
Myth #1: You must get a copyright to protect your work so editors don't steal it.
Fact: Under U.S. copyright laws, your work is protected as soon as it is in tangible form. You do not need to apply for and pay for an official copyright before you submit your work.
But should you do it anyway, just to be sure?
No. And here's why not.
Reason #1: If you are submitting to real editors at real publishing houses as you should be (not vanity presses or so-called "subsidy" presses), your manuscript will be just one of thousands of hopefuls in a staggeringly-high slush pile. Ahead of your manuscript in the line are manuscripts that were pre-screened and submitted by agents (who also have staggeringly-high slush piles in their own offices). If an editor has that kind of overabundance of material on hand, what incentive is there to steal?
"But," you protest, "what if the editor decides to publish my work under the name of a famous author so the publisher can make a lot of money?"
Think -- would that famous author really sit still for that? Of course not! Famous Author's lawyers would be all over any editor who tried to pass of someone else's work as that of Famous Author's. Nor is Famous Author likely to form a conspiracy with an editor to steal someone's work and publish it under Famous Author's name. There are too many things that can go wrong, too many careers at risk. Possibly, maybe, under certain phases of the moon and alignments of the planets, this might happen in the music industry. Maybe. If you're submitting songs, get educated about the music industry and how copyrights work. If you're submitting novels and nonfiction, don't sweat it.
Reason #2: So you go ahead and shell out 20 bucks or so to get that copyright. You submit your manuscript. Editor takes a look at your manuscript. First impression: "Hmm. This author copyrighted the work. Doesn't trust me to know not to steal manuscripts. Pah! Amateur!" The reading starts off with a bad impression, and goes downhill from there.
Reason #3: It's 20 rejections later, and you're still shopping your manuscript around. Editor number 21 picks it up and sees the copyright date from ten or so years ago. "Man, this has been out for a long time. Must be a real loser." Again, the reading starts off with a bad impression, and back comes the manuscript with rejection number 21.
The only exception to this rule is if you are self-publishing. Then and only then do you need to purchase an official copyright. Everything you need to know about copyrights can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office at http://www.copyright.gov/
Myth #2: You have to pay a lot to get your book published.
Fact: You don't have to pay anything other than postage costs of mailing your manuscript to get it published. A legitimate publisher pays YOU the going industry rate for the various rights to publish your work. A literary agent gets paid a percentage only AFTER selling your book.
If an agent asks for "reading fees" or other fees other than itemized postage costs, the agent is likely a scam agent. If an agent can make money with reading fees, what incentive is there to actually sell your book?
If a publisher offers to publish your manuscript for a fee, that publisher is a subsidy publisher, known more commonly as a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers accept anything that comes at them. They are little more than a glorified printing service, with one important difference: the imprint on the book and the ownership of the ISBN number belong to them, not to you. The Best Internet Marketing Strategies
It seems to me that there are more internet strategies today than ever, you would think they would slowly evolve over the years and the worst of the bunch would die, and the best internet marketing strategies would thrive and grow. That would leave us with an elite group of strategies that were honed to perfection and could reap the kind of results we all dream of. Instead we have thousands of ill thought out and some, utterly useless, strategies being proliferated all over the web by people who only make money by selling the strategy to other people… Of course in amongst all of those are the true gems that are hiding in shame from the rest of the internet marketing community.The internet is always in flux as it adapts to the growing needs of the online users, and with that will come fresh ideas that usually do work for a while. The problem is that as more and more people start to use (and abuse) those strategies then they lose their effectiveness. However there are a selection of the best internet marketing strategies that are sadly overlooked by most new marketers, and which remain as effective today
But should you do it anyway, just to be sure?
No. And here's why not.
Reason #1: If you are submitting to real editors at real publishing houses as you should be (not vanity presses or so-called "subsidy" presses), your manuscript will be just one of thousands of hopefuls in a staggeringly-high slush pile. Ahead of your manuscript in the line are manuscripts that were pre-screened and submitted by agents (who also have staggeringly-high slush piles in their own offices). If an editor has that kind of overabundance of material on hand, what incentive is there to steal?
"But," you protest, "what if the editor decides to publish my work under the name of a famous author so the publisher can make a lot of money?"
Think -- would that famous author really sit still for that? Of course not! Famous Author's lawyers would be all over any editor who tried to pass of someone else's work as that of Famous Author's. Nor is Famous Author likely to form a conspiracy with an editor to steal someone's work and publish it under Famous Author's name. There are too many things that can go wrong, too many careers at risk. Possibly, maybe, under certain phases of the moon and alignments of the planets, this might happen in the music industry. Maybe. If you're submitting songs, get educated about the music industry and how copyrights work. If you're submitting novels and nonfiction, don't sweat it.
Reason #2: So you go ahead and shell out 20 bucks or so to get that copyright. You submit your manuscript. Editor takes a look at your manuscript. First impression: "Hmm. This author copyrighted the work. Doesn't trust me to know not to steal manuscripts. Pah! Amateur!" The reading starts off with a bad impression, and goes downhill from there.
Reason #3: It's 20 rejections later, and you're still shopping your manuscript around. Editor number 21 picks it up and sees the copyright date from ten or so years ago. "Man, this has been out for a long time. Must be a real loser." Again, the reading starts off with a bad impression, and back comes the manuscript with rejection number 21.
The only exception to this rule is if you are self-publishing. Then and only then do you need to purchase an official copyright. Everything you need to know about copyrights can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office at http://www.copyright.gov/
Myth #2: You have to pay a lot to get your book published.
Fact: You don't have to pay anything other than postage costs of mailing your manuscript to get it published. A legitimate publisher pays YOU the going industry rate for the various rights to publish your work. A literary agent gets paid a percentage only AFTER selling your book.
If an agent asks for "reading fees" or other fees other than itemized postage costs, the agent is likely a scam agent. If an agent can make money with reading fees, what incentive is there to actually sell your book?
If a publisher offers to publish your manuscript for a fee, that publisher is a subsidy publisher, known more commonly as a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers accept anything that comes at them. They are little more than a glorified printing service, with one important difference: the imprint on the book and the ownership of the ISBN number belong to them, not to you.<
When looking for a Web Host there are lots of factors that come into play. Usually the deciding factors are price and bandwidth. A common overlooked item is the uptime guarantee. This is the percentage of time your account will be up and running What do these numbers really mean? If we look at these percentages and convert them into the amount of time your site is going to be down we get some very telling information. The chart below lists the uptime gurantee percentage and how that equates to time. 99% - 5256 Min/Yr or 87.6 Hours/Yr – 438 Min/Month or 7.3 Hours/Month99.5% - 2628 Min/Yr or 43.8 Hours/Yr – 219 Min/Month or 3.65 Hours/Month99.9% - 525.6 Min/Yr or 8.76 Hours/Yr – 43.8 Min/Month or .73 Hours/Month99.95% - 262.8 Min/Yr or 4.38 Hours/Yr – 21.9 Min/Month or .365 Hours/Month99.99% - 52.56 Min/Yr or .876 Hours/Yr – 4.38 Min/Month or .073 Hours/Month As you can see that while 99% uptime sounds like a lot, it actually allows for the host to have over 7 hours of downtime per
Reason #2: So you go ahead and shell out 20 bucks or so to get that copyright. You submit your manuscript. Editor takes a look at your manuscript. First impression: "Hmm. This author copyrighted the work. Doesn't trust me to know not to steal manuscripts. Pah! Amateur!" The reading starts off with a bad impression, and goes downhill from there.
Reason #3: It's 20 rejections later, and you're still shopping your manuscript around. Editor number 21 picks it up and sees the copyright date from ten or so years ago. "Man, this has been out for a long time. Must be a real loser." Again, the reading starts off with a bad impression, and back comes the manuscript with rejection number 21.
The only exception to this rule is if you are self-publishing. Then and only then do you need to purchase an official copyright. Everything you need to know about copyrights can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office at http://www.copyright.gov/
Myth #2: You have to pay a lot to get your book published.
Fact: You don't have to pay anything other than postage costs of mailing your manuscript to get it published. A legitimate publisher pays YOU the going industry rate for the various rights to publish your work. A literary agent gets paid a percentage only AFTER selling your book.
If an agent asks for "reading fees" or other fees other than itemized postage costs, the agent is likely a scam agent. If an agent can make money with reading fees, what incentive is there to actually sell your book?
If a publisher offers to publish your manuscript for a fee, that publisher is a subsidy publisher, known more commonly as a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers accept anything that comes at them. They are little more than a glorified printing service, with one important difference: the imprint on the book and the ownership of the ISBN number belong to them, not to you.<
A lot of new online businesses start the wrong way: They build a wonderful ecommerce shop (often spending a few thousand dollars). Then and only then does it become obvious to them something must be wrong. They know something is wrong because they don't make the much talked about internet riches.So what could be wrong?Coming online with the offline mentality...Offline, if you can get a shop in a very busy street or in a very popular mall, you will have a lot of shoppers. Offline, you'll need very attractive displays (The more outstanding and expensive the better).Offline, the location of your shop is about the most important factor in getting lots of people to your store. So, these offline thinkers come online with flash animations and thirty thousand dollar site designs.But guess what? No one notices them.Online, know one happens to pass by a site. They search and find a site. The question is: Are your findable?Starting a web business at the end instead of the beginning. Traffic is the lifeblood of any site. If you don't have traffic and loads of it, you're n
Reason #3: It's 20 rejections later, and you're still shopping your manuscript around. Editor number 21 picks it up and sees the copyright date from ten or so years ago. "Man, this has been out for a long time. Must be a real loser." Again, the reading starts off with a bad impression, and back comes the manuscript with rejection number 21.
