Funny thing how when you value your time and your talent more, others follow suit. Putting a higher value on my services was a major decision on my part. It has paid off, even if there was a short ‘bare patch’ with work being rather thin on the ground, so to speak. Now I am humming along steadily and have a ghost writing eBook 60% done and a stack of web content to produce for a good, long standing client. I won another contract but the client seemed to have trouble working out the time difference between here and the USA and has faded off the screen, for now. It happens. Usually for the best and if it happens this early on then that has to be a positive thing for both parties.

I still haven’t done anything with my novel but I have had a lot more lecturing work and some new tutoring clients. I am hoping to also get some time to look at my backlist and maybe push some of those titles before I have to upgrade the StreetWise Philippines series following our trip there next month. So basicaly I have never been busier and that is of course, a good thing. Next term I will be teaching a new, updated version of my ‘How To Make A Living Online’ Course. As you might note, I have dropped the ‘As An Online Writer’ part of the title as most attendees don’t want to be online writers as such and I have no doubt scared off a number of potential students. I will make it more generic to making a living online and should have full classes. Stay tuned for more updates!

I finished the new writing course on schedule and delivered it to my client. Right now it is in treatment or pre-production or whatever they call it when they start making videos and doing voice overs and stuff. As soon as it is released I’ll let you know. We have already had several inquiries from interested parties which is very encouraging. So what’s next?

Regardless of the fact I teach this eWriting stuff, I still like to learn as much as I can about our craft and am forever looking for new sources of fresh and interesting information. I have found one, ‘The Freelance Writer’s Den’. This great resource is headed by Carol Tice, who you can glean a great deal from for free by signing up for her Make A Living Writing courses and blog. Carol puts out a ton of good stuff for you to gain from but of course, that isn’t how she pays her bills. Carol has the aforementioned subscription site, ‘The Freelance Writer’s Den’ and charges $25 a month, cancel any time, no obligation. For the $25 you get a lot of great information and value with monthly events and webinars featuring very knowledgeable experts in the game.

Why pay when there is so much free stuff online? Good question but keep in mind two things. First of all you get what you pay for and second, there is a lot of free rubbish and misinformation online too. If I were to charge a subscription for this site and get a ton of members I could afford to provide far more info than I already do. I could pay writers to contribute content… like Carol does. I could have guest experts giving webinars and writing blogs… like Carol does. Free only gets you so far. When you invest your money as well as your time you tend to appreciate the information more and actually apply it. How often have you read some great advice on a free site but then never done anything to apply it to your business or life? And the net result is you stay exactly where you were when you read this life changing advice, right?

I will add some links to Carol’s site where you can sign up but in the meantime, surf on in and have a good read. It is worth your time to check it out.

I have just signed off on a deal to develop a new, exciting online writing course for a US client. It will be built on my existing ‘Eat Your Words – How To Make A Living Writing Online’ course that has been presented at several community colleges and online since 2010. It is also offered as an online distance learning course and in expanded form with Rainbow Writers.

This new course is being developed for a client who I have written eBooks and web content for in the past. He will own the course and market it but I will be available for counselling and additional tutorials on an ongoing basis. what will set this course apart will be the focus on online writing as a source of regular income. Most courses are either for people looking to monetize web sites or write novels and other creative pieces like short stories. This course will teach writing skills, web skills and business skills, bringing the three areas together to produce a writer who can operate effectively online.

I had the pleasure today to attend the book launch of ‘The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf’ by Ambelin Kwaymullina. Described as a ‘pyschothriller set in a dystopian future’, it has a lot of levels within the narrative that, while aimed at teen aged readers, will resonate with readers of all ages. Ambelin is an attractive, intelligent and well-educated woman who ‘got lucky’ and had the book accepted by her publisher, Walker Books, with a sample first chapter and a synopsis. They were the first publishers she approached so some might say she is the exception that proves the rule you need to send out dozens of query letters to agents and be ready for rejection after rejection.

The thing is, Ambelin wrote a book for a specific readership and then approached a publisher that specialises in that market. Just as importantly, she wrote a great book with a super premise and wrote it well. All her ducks were lined up in a row, something most authors fail to do, then blame the publishing industry and the market and the government and everyone else but themselves.

