Tips to build your reputation as a creative Writer

The career of a creative writer cannot remain stable. It is a career where every time you have to prove yourself through the quality of work. This consistent quality work, builds up the good reputation of the writer. It is very simple to start a career in writing. You can write a poem or some article and name yourself a writer. It is very hard to sustain and build a reputation as a writer. It is very important that others name you a writer, rather than yourself. Good or bad, reputation follows the writer everywhere. It is important that creative writers consider the quality of their writing very seriously and understand the requirements of the publishing company, editors, and literary agents. It is difficult to undo a bad reputation. On the contrary it is very easy to build a good reputation.

The complete writing process is filled with perils. The majority of writers experience difficulty when starting to write. They have the central theme of the writing, but are stuck on how to begin. Sometimes, writers argue that the ideas are clear and perfect, but the writing or execution of the idea becomes difficult. The best way is to go step by step. The writer must write slowly each day. The writer must work hard on finding correct words depending on the subject. This is the work of patience and accuracy.

It is very important that the writer must be well-informed. Writers must have a habit of reading frequently. It is quite absurd if a person tells that he or she wants to write but do not get much time to read. Good reading is the key to being a good writer. You must be fond of reading everything. A good habit of reading and writing is very important to cultivate the skill of creating your style of writing.

Social networking sites: like many other fields, the world of writing is also very competitive. There are many good creative writers present. Just word of mouth is not enough to establish oneself as a creative writer. Networking is a very effective way to make oneself known. Participating in writers’ conferences and attending writers’ groups have been very fruitful activities which increase contacts with many useful people in the writing industry. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter do a very remarkable job of building good connections worldwide. It is a very quick and effective way to get known.

Joining an association of writers is also very advantageous. You can join a professional group of writers, if your work is published. It is a great opportunity to join an association and build up a network of like-minded writers. This provides advantages like getting beneficial links, latest news of the industry, and you can join the discussion in groups.

Creative writing needs powerful imagination. It is very joyous work to do. You start a journey filled with adventures, magical worlds, and many more fantasies which you need to put for sale. You can use personal thoughts, imaginations of childhood, stories and experiences and create a creative work.

It is very hard to sell your work overnight and become rich. Your work will receive admiration from newspapers and editors but in order to earn money your work must get sold. Therefore, the sale of your work is very important. Admiration does help to build up your reputation in the long run, but things should be balanced. You must have good earnings and good admiration. This will help you to be a reputed creative writer along with good earnings. Today, the internet provides all the answers. You can create your own profile online, which will make you known as a writer and people can visit your website and look at your work.

You can publish your poetry, stories, and novels online and receive reviews online. Good reviews will add to your good reputation. You can link your profile to your website so that viewers can easily connect to your work.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Protection of book titles

The title is the soul of any book. An effective title can give great success to the author. It can also generate openings for numerous passive income sources from licensing the sale of the book, merchandising, and belongings. The book title should be original. The book title also requires authorization, it requires  ownership and security. If, intentionally or unknowingly, you copy the title from another author, it is a very serious allegation and your reputation can be damaged.

Most commonly, the titles are protected under the laws of trademark, especially the titles of an ongoing series. Chicken Soup for the Soul is a very popular series, and when the name of the series comes in people’s mind, it is from the same author. The unfair competition laws protect such names from getting pirated. Such established series come under the same author’s name and is entitled to publish under the same name. When the series gets established and popular with people, the series writer and publisher can enjoy great success.

Trademark law is here to help the consumers get the right kind of information from the writing market. Depending on the popularity and reviews, the series may be carried forward. The sequel of the movie from the series of the book can be denied or accepted depending on the circumstances. Trademark law gives opportunity to cash in on the commercial management and goodwill of a best selling series book or book title.

The advantages of trademark registration include:

·         Positive notice nationally of the trademark author’s claim.

·         Confirmation of possession of the trademark.

·         Authority of federal courts may be appealed to.

·         Registration can be utilized as a source for getting registration in foreign countries.

·         Registration may be updated with U.S. Customs Service to avoid importation of foreign goods.

While selecting the title of the book, make sure that it is suggestive or arbitrary. You must be careful about the title, as it should not reveal too much of the content, but makes readers intrigued about the book. Suggestive titles are more effective than the too much description titles. Marketing agents like descriptive titles, but such titles do not receive a trademarked level in the market.

Many people believe that book titles tell the complete outline of the story. Depending on the studies done on over 300 popular books in the country, around 75% of booksellers believe that the cover page and a good title are very important in the book. The title must draw the attention of the reader. The disadvantage is that the reader might make an opinion about the book, which could be bad or good. You must try to use an attractive title for the book, which is popular in the market, if you are writing your first book.

