Self Publishing - In Vain or Vanity?

Ambrose Musiyiwa, writing for BlogCritics, writes about the future and the realities of self-publishing. The grey line between POD and vanity publishers, readers' response to self-published books and comments from self-published writers. Makes for some great reading.

"Irving Karchmar says, "It can be done! It just takes work, like anything else in life."

Writers who are contemplating self-publishing need to investigate the industry thoroughly and make sure their work has been sufficiently edited and critiqued before they take it to the printers. They should also be prepared to market and promote their books aggressively."

See ' Print On demand - Free ' if you want some more information about POD publishers.

Suggested course of action:
1. Write book.
2. Post an ad on Craigslist that you need a pro editor to go through your book with a toothcomb.
3. POD
4. Promote

The dificult parts are 1 & 4. And I can't help you with either. Well, maybe a little bit with 4. Promoting a book is nowadays more of a science than an art. Just check if you're doing it all. Flooding book reviewers online with emails touting your book. Even a ratio of 1:10 will get you a huge number of reviews. Youtube video promos. Do it the old-fashioned way. Word-of-mouth.

End of the day, if your book is good, you have a good chance of hitting the mark. But it is true that with a crush of self-published books hitting the market, it will take time to weed out the trash from well,...your trash.

Freelance Jobs 27th Jan

The focus of the previous post was how people are making money off wikipedia. Well, here you go: Grant Writer needed for Wikipedia documentary.

Freelance copywriter wanted.

Web content writers wanted.

Looking for a ghostwriter.

Work at home, surf the web, google to your hearts content, do a teeny-weeny amount of research and get paid for it.

SEO article writers wanted.

Some more web content writers wanted.

Writers wanted.

Pay per post gig for bloggers. More like pay per article, but what the heck...

In other news, NYPost Page Six blacksheep Jared Paul Stern was told he would not be facing charges for supposedly demanding payment in return for favorable coverage. And journalists in China are supposedly on a blackmailing spree. The business, it seems, is so lucrative, that people are posing as journalists, just to be able to squeeze some money out of some hapless evil personality.

One, we can conclude that this is not a good time to be a high-profile white collar criminal. Second, a lot more people are going to want to become journalists. Before, the only reward was the joy of bringing the truth out into the open. Now, it seems, journalism is a really rewarding profession...

Have Cash - Will Pay For Wikipedia Writeup

If there's anything John Kerry and Microsoft have in common, other than bundles of cash lying around, it is a tendency to shove their own feet solidly into their own mouths. The latest online smackdown? Microsoft offers cash to a blogger, Rick Jelliffe, to edit wikipedia entries. End result? No edits, but a new entry in wikipedia, which says that Microsoft offered cash to Rick Jelliffe.

AP writer Brian Bergstein asks a stupid question "Should Wikipedia writers be paid?" Of course, they shouldn't be paid. Can you make money as a wikipedia writer? Another stupid question. Of course you can. Isn't there something wrong here? Stop being dense, huh? This is the real world.

If it's good, people start looking for ways to make money off it. It's called the support or service industry. Same as adwords consultants and ebay consultants, there's bound to be 'wikipedia' consultants. Debating if it's right or wrong is all fine, but just like with the US congress, reality is far ahead. Wikipedia is no longer an innocent virgin, but digital real-estate soiled by massive egos and a hint of over-reaching. Their arrogance is breath-taking. 'We can do no wrong because we are the voice of the people.'

Far as I'm concerned, wikipedia is a great help for getting all your information on one page, instead of googling it and looking up a hundred pages. But it's by no means indispensable. Dmoz is lying in ruins today. Tomorrow, someone else will come up with a brighter model, and wikipedia will be toast, not toast of the year.

Mini Freelance Jobs Post

Wanted to do some political steam venting, but just to stay on topic, before I start unloading, here's a few jobs:

A Non-American charity is looking for a writer who can pull at heart-strings ( and purse-strings ). In short, a grant writer for a con job.

Wanted blogger, who spends all his time behind a wheel, parenting. If you do that, and you still have time to search for, find, apply and work on a blogging gig, go for it.

Freelance writers wanted for entertainment industry mag. Most likely you'll have to be a paparazzi disguised as a freelance writer.

Data entry gig.

Non-US citizen living in the U.S.A.? This writing gig is for you.

Virtual assistant wanted to answer calls and schedule appointments.

Wnat to have people slam the phone down in your ear? Telecommuting, work from home, juicy, pay per call, uh....marketing position available.

