Posted by admin on July 9th, 2008 — Posted in Publishing Info
Q and A.
Best choice when subject is very verbal or there are two or more people being
interviewed or taped at the same time. All repetitive statements, umms, ahhs and blatant
incorrect grammar are edited out. Natural patterns of speech, coloquolisms and favorite sayings
are left in.
JHW. When you started your business in 1934, how did you finance it?
BT. Well, remember my uncle Horace? He was my Mother’s brother.
HT. Half brother.
BT.. OK, so half brother, her father remarried after Sybil, my grandmother, died and my mother was a little girl
about nine or ten. His second wife, what was her name?
HT.Alice May Jones, her family had moved west to build the dam.
BT.. So anyway, Horace was killed in a train wreck when he was visiting in California and as he had never married,
the insurance settlement went to his next of kin, which turned out to be my mother. She wanted to invest the money
and came to us and asked our advice. I told her that I had been thinking of opening this repair shop and I thought I
could make a go of it. She thought about it long and hard and came back the next day and said she would rather
invest in us than any old bank.
HT. But we paid her back with interest. We were able to put the business in the black in only three years.
BT. Of course, we worked our butts off, didn’t we?
First person: Best choice when the tapes will need significant editing to make a flowing
narrative. It is written as if the speaker were doing the writing. The interviewer simply ghost
writes the life story.
I loved being a mother. It seemed as if that was the role God had created just for me. Other women would complain
about their children being messy or noisy, and I honestly didn’t even care. I just loved to be there when they came
home from school. About two o’clock I would start to get antsy, just couldn’t wait for them to come in the door,
throw down their jackets and books and sit at the kitchen table and talk. I even loved cleaning up after them when
they were sick. I know that is hard to believe for some people, but I used to say to myself “well, I would rather have
it out here smelling bad than inside of them making them feel bad.”
Third Person: Best choice if the subject is having difficulty remembering or if the interviewer
has to gain the majority of the facts from records, other family members or others who can add
insight and information.
Jennie was a fun loving little girl and definitely the apple of Tom B. Bradshaw, her loving father’s eye as
well as the object of his generosity. But one time, when she was about six years old that generous and loving spirit
was put to a test. Active in the first Methodist church, their entire family enjoyed the Sunday school picnics held
every summer in the park east of town. On this particular day, the family had no sooner arrived and began eating
when a group of little girls came to the table demanding to see the elephant Mr. Bradshaw brought.
Methods of telling the story:
It is best to think of a life as a long strand of pearls with each year or significant event as one
pearl.
• An autobiography tells the jest of the whole necklace, usually in a chronological order.
Chapters, special events, decades, houses or any other natural division can separate the
sections.
• A memoir takes an important section of the pearls and makes a short necklace. You can
refer to the other beads, but you don’t go into detail describing them but concentrate on the
significant period of time you are describing.
• An anthology is a collection of short unrelated stories, essays, anecdotes, incidences etc. that
are gathered together in one book The stories may build upon one another or they may be
able to stand on their own.
• A photoscribe is a more in depth scrapbook. The stories revolve around a photo or two.
Each page has a beginning, middle and end.
Including photos, graphics and memorabilia
These additions to the narrative greatly enhance the readability and value of the project.
However, they also greatly enhance the time needed to do layout, scanning, sizing etc. that will
be reflected in the cost of the finished project. One method of saving money is to group all
photos in the center of the book.
If you are interested in taking a tele-class on memoir writing please send us an e-mail at
Judywright@artichokepress.com and we will set one up. It is a fun way to learn and share from
the comfort of your own home.
Keep Writing!!! You are doing an important work.
©Judy H. Wright, Personal and Oral Historian - www.artichokepress.com
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Posted by admin on May 3rd, 2008 — Posted in Publishing Info
What to think about before creating an e-zine.
Decide on what you want your e-zine to be about- For example: If your e-zine is about teens, do you want it for eating disorders, homework help, teen relationship help?
Cost- Will you have a cost to subscribe to your e-zine?
Advertising- Where will you advertise your e-zine to attain subscribers? You e-mail signature? On message boards? E-zine directories?
Mailing list- Who will you sign up with for your mailing list management? Free or paid service?
Ads- Do you accept ads? Paid or free? Swap with other e-zines?
Format- Will your e-zine be in PDF, text or HTML?
Deliveru- Will your e-zine be weekly, bi-monthly-monthly or quarterly?
Material- Will your material come from paying contributors or from free article directories?
Contact- Make sure you have a public e-mail address for others to contact.
Links- Will you provide additional places for your readers to check out regarding your content for that e-zine issue?
Creating an e-zine can be fun and profitable, but there are no guarantees. Good luck!
About the Author
Content Producer and Children’s Author of Mysterious Chills and Thrills for Kids.
http://www.laurahickey.com
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Posted by admin on April 10th, 2008 — Posted in Publishing Info
When you frequently post articles on ezines, you might be aware that you are an active participant in the art of publishing at grass roots level. From experience, you will know that after planting your seeds, it takes time before your efforts will actually bear fruit. What happens on the trajectory from planting the seed to seeing traffic numbers jump and your site’s visibility increase? And is this in line with what’s happening in the wider publishing world? Are there alternatives?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find out just how much of a market there is for articles that somehow cover what your site is all about, before you set out to the laborious task of writing? Guess what, from a publishing point of view, you are not going to get this information without paying through the nose, but then you are not writing your articles for readership audience, but rather a consumer base, aren’t you?
So there is no point in researching your audience this way. It is simply best to stick to the market research for your product and align the number of your articles somewhat with this outcome and take a comfort buffer zone from estimates of your traffic. But you have to get a sense of whether you are doing enough to make a difference.
A few years ago, you could get away with writing a handful of articles about a product or website and expect to see some immediate traffic on the back of this effort. Today, things are less simple. Life has become a lot more multi layered and to reach critical mass your need to seriously increase the numbers on all fronts. Not only on the articles written, but it also makes a difference to increase the number of ezines and forums on which you publish.
This increase in capacity to take in information is visible throughout society. It dominates the publicity game. Society’s capacity to take in information has increased dramatically and in order to get through to your end market, you need to use heavier artillery than ever.
People who fail to understand the numbers game lose out. But there is more to the ‘increased capacity’ phenomenon. Aside from bombarding the market with quantity, quality is also important. To garner an interest you need to make sure that you write better articles than your competition. Wittier, more in depth information, friendlier. If you manage to write enough and good quality articles that show you know your market, you have a chance to create natural hubs around your products that make them stand out from the crowd.
Attracting visitors this way will generate traffic, which, through further nurturing will become a mechanism that starts to snowball. How do you know whether you have done at least the minimum in terms of writing to make sure you have a chance to create these desirable hubs?
Check your traffic figures. There are millions of ezines to which you can upload articles on any topic for free. The only obligation the ezine owners have to the writers is that they need to include your short bio and a live link to your website if you include this. There are around 80 ezines in all those millions that actually will stick to their obligation and ascertain through human intervention that this also happens.
The articles when published by webmasters create a long term effect in that you generate free backlinks from sources you might not have thought of to include in your marketing campaign.
More immediately, direct traffic won’t show a dramatic rise unless you are able to submit a serious amount of articles. Around 200 will start to make a difference. Can you see yourself writing this many articles without tearing your hear out at what angle to describe your service from after number 15?
If you wonder what writing articles is actually going to effect aside from instant work creation without a guaranteed hype around your product, you might want to consider what other means you have to get through to your target market. Today’s multi-layered reality simply demands a heavy input if you want to see some results. Growing a business takes time and a lot of effort.
The internet as a whole is thriving on free content which professional aggregators are offering to anyone interested. Free content dominates the entire internet, but it’s whether the topics cover anything of interest and are well written that makes all the difference.
If you are inclined to publish frequently about interesting topics, there might be sense in grouping with a few other people and making up your own RSS feed and offer it to publishers. In doing this, you will be evolving into a new brand of publishing venture and start to join the publishing revolution from within.
Angelique van Engelen is a freelance editor at http://www.contentClix.com, a copywriting agency based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which specialises in tailormade content as well as specialized RSS feeds on culture and arts.
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Posted by admin on March 28th, 2008 — Posted in Publishing Info
A few months ago, I wrote a guide entitled: 101 Writing Tips for Successful Email Marketing. In fact, many COPY TIPS subscribers have a copy. Since that time, I have worked on dozens of successful projects and have discovered some additional tips for boosting response.
1. Ask a question in the Subject line. This almost always gets the email opened. I suspect this is because questions are so much a part of everyday email between friends and colleagues. It’s a natural way to begin a conversation. Just be sure your question is honest and straightforward not cryptic, hyped, or suspicious.
2. Write a letter, not an ad. With the growing use of graphics in email, a lot of marketers are experimenting with formats that look more like an ad than a personal message. The fact is, an “email ad” is more likely to be deleted on sight than one that appears to be a personal message - even if that message is obviously promotional.
3. Don’t be afraid to go long. In the early days of email marketing, short copy was the rule. But this is changing. For some offers at least, longer copy that tells a more complete story is doing better. This is especially true when a transaction is involved, such as a subscription or sign up.
4. Beginning, middle, and end. Most click-thru responses will come from the hyperlink at the top, bottom, and middle of your email message - in that order. A lot of marketers forget the middle hyperlink. Don’t. Your response rates will suffer.
5. Show a picture. For graphics-enhanced email, consider including a picture of your product. This will tend to lift response. Of course, if your product is intangible, you’ll have to think of an interesting way to present it as an image. But, trust me, it’s worth the effort.
6. Link the images. If your email contains pictures and other graphics, be sure to hyperlink them. You’ll be surprised how many prospects will click on these to respond.
7. Drop-text images. A drop-text is a text message that appears when your curser hovers over a graphic. This is common on web pages. In email, this technique works like a picture caption or sidebar that displays as your prospect interacts. Very powerful.
8. Bribes work well. An offer of free shipping, a discount, an invitation, or a free gift is extremely effective in email marketing. For my money (and my clients’) information premiums white papers, guides, checklists, downloads work best.
9. Add a toll free number. Most prospects will click thru and respond to your offer online. But some prefer to call and speak with someone live. A toll free number will often boost response.
About The Author
An award-winning copywriter, Steve Slaunwhite helps companies achieve their direct mail and email marketing objectives. He can be reached at www.steveslaunwhite.com
mail@steveslaunwhite.com
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