I will be eagerly waiting for your post on Monday to sharewords.
Hope the reunion went well.

Tony

Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me! LOL We’re heading out for my 20 year high school reunion, but I’ll join you there Monday/Tuesday. I promise. Thanks for the kick in the pants. We all need that from time to time…

Jen

Being a good finder of article writers is a worthy skill. You being a great writer means you can also find great writers for us to enjoy on your website too. Having guest writers is a great thing to do I think.

Now please come and join us on the sharewords post, I promise there is a lot of love and support waiting for you. Going through the process will reveal things about yourself and your business you can’t normally see. ‘Can’t read the label from the inside of the bottle’

Now here is the link to save you looking for it:
http://www.radsmarts.com/2010/05/sharewords-the-easiest-way-for-us-to-recommend-you/

See you there, today.

Tony

Thanks for the plug and I DO need to get over to the Sharewords post. I hate to admit I’ve been intimidated, but there it is.

Jen

It was great meeting you all at the choc fest on Tuesday, and joining this motivated community of entrepreneurs. Thanks for being so welcoming. I’m working on my sharewords and it would be fabulous to get some input:

Creatively expresses the heart of your business

Thanks,

Emily

I have to mention your blog, I was blown away by the latest article http://everydaybright.com/2010/07/27/taking-charge-of-your-happiness/ and think that our sharewords community could learn a lot from the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan and their approach to GNH – Gross National Happiness.

Look forward to meeting you in the future.

kind regards
Tony

In spite of the stigma w/ POD, I’ll do it for the 2nd and 3rd books too (it’s a trilogy). My objective from the outset was to use the book as a fund raising tool for no kill shelters. I’ve raised over $400 to date. Doesn’t sound like much, but there are limitations on the time you can put into promotion. The same amt. of time a publishing house would expect from you, I have to say. So I do shelter fund raisers and local book signings when I can.

I finally got the amazon affiliate badge on my blog, so I could sell the book that way. (just today actually). It has been available through amazon and barnesandnoble.com since it was first published.

I’m almost finished polishing my 1st e-book, which is a journal I wrote while my husband was (successfully) battling cancer. A very savvy PR person told me that should be available in hard copy, too. It’s the kind of thing people want to give as a gift, and share with people. So I may do it both ways, and POD will definitely be an asset for that!
Sorry this ran so long! Thanks for the question!

As you know, I’ve struggled with this question myself. I am a published poet (my book won the Steel Toe Books Poetry prize in 2004, judged by one of my favorite poets, Charles Harper Webb). That was an amazing experience: my editor was very supportive, I had a lot of input on the cover design, and I was able to get blurbs from some truly top US poets. That said, the book has sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 500-600 copies. Good for poetry, but pretty darn small audience.

What I’ve come to realize is that through a lot of social networking on the web, I could probably sell that many copies of a book myself. There are dozens of poetry prizes each year, yet so few people are really reading them. So it all comes down to this: why write? Do we write for the money, the ego, or to be read? For me, it is definitely the latter. It’s why I’d rather have a smaller blog with an engaged community than a mega-blog with shallow comments.

All that said, I’m still not ready to pull the plug and just publish my second book on my own yet. I don’t like the stigma associated with self publishing, particularly for poetry. So…we’ll see. I’m going to focus on editing this month, try one more year of contests, and if no luck, I’ll reevaluate.

One of the reasons I LOVE blogging is there’s none of this silliness. You write and hopefully people read it and comment on it. Best of all worlds I think.

Jen

I had a discussion with someone recently in which they said:

“…So many people try to reduce the steps between that first interaction and a sale”

I’m interested in your opinion on the tendency on the online Social Media world for ‘the sale’ to be softened/delayed by ‘conversation’. Based on your Black Chair ep.7 ‘Get To The Point’, is it fair to say you have little time for the the conversational preamble that social media advocates before selling?

PS My first comment here – it’s a momentous occasion for me

Thank you so much for all the effort you put into organising such a fabulous afternoon for us all – it was so great to finally meet “all the muscle”!!

Stephen Fry was outstanding and we arrived home safely at around 1am!

Look forward to Aug 25

I hope you liked the chocolates – and I personally can’t wait to see this business-focused collaborative effort getting some traction.

To our dear interstate / overseas friends, we did miss you today! We haven’t forgotten about you though, so stay tuned for a debrief blog post from Robin, with pics from Tony H and Roger 42.

PS: Leanne and Ian, hope you’ll have a safe drive home tonight after the Opera House show

Myriam x

PS2: pretty hilarious, after a day like today: my “captcha” below is reading “the schmoozes”!