You can try the use of numerical records to impress the reader with your book title. You can put proverbs and high quality meaningful words. But do not increase the length of the title far too much.

The book titles of series writing are well protected under trademark law. The single titles of the novel, poem, movie, song, periodical or program is not effectively protected by the unfair competition law. This is one of the idiosyncrasies of trademark law. The law states that “In spite of the true relation of the title to the book,” law handles all single title book as "naturally descriptive" at best and "naturally generic" at worst, except the single title has had “broad range of promotion and tremendous success.”

Famous  names: it is not wrong to use the name of a popular person in a biography, which is produced without the person’s knowledge. But it is illegal in any part of the world to give false facts about that person. It is a violation of the individual’s rights and also a violation of trademark law. False facts and slander claims are wrong practices. A writer could be banned from publishing any further work for this kind of act.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Book promotion and podcasts

Book promotion is very vital to market your book. You need to create a network physically and online. It is a job which involves lots of talking and associating with many groups and making friends. You will have to find a literary agent who will promote your book. For that you will have to meet different agents and publishers. After meeting different kinds of agents, when your luck is good, one of them will like your work and accept it. Then there will be a promotion campaign and then it will be accepted and published. It is the most traditional and long way to get your book published.

This is the age of fast and quick action. There are many competitors in the market. If your work is not published in time, then the content can get outdated in some days. Therefore, writers tend to search for ways which will reduce the path between the book and consumers. The best way is by spreading the word and reach the consumers' ears. Auditory broadcasting is a very powerful way to make your work known. You must have realized that whatever you have heard is easily remembered as compared to reading. You do remember an old song but you might  not remember an article read from a newspaper this morning. This is the power of listening. You can use it in propagating your work. The sound is powerful, and draws your attention.

Therefore, writers must use this powerful source and try to promote their books. Authors can promote their work by using radio as a medium. This is the more traditional sound source you can use. But today there is a more powerful source that you can use to promote your book, and that is podcasting.

Until now, blogging was considered to be the most effective way of promoting any book. In recent times, podcasting has created an incredible revolution in the writing world. It is a more powerful and speedy means to get your book promoted. Podcasting is creating an audio blog for your book. It is a powerful way to promote and spread the message, in regards to your work and yourself. There is a source of internet radio to promote your work, but it is very expensive and it requires sponsors to carry out the promotion.

Podcasting is an audio blog created by you. It is similar to blog writing. You create your blog on the internet in a document and sent links to people. Similarly, you record your message and save it in MP3 file instead of a document. Like a blog link, you can easily send your audio blog to other music devices like an iPod. It is not that hard to set up a podcast on your computer. It very easily gets downloaded and set up on your computer in less than an hour. Once you save the setup you are free to use it at your will.

You can create a play which is associated with your book and play it on the podcast. You can record a small portion of your book so that the audience hears and thinks of buying your book. You must be careful while recording. The voice must be clear and flawless. There should not be any stumbling of words.

Podcasting is a means to bring the book to life. It is a live promotion of your book. The majority of podcasts need an external microphone on the computer, but you can also use the Audio Acrobat system. This system allows you to record from anywhere in your office, from your automobile, whenever you get time. After recording, you have to save the file in the system. The audio files have their own publication tools. With the help of these tools, you can upload your audio blog to the internet.

The question is how will people know about your audio blog online or about your podcast. First of all, you will have to know your position, that is, the subject of your book. Whether it is on travel, thriller, religion, gambling, etc. Depending on the topic, you can upload your audio blog to that particular forum. You can go on the internet and sent it to an iPod, iTunes, etc. and see the magic as to how fast your book gets promoted.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Why authors should be on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking website for professionals in their fields. You will come across good writers on this website. Therefore, if you want to join a professional group of writers, you must be on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn heightens your rankings on a search engine:

When you link your sites on LinkedIn, it gives you ‘Google Points’ to earn. This increases your rankings on Google. You must use a sensible name on LinkedIn, and you can come within the first two pages on Google search very easily.

LinkedIn Answers Questions: LinkedIn not only provides you a platform to flourish, it also solves your queries. If you have any questions regarding publishing or book proposal, you will find professional editors and marketing managers to solve your queries. This kind of expert advice is only provided by LinkedIn. Therefore, it is wise for authors to be on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Establishes Your Credibility: You will receive answers from all around. The LinkedIn question rating will pick the best answer for you. Another benefit is that, whoever’s answer is selected as best answer will get good ranks on the profile. It means that the profile page of a writer gets high ranks on Google. This is a simple and successful way to institute your integrity on a subject. Due to higher ranking, you will get answers from experts which are trustworthy.