The only exception to this rule is if you are self-publishing. Then and only then do you need to purchase an official copyright. Everything you need to know about copyrights can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office at http://www.copyright.gov/
Myth #2: You have to pay a lot to get your book published.
Fact: You don't have to pay anything other than postage costs of mailing your manuscript to get it published. A legitimate publisher pays YOU the going industry rate for the various rights to publish your work. A literary agent gets paid a percentage only AFTER selling your book.
If an agent asks for "reading fees" or other fees other than itemized postage costs, the agent is likely a scam agent. If an agent can make money with reading fees, what incentive is there to actually sell your book?
If a publisher offers to publish your manuscript for a fee, that publisher is a subsidy publisher, known more commonly as a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers accept anything that comes at them. They are little more than a glorified printing service, with one important difference: the imprint on the book and the ownership of the ISBN number belong to them, not to you.<
People often think that Adwords can only be used to help your internet business. That is NOT true. It can be a good use for your offline businesses as well! The first thing you need to do is to have a website for your brick and motar business, if you don't have one already. Usually the design doesn't matter that much, but you want something that stands out to give your business a more professional look. Make sure the words that you write aren't just professional but are able to convert. Your business info such as the address should be very close to the homepage for people to easily find it. Also you probably want something to capture prospects, and a mailing list will actually do. If you could, a contact information page is a better option.For the actually Adwords part you'll want to use the Geo-targeting feature. This means that Google will pay attention to your ads and given the location that you input, will only publish those ads to that specific demography. They will ignore the rest, so it will actually help you target the people in your local area. This is an excellent way to get you a good ROI an
If an agent asks for "reading fees" or other fees other than itemized postage costs, the agent is likely a scam agent. If an agent can make money with reading fees, what incentive is there to actually sell your book?
If a publisher offers to publish your manuscript for a fee, that publisher is a subsidy publisher, known more commonly as a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers accept anything that comes at them. They are little more than a glorified printing service, with one important difference: the imprint on the book and the ownership of the ISBN number belong to them, not to you.
Why is that important? Because if you want your book to appear in real bricks-and-mortar bookstores, you don't want the imprint of a vanity publisher on them. Book distributors and buyers know who the vanity presses are and avoid them like the plague.
If you really want to self-publish, go with a good printing service, such as Books Just Books. Educate yourself about copyrights, ISBN numbers, bar codes, distribution services, marketing, and other business aspects of publishing. You need to know the business side, because when you self-publish, you are starting a business.
If you do not want to self-publish, avoid the siren calls of the "We'll Publish Your Book!" vanity press advertisements in the backs of magazines, polish your work until it gleams, then submit it to legitimate publishers, the ones listed in the Writer's Market.
Myth #3: If you want to break into publishing, start with writing for children. It's easy. Then move up to writing for adults.
Would all the children's writers out there stop howling with laughter? Thanks.
Fact: Breaking into the children's market is harder than breaking into the mainstream adult market, and breaking into the picture book market may be the hardest feat of all.
Part of the difficulty is that everybody and his uncle thinks writing for children is easy, so they dash off a cute little tale in Dr. Seuss rhyme about the fuzzy bunny who saved the day, throw in a heavy-handed moral, and send it off "to get published." Slush piles are knee-deep in these amateur offerings. When 95% or more of the slush pile is unpublishable scribbling, it's no wonder that the odds look so bad when you just look at the numbers.
But even for writers who know what they're doing, who study the market, who read children's books all the time, breaking in is hard. Editors are demanding. Children's books have to be concise. The author must choose words carefully for best effect.
Good writing is good writing. All editors demand good writing. Children's editors demand it even more, because their market is smaller, and adult buyers of children's books are more discriminating about the quality of those books. We're not just talking parents here, either. Teachers and librarians have a big influence over the children's book market, and you'd better believe they demand quality writing.
Myth #4: Once you've published your first book, your writing career is set. From then on, it's easy.
Fact: Would all the authors who have published one book but couldn't get the second published please raise their hands?
Thank you. From that forest of hands out there, it's easy to see that publishing your first book is not the equivalent of opening the golden door to the publishing industry. There's no free ticket to a glamorous life of autograph parties and spots on Oprah.
Sorry.
Myth #5: Getting published is easy once you know the "secret."
You'll hear this from people who have been "published" by vanity publishers (see Myth #2). Often they're pleased with the service -- but their pleasure comes primarily from seeing their writing between two covers and having a handful of sales. For hobbyists, maybe this is enough, provided they don't spend their retirement savings on publishing scams. You may also hear pitches like this from eboo
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