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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.

Get the Scoop on Some Great Informative Parenting Freebies Being a parent can be hard and especially, when it is about money. So many things in life are very expensive and children often desire what they cannot have. Therefore families of average or below income have often trouble giving their children what is in or what other children have. Therefore any opportunity to get something for free in parenting hood is a great opportunity. Whether it is free advice, free literature or even free products, it is surely something that a parent can use. Where and how to find great parenting freebies? It is actually fairly easy to find parenting freebies, especially when one has access to the cyber world. The Internet is one of the greatest resources for information, products and advice. The Internet holds freebies for any stage in life, but the most for the infancy and toddler stage, as well as some resources for the young years of life before children grow into adulthood. Many of the resources that are available on the Internet are actually sponsored by different departments of the United States government. For example, the US Department of Health offers easy reader books for young children or a free CD for parents with information on the development of teenagers during their adolescents. For parents of toddlers, the Internet holds resources for free toddler magazine subscriptions, potty training success guides and guides to prevent childhood lead exposure. Many of the major issues in toddler live can be found online with advice, frequently asked questions sections, chats and forums to help parents. For later on in life, there are plenty if resources that will help parents with such things as saving for college, preventing teen pregnancy, preventing drug and alcohol abuse in the teenage years and preventing or talking about smoking with children. All the information that is available online is often also available for parents as kits that are mailed to their houses. Online pages offer forms that parents can fill to have material sent to their home mailing address. Books, CDs, DVDs, guides, and other informative material can be downloaded or requested by parents. Many parents do not know about these resources and struggle with these exact same problems that they could have help with. Some of the offers for young children, such as free music downloads for children, often include such music as classical music and therefore might make a good download for anybody who loves classical music. Even though these pages are geared at babies and toddler, it does not mean that other people cannot use this music for themselves. Other sources on the internet offer for example free descriptions to art projects, fee coloring pages that can be printed using any printer, free read along stories online and more. There are so many activities online, that parents can do with their children, or that can be used to educate children that sometimes it might be hard to choose with what to start. The Internet also offers parents the possibility to talk tot her parents and get connected without having to attend an actual meeting or playgroup. Whenever parents need advice, they can just log on to one of the many free parenting sites and ask questions. Of course answers are given by other parents and are more their thoughts and experiences rather than professional advice, but some of the pages sometimes offer advice from experts on topics and have special chat sessions for parents with these experts. Whatever kind of informative parenting freebie or product parents are looking for, the Internet might hold the answer to their questions. It often amazes parents what they can find just by typing their questions or search keywords into one of the Internet search engines. Literally hundred of answers and pages with free help might pop up and parents might have a hard time reading it all.

Networking Know-How: How to Get Through to the Busiest of People When you are job hunting, sometimes the most frustrating part is just getting your foot through the door to let the right people know that you are out there and available for work. Companies can be like members-only clubs; they tend to be a little distrustful of cold callers and most executives advise their assistants to run interference for them on the phone so they do not get stuck having a protracted conversation with someone they just aren’t interested in doing business with. The thing is that to get an interview, these people can be the very same people you need to talk to. How do you get these busy people to clear some time off in their busy schedule to speak to you? First things first – you have to get the right attitude. If you want busy people to make time to talk to you, you have to present yourself in a way that makes them feel like you are worth the time investment. The trick here is that you have to do this by phone, and often, you have to first convince an operator or personal assistant that your call is one worth putting through to the boss. Your phone etiquette and vocal confidence will be the key here. Consider you basic phone manners first. Instead of launching right into what you want, respond to the greeting of the person who answers the phone with a hello of your own. Animate your voice and always remember that simply saying “please” and “thank you” can go a long way. Be the kind of caller that you would want to talk to if your job was answering the phone all day. People will respond to your positive attitude with a positive attitude of their own. Next, consider your confidence level on the phone. Do you tend to get tongue-tied and stumble over your words? That kind of delivery from you will set all the warning bells ringing on the other end of the phone, and you will find the person with whom you wish to speak always “out of the office.” Instead, work on sounding like you are confident that it is a forgone conclusion that you will get to speak that busy person you want to talk to. Be confident that what you have to say is something that is worth hearing. It may help to write out a framework of what you will say and practice a few times so you sound relaxed and composed when you make that call. Once your attitude is right to make the call, you can then employ a few tricks of the trade for getting through to those busy people. Instead of giving away too much up front, start your call by asking if the person with whom you need to speak is in. If the answer is yes, then you can remove on potential “excuse” for not putting your call through. If your call can’t be taken at that time, skip the message. Let the PA or operator know that you will call back again. That way you have a legitimate reason to keep calling. Of course, you might have to keep calling and calling, and that assistant might start knowing the sound of your voice. If you keep speaking to the same person, it’s time to open up with some person details. Let them know your name, why you’re calling, and if someone referred you, who that person is. Developing that personal relationship can help you get your call through to the boss. Last but not least, don’t give up. Busy people are, well, busy, and not necessarily avoiding your call. Persistence pays off, so keep on calling until you get through.