 

LinkedIn associates you with editors and literary agents: You will find numerous experts and top editors and agents on LinkedIn. You will find many of your friends have done schooling with a popular writer or editor. You create a connection on LinkedIn. You can get help by putting a word in your favor with some good editor. This will definitely help you in your writing career.

You must be on LinkedIn:

·         You should be on LinkedIn to cultivate networking for business. You should abide by the rules and regulations. You need to make profit from this medium and do not go into spamming. This spoils your name. If you spoil it on LinkedIn, you will spoil it everywhere. This source is to increase your rankings and get good business.

·         The website helps to create your brand name. People will be saying, if you want to contact him or her, go on LinkedIn. You must keep your profile updated on a regular basis. This is important to get potential customers, employees, and collaborators. You can use the Q&A application to share the information that you hold and also try to answer the questions.

·         You could leverage a channel of social media that will connect you to key collaborators. There is a facility for free and paid accounts to connect you with others. You can see their profile and meet them.

·         You will be fully informed about your competitors on LinkedIn. You will get greater access to useful tools on LinkedIn which will help you to be aware of the latest market trends.

·         The best part of LinkedIn is that you can join a group of writers and share your experiences and know theirs to get a good perspective towards your work. Your business could be big or small, you can enter a discussion occurred on the website and get some attention from others.

·         If you want to do research, you can put it in the forum section and get a good response and good findings on your subject.

LinkedIn gives you real connections. You can share your content. You can add the content generated on the website in your blogs and give links to connect them on LinkedIn. You will get an opportunity to make a strong reputation for yourself. The only thing is that you must be honest in your work. Politeness and authenticity is very important, because false data can last only for a short time. Therefore, authors should be on LinkedIn to get known, to get good connections, and make their work known to people.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Trends in Children’s books

A particular trend or style is very important for childrens’ books. Therefore, a writer must pay attention to the style of writing. The construction of the story is very important. It helps to add elegance and style to the story. The story becomes easy to understand and not awkward to read. Creating a children’s book is a very creative and fun filled adventure. It requires great imagination and skills to create something impossible, yet innocent. First of all, you must know what you are going to write, which will be the center of the story. Once you realize your theme, you can write faster and come up with good ideas one after the other. This will help you a lot to create a good story.

You can follow the following suggestions to make the children’s booklet trendy:

·         When a writer starts writing, he or she, writes everything that comes to mind. You must make sure to cut out unessential description in the creative writing. It is not very amusing to keep on reading long descriptions. In writing, brief can be more impressive. Especially in children’s books, simplicity and to the point attitude can work better.

·         As you are writing childrens’ books, you must keep the sentences short and concise. Many times, parents have to read the book to children. Therefore, long sentences can be boring for parents to read and kids to hear. Concise sentences keep the story more interesting and dramatic.

·         You must be very sensitive towards the words you are using. You must use correct words and correct grammar. Children are great and keen listeners; therefore, any wrong usage of words or grammar, and you are immediately caught. Besides, it becomes hard for kids to understand if it is not correctly presented.

·         Do not overuse a word. Sometimes, a word just fits in your mind, and you tend to use it again and again. Avoid such mistakes.

Research: You must know that all the work that you create comes from research. Therefore, research is very essential. Anything that you state in the story must come from good research and a solid background. If you just create a story in your head and write it down without any research, then readers will know it. The writing should be precise and straight forward. If you ramble around too much, the readers will lose interest. You must know when to go into details and when to remain short. This all happens with thorough research and experience.

Characters: It has been observed that novice writers first develop the story and then try to fit in the characters in the story. This kills the charm of the story and takes the story into an artificial mode. Therefore, the ideal thing to do is first create the character and then the story along with it. When you create characters, you create their temperament, nature, and their own background story. This will bring characters to life and show your passion towards your work.

If, for example, you are writing about a narrow valley, you can use different names for the same. You can call it ravine, or canyon, etc. this will keep the story fresh and kids will learn new words for the same thing. This will improve the child’s vocabulary.

A writer must have a habit of re-reading their work. Sometimes while reading you will realize that there is overuse of a particular term. Too much occurrence of the same term is rather disturbing while reading. There are some words like “but”, “so”, “however”, and even “the” that are sometimes used too much. You must remove all the unnecessary words. You can use the help of Microsoft Word to check grammar and spelling.

There are very popular expressions like “short and sweet”, which look good, but do not overuse them. It is best to use them once in your story because too much use will decrease its effect. The above given suggestions are to improve your trend or style of the story.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved