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E-Writer Issue #23 1 September 2005 http://www.nickdaws.co.uk E-mail: ewriter-at-nickdaws.co.uk "Hints, tips and tricks for wired-up writers" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >>> In This Issue <<< 1. Editorial 2. How to Get as Much Writing Work as You Want in 14 Days or Less 3. Market Info: Miscellany 4. Useful Resource: MSGTAG 1. Editorial Hello again, and thank you for being a valued E-Writer subscriber! August was a quieter month for me, though I had enough work to keep me busy, including finishing the pub trivia quiz book I referred to in the last EW. I've also been doing some work for a new client, a UK financial services website. They contacted me out of the blue after discovering my website (another good reason for having one - see my article below). So I've been delving into the murky world of mortgages, credit cards, financial advisors, and so on! As I wasn't entirely rushed off my feet last month, though, it did give me the chance of a few days out with Jayne, who as a teacher was off for the whole of August. A couple of weeks ago we went to see the musical Starlight Express at the Birmingham Hippodrome. If it's coming your way, I thoroughly recommend going to see it, even if (like us) you don't have the excuse of taking children. It's high-octane entertainment, though you do have to get your head around the fact that the roller-skaters represent engines and carriages! I'm still getting a lot of interest in my new course Quick Cash Writing. For the benefit of new readers, QCW is a course aimed at people who want to start making money from writing as quickly as possible. It covers a wide range of shorter opportunities, from readers' letters to greeting cards, articles to short stories, contest slogans to movie ideas. You can read more about it at http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/qcw.htm. The latter also has links to my publisher's sales page. Regular readers will know that I have been offering a free copy of my electronic tutorial Short Story Acumen to anyone buying QCW via a link on my website, and many RW readers have taken up this offer. Unfortunately, for commercial reasons, I have now had to withdraw this offer, so if you missed out, I can only offer my apologies I am, however, making a brand new special offer. Anyone ordering QCW through a link on my site will also receive a free copy of my mini-guide to getting the most from the free software bundled with the course. This includes my idea-generating program the Mini-Inspiratron and eight other writing programs and demos. My new guide will reveal the 'insider' secrets to setting up and using these programs, and offer some insights into how I use them myself. There are some real gems among these personally selected freebies, and this new guide will help to ensure that you get the full benefit from them. To get your copy of QCW and stake your claim to my free mini- guide, go to http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/qcw.htm, then click on one of the banner ads to go to my publisher's sales site. Once you've ordered your copy of QCW, forward a copy of the e-mail receipt to me and I'll e-mail you back with details of how you can access the guide and your other 'mystery bonus'. I must admit, as I've been goofing off in August, I haven't finished the mini-guide yet - but if it's not ready when you contact me, I'll email it to you as soon as it becomes available. * And don't worry if you've already bought a copy of QCW via my website. You won't lose out! I know who you are, and I'll be e- mailing you separately with your free copy of the mini-guide. In this month's EW, as well as the usual range of market info, I'm sharing some information about a free program called MSGTAG which can save you endless hassle with your emails. But first of all, I'm setting out for the first time a guaranteed technique for getting more work that I should probably be charging serious money for.... ------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement Deleted something from your Recycle Bin and suddenly realise you need it back? File-Saver can almost certainly retrieve it for you. This program, from my publishers WCCL, instantly displays hundreds of deleted files from any drive on your computer. It provides details about each file, including name, type, size and last modified date. You can then restore any files you want to the location of your choice simply by clicking on 'Restore by Copying'. In addition, File-Saver allows you to quickly erase confidential data from your computer's hard disk by wiping out any trace of files you wish to stay deleted. File-Saver is currently available at a special offer price of just $14.97 (around £10). For more information, click on http://tinyurl.com/2tdgl. ------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Article: How to Get as Much Writing Work as You Want in 14 Days or Less No, this isn't the title of my latest writers' guide, though maybe it should be! Rather, it's a quick and effective method which can be used by anyone wanting more writing work. I tried it myself recently, and can personally vouch for its effectiveness. I must make a couple of things clear immediately, though. First, you'll need to have, or to create, your own writer's website. Of course, every serious writer