Just one more. Hypnotherapist wants a telecommuting home based personal assistant to make and take calls. Should be fine, so long as he doesn't start practising on you....

That's it. I wanted to unload about the Iraq war, Army Lt. Gen. David H . Petraeus, Scooter Libby and scapegoats, but I guess you get the point, so I'll leave it at that.

Health Plans For Freelance Contractors

Time's Joe Klein says that he bought health insurance on his own. "Sorry, but I did, during two extended and pretty painful periods--as a free-lancer in the early 1980s and as a New Yorker staff writer--yes, the venerable old mag doesn't bestow health insurance on its writers--in the 1990s. It was ridiculously expensive, with limited coverage--group plans like Time-Warner's have a lot more benefits--and a mind-numbing, ultra-skeptical bureaucracy."

So is there a special health plan for 'freelancers'? I mean, there should be. There's a health plan tailor made to con just about everything and everyone. Here you go:

1. Flexible health freelance - What is it?
2. Health insurance coverage options for contractors
3. The necessity of health insurance for freelancers and the self-employed
4. Health insurance for freelancers

And here's what Medicaid has to say about freelancers in the media:

"Representative of the news media means a person actively gathering information for an entity organized and operated to publish or broadcast news to the public. News media entities include television and radio broadcasters. publishers of periodicals who distribute their products to the general public or who make their products available for purchase or subscription by the general public, and entities that may disseminate news through other media (e.g.. electronic dissemination of text). We will treat freelance journalists as representatives of a new media entity if they can show a likelihood of publication through such an entity. A publication contract is such a basis, and the requester's past publication record may show such a basis..."

So....Let's say you want to be treated as a journalist rather than a freelancer. You know what to do, right? Cough up a couple of past contract agreements, get letters from a few prospective publishers and you're no longer an outcast freelancer. You're a new-media journalist.

Leszek Kolakowski

It takes great courage to write what you truly believe. It takes an extraordinary writer to inspire others to believe. Leszek Kolakowski, polish writer, carrying the torch of freedom, has been gifted with both courage and inspiring prose.

"Kolakowski's copious works include The Priest and the Jester (1959), a collection of essays that criticize all orthodoxy and dogmatism, and Towards a Marxist Humanism (1970), in which he stresses human freedom of thought and choice as essential to life." - The Jerusalem Post

Leszek Kolakowski ( born 23 October 1927 in Radom, Poland ) is a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. Kolakowski on religion and the meaning of life, "A hypothetical world from which the sacred had been swept away would admit of only two possibilities: vain fantasy that recognizes itself as such, or immediate satisfaction which exhausts itself. It would leave only the choice proposed by Baudelaire, between lovers of prostitutes and lovers of clouds: those who know only the satisfactions of the moment and are therefore contemptible, and those who lose themselves in otiose imaginings, and are therefore contemptible. Everything is then contemptible, and there is no more to be said" - Wikipedia

Tells you that he's more of a philosopher than a writer or social activist. That is what lies at the core of his strength and character. He's got his sticky fingers on one hand dipping deep into the abstract, from which flow his conviction, his faith and his love of the individual and freedom. And all this while the fingers on his other hand are busy noting down the flow of history and the surrounding reality.

The result is a writer whose work is a fine blend of real-world problems, with a bedrock of unshakable faith and respect for the individual. Which is why Leszek Kolakowski was awarded The Jerusalem Prize. He is also the winner of the first John W. Kluge Prize from The Library of Congress for 'Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences'.

Recommended Reading

Perks and drawbacks of becoming a freelance copywriter, By Mario Churchill
"Freelancers are their own time-keepers, the best advantage they have over the ones tied inside a cubicle..."

Serial freelance contracts don't benefit anybody, By Jeremy Sice
"Unfortunately, permanent middle and senior designers are becoming a rare breed as swarms of freelances fly around."

Art Buchwald - A Jew, a writer, a celebrity and a mensch, By Dov Burt Levy
"At the end of the talk I knew for sure that this man, beside doing his work well, loved and enjoyed it."

Who would want a writer for a brother? By A N Wilson
"Not all writers are pleasant. Many would have echoed A L Rowse, who was rightly beaten for shouting, aged five, 'You're all fools, and I'm not' to his working-class brothers."

Notes from north of the border, By Times Online, UK
"Writers and musicians have always been drawn to each other’s disciplines. The latter have repeatedly found inspiration in literature, just as authors have drawn on music to influence their own work."