should have one of these anyway. And second, you must be prepared to spend a small amount of money. Still with me? Good! Then let me explain the method in a nutshell. It is based around using Google AdWords (the small ads you see on the right of Google search result pages and on many other websites) to drive potential clients to your site. My own investigations have revealed that this technique is currently under-used by writers, and it is possible to get your ad read by a highly-targeted readership of potential clients for a very modest cost. Let me say a word first about setting up a writer's website, though. Nowadays, with the huge range of easy-to-use website building tools available, building a basic site is within the scope of anyone who is capable of using a computer to surf the net. And most people have free web space available to them by courtesy of their internet service provider. And bear in mind, a writer's personal website doesn't need to have state-of-the-art graphics and Flash-y animation. A well- written site which tells the viewer about you and (perhaps) displays some of your work is more than sufficient to operate this system. * If you're brand new to web design, a very reasonably priced package I recommend is The Newbie Club First Website Builder. At its heart is a 3-volume guide to creating, writing, designing, automating, uploading and promoting your own website, in fully illustrated e-book format. In addition, the course includes a 24-part HTML course, a book of insider tips and tricks of the web design trade, and such website-building tools as a gizmo wizard which enables you to add special effects in just a few clicks, a mini-site wizard for creating a no-frills mini-site in minutes, and more. Check out everything on offer at http://tinyurl.com/2syw8. Once you have your website running, you will need to open a Google AdWords account. As I mentioned above, Google AdWords are the small text boxes that appear to the right of the results page of searches performed using Google. They are actually mini- adverts. The advertisers bid a certain amount (say 5p or 10c) for one or more keywords or phrases. Every time someone performs a search which includes these words, the ad in question is displayed and the advertiser is charged the amount of their bid (sometimes less) by Google. In general, the more you bid, the higher your ad will appear on the searcher's results page. To use AdWords yourself, you will need to open an AdWords account. This isn't rocket science - if you read Google's own AdWords guide at https://adwords.google.com/select/ it will tell you most of what you need to know. * If you want the full scoop about AdWords, an e-book which I thoroughly recommend is Google Cash by Chris Carpenter. This also covers making money from AdWords by advertising other people's products (known as affiliate marketing). You can read all about Google Cash by visiting http://tinyurl.com/2xtga. Once you have set up your AdWords account, you are almost home. All you need to do now is write your ad, choose the keywords (search terms) you want to bid for, and start your campaign running. Here is the ad I used: UK Freelance Writer Now available for commissions. Fiction or non-fiction, all media. www.nickdaws.co.uk Feel free to copy or adapt this if you like! I decided to set my bids to a maximum of 5p (around 8c) per click. The keywords I bid for were as follows: website content writer website writer short story writer professional writer fiction writer comedy writer copywriter script writer freelance writer With all these keyword phrases except one, a maximum 5p bid got me an average position in the first eight ads displayed on a page. That's important, because many people will only look at the first page of their search results. The exception was copywriter, where a 5p bid got me an average position around 15. I wasn't too bothered about that, though, as I don't especially enjoy copywriting (though I can do it). In the fortnight or so I was running this campaign, I got 126 clicks on my ad, costing me round about £10. Obviously not all of these people contacted me with offers of work, but some did. For example, a US publishing house wanted me to ghost-write a book about a financial scandal for them, and a local video production company contacted me with an offer of some scriptwriting work. I've put this campaign on hold for now, but if ever I'm short of work in the future I fully intend to run it again. If you decide to try this method yourself, I'll be very interested to hear how you get on with it, and what offers of work you receive. Good luck! P.S. I came across this special offer on the web the other day. Use the following link and, if you don't yet have an AdWords account, you should be able to get a $50 voucher towards the cost of your AdWords advertising: http://tinyurl.com/4pr5c -------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement If you have expertise in just about ANY field, you can now write, edit, self-publish and sell your own work in an ebook. It's easier than you think, it really works, and a new course by my colleague Younes Boutriq will teach you everything you need to know about it. The course is called 'The Insider Secrets to Ebook Self-Publishing'. It costs just $29.97 (around £20), and you also get over $320 worth of free bonus software. For more information, check out http://tinyurl.com/b9upf. -------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Market Info - Miscellany Here are a few more potential markets for you, starting with another appeal from the mobile phone publishing company Kwickee, for whom I am a freelance editor (and contributor): Freelance writers and artists are invited to submit material for a new mobile phone content service aimed at 17- to 25-year-olds called Gobstopped. As with the main Kwickee service there are no up-front fees, but contributors will receive a royalty every time someone buys any of their work. For more information, see the Gobstopped website at www.gobstopped.com/contribute.asp. You can also e-mail gobs-at-gobstopped.com for more information. Although Gobstopped (and Kwickee) are providing a service to UK consumers only at present, contributions are welcome from anywhere in the world. Non-UK residents are paid using the online payment system Paypal. The Crafty Traveler ( http://www.craftytraveler.com ) is looking for travel articles about destinations anywhere in the world. Payment is $20 per article, or you can choose to take a 1 in 40 gamble on winning an $800 prize. Again, all payments are made by Paypal. Suggested length is 500 to 2,000 words, though this is flexible. They say the most common reason for an article not being accepted is a lack of detail. They want to see addresses, opening hours, directions, prices, and so on. Full contributors' guidelines can be viewed on the site. Reverb is a new UK publishing house open to submissions of contemporary literary fiction. They say they are looking for well-written books that are "aware of contemporary popular culture: music, films, TV, the internet and other contemporary fiction." They are not interested in the traditional romantic, historical or thriller genres, nor do they require non-fiction. Authors are asked to submit a sample chapter and synopsis initially. Full writers' guidelines can be found on their website at http://www.readreverb.com. You can also e-mail them with any queries at mail-at-readreverb.com. Tales from the Transdimensional Horror Express is a new, illustrated, quarterly, dual-language (English/German) horror fiction magazine. Each issue has a theme, e.g. the launch issue covers vampires, with werewolves, voodoo, Egyptian mummies and more coming soon! The preferred length for stories is 3,500 to 4,000 words; they also accept novellas of 6,000 to 8,000 words. Articles of up to 1,200 words are also required. Payments are 200 euro for a short story and 300 euro for a novella. More info can be found at http://www.trans-horrorexpress.com (click on the almost-hidden Enter button in the middle of the screen). I couldn't find any writers' guidelines on the site, but if you e- mail the editor, Darren Smith, at editor-at-trans- horrorexpress.com, he will email them to you. Midnight Ink ( http://www.midnightinkbooks.com ) is a new publisher of mystery titles in trade paperback format. They welcome submissions of all types of mystery book, including historicals, hard-boiled suspense, 'cozies' (think Miss Marple), as well as comedy and chick-lit mystery. They will accept either complete manuscripts or a sample chapter and synopsis. Writers' guidelines are on the website - scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Submission Guidelines. You will also find a six- page PDF file here setting out their detailed requirements for submitting work to them (they are quite strict about format, font size, line spacing, and so on). Linden Bay Publishers is a new UK/US-based e-publishing company currently seeking submissions of romantica - defined as a cross between traditional romance and erotica. They are in the market for anything from short stories to full-length novels, and pay 37 per cent royalties. As for the actual content, they say, 'All the usual romance sub-genres will be accepted, but they must have a strongly defined hero and heroine whom the reader will really care about. Smoldering passion is positively encouraged. Whether it be a temperamental concert pianist, a dark brooding vampire, a pirate or a cocky starship captain, we're looking for characters who leap off the page and provide the reader with a good, escapist read.' For more info, and detailed writers' guidelines, see their site at http://www.lindenbayromance.com. Finally, editor Rebecca Mason Harding is looking for contributions of poems, articles and artwork for a new independent poetry magazine to be titled The Green Door. Contributions can be e-mailed to r.masonharding-at-tiscali.co.uk, or sent by post to: Rebecca Mason Harding, The Green Door, 103 Lincoln Street, Wakefield, WF2 0ED, UK. -------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement Are you interested in writing for children? Then a brand new e- book by children's author Robyn Opie could be just the resource you need. Opie has written 55 published children's books, and in this new guide she reveals the secrets of her success. You will learn why children's fiction is different from other fiction, how to create believable characters, how to write realistic dialogue, how to ensure your reader is 'hooked' after the first two pages, and much, much more. You'll even get a free copy of Opie's children's book 'Black Baron' - all for just $19.95 (around £12). Visit http://tinyurl.com/bs86n now for full information! -------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Useful Resource: MSGTAG I first mentioned MSGTAG (also known by its full name of Message Tag) at the end of last year, when I featured it as one of my free 'Christmas presents' for EW subscribers. Several people e- mailed me subsequently to let me know how useful they found it, so I thought I would take this opportunity to spotlight it in more detail. What is MSGTAG? It is a free program which overcomes one of the main problems with conventional e-mails. This is the fact that you can never be sure whether they have been received or not. That can obviously be bad news if you have e-mailed an urgent query to your client and are waiting to hear from them. Unless you phone, which may not always be practicable, you have no way of knowing whether your e-mail has arrived safely and, if so, whether it has been opened. Yes, in Outlook Express and some other e-mail clients you can request a receipt. If you do this, however, a pop-up box appears on the recipient's screen asking them to confirm whether they wish to send a receipt, and in practice many people ignore or cancel this. With MSGTAG running on your PC, all of this is handled automatically. When the recipient opens your tagged e-mail, you are automatically sent an e-mail confirming that they have opened it. The recipient sees a message at the foot of the e- mail saying that you have been notified of its safe receipt, but they do not have to take any other action. Once MSGTAG is installed, you can switch tagging on or off at any time by simply clicking an icon which sits in your system tray (the small bar at the bottom right of the screen). MSGTAG will work on most modern PCs, subject to certain requirements. To use it, your computer must be running Windows 98, 2000, Me or XP, and you must use an e-mail program such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Incredimail, Eudora, Pegasus, or Netscape Mail, which uses the SMTP protocol. Web-based e-mail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! cannot run MSGTAG. You can send tagged messages to such addresses, and use them to receive your receipts, but you cannot send tagged messages from these services. The free version of MSGTAG can be downloaded from the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/bcpg2. It is just over 1MB in size, and will take around 3 minutes to download using a standard dial-up connection (broadband is obviously faster). Once the download is complete, simply double-click the install icon and follow the prompts of the install wizard. I found MSGTAG easy to install and use, and on occasion it has been a great help when e-mails have failed to arrive safely. It is also very instructive seeing who checks their mail regularly and who doesn't! The free version does not include technical support, but unless you are new to computing you are unlikely to need this. Paid-for versions with added features and benefits are also available from the MSGTAG site. MSGTAG Plus gives you all the features of the free version, plus you can customize the tags that appear on your messages, e.g. by adding your own greeting or signature, or hiding it. And you get unlimited email technical support. The top of the range version, MSGTAG Status, offers all these benefits and more. You can use the 'Group' feature to quickly set tagging and notification options for your regular contacts. You can also see the status of all the emails you have sent - whether or not they have been opened yet - on the at-a-glance Status Dashboard. If you send out lots of emails, this could be a very handy facility. The basic version of MSGTAG is free, however, so why not give it a try? It could help lower your blood pressure if you seem to spend half the time wondering why your client hasn't responded to an urgent query! Once again, the main information page can be found at http://tinyurl.com/bcpg2. That's it for this issue. I do hope you've enjoyed reading it and found something that may be useful to you. E-Writer will be back again in a few weeks' time. All good wishes, Nick ---------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement Nick Daws' CD-based course 'Write Any Book In Under 28 Days' takes you through every stage of writing a book, from getting the original idea through to editing the completed manuscript, all in the shortest possible time. Read a lengthy extract from the course at http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/writeany.htm, then click through to the publisher's website to read some of the many testimonials! * New! See the latest independent review of 'Write Any Book in Under 28 Days' at http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/articles/realresults.htm. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Info Except where specifically stated, material in E-Writer is protected by copyright of Nick Daws, 2005. Material from the newsletter may, however, be reproduced in other online or off- line publications so long as (a) the text (including any URLs and e-mail addresses) is not altered in any way, and (b) the souce is acknowledged and a link or text reference is provided to my website at http://www.nickdaws.co.uk. Notifying me is not essential but would be appreciated - please use the e- mail address above or the link on my site. Many thanks! |