The launch was a friendly, casual affair but none the less professional and well supported by the publisher with the General Manager and three or four of the key people in sales and marketing there to help out. The level of support given to this book was on show with several high quality printed pieces and other bumf. This is continued on the web site with a YouTube clip and other supporting media. While they wouldn’t say how large the print run is, I was assured it is significant, probably over 10,000 copies and that is a lot for an Australian book and more so for a first novel  in YA, or Young Adult.

All in all, the launch confirmed my belief that the secret in  selling books is to have a good book that has a market and then getting a publisher who will get behind the author. The author then has to get with the program and put in the hard yards and time and effort, just as Ambelin was doing at this launch. She also does seminars and workshops for young writers and uses her book as a teaching tool.

One thing that struck a chord with me was an anecdote Ambelin related bout her grandfather. He said a white farmer once painted a whitewash circle around his homestead and a whitewash circle around the camp of the local indigenous people and said you stay in your circle and I’ll stay in mine. This old gent said how he should have made the circles bigger so there was a place where the two interlocked; a place where black and white could both sit and talk about things, understand each other better. ‘The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf’ has a lot to say about some major issues. There are several themes running through this novel that educates as well as entertains, thrills and involves the reader. It is fast paced, Ambelin cut some 25,000 words at the suggestion of her editor to keep that pacing throughout the story. It is a story of a very strong, determined girl set in a future that has parallels with our own Australian past and even our present and immediate future. It isn’t available as an eBook but you can download a sample chapter and get a nice taste of something worth finishing. Great work Ambelin and well done Walker Books.

So when do you go global? One might consider oneself already global, given the international nature of the world wide web. But are you global, or glocal? You can connect with people all over the world and with programs such as Google Translate and Babel Fish you can read foreign web pages, albeit with dodgy translations that can easily lose the plot and the intent of the content! Or you can stick to English s the new lingua franca of the internet.

Alternatively, you can translate your work into foreign languages. I have done the first title in my back list and now offer ‘Hilda Hopkins, El Asesinato que Ella Trejio’ to the Spanish reading world. In time it will be an eBook as well as the Lulu.com pocket size paperback it is now. It will also be released as a dual language reader, with English on the left page and Spanish text on the right. All those 50 something ladies looking to retire to Malaga, or Costa Rica, Panama or wherever will have something more interesting to read as they learn the local lingo than ‘see Spot run’ in Espaniol!

It is not overly expensive to crowd source your translation. I was lucky to find a superb translator in Maria Nalus of Bogota, Columbia. She made sure I could follow the Spanish text by leaving in the page numbers where they correspond to the English version. Made it easy to figure out and format for print. Not sure how it will go for .epub, I envisage issues! Maria might have someone who can help with that layout problem for  a reasonable sum. Now I am extra fortunate in that Maria is also a marketing professional and she will help sell these Spanish editions in that neck of the woods. I hope to offer the books in Hindi for the Indian market also and have a top writer, Poormina, working on the same book as I write. That will be a challenge as the script is very different but it will be a good test for Russian, Arabic and Chinese (Mandarin) editions. If I get Portuguese, French and German editions happening that lot plus the original English editions will cover half the population of the world! Anyone else will be either able to read one of those languages or not in a position to buy books anyway.

The dual reader versions are the real jewel in the crown. So many people want to learn English and these books will help them. Not just the Hilda Hopkins series of tongue in cheek crime thrillers, but my own novels, short story collections and the work of the Rorschach School, four volumes worth already and counting. Plus we have a wealth of writing published on The Word Shop and I invite non-English speaking writers to contribute and share their work.

The beauty of this is that it is a doable project, in fact it is already being done! We are at a time and place in the history of mankind where we have far more capability than ever before. As electronic writers, we can do so much to bring the world together, make it a better place and share so much of the richness mankind has to offer. I don’t see it as an exaggeration to say that if we understood each other better, if we could communicate with each other more easily, then we would find more reasons to be friends than excuses to be enemies. All of us, as writers, have the ability to make such a difference and it behooves us to try. I’m just one 50 year old bloke in a garage office in a low socio-economic suburb in a far flung antipodean city, yet I can reach out and touch the world. I have true power because I believe I do. What do you believe you can do?

I was doing some research for an article I am writing on scam writing sites and I thought I would check You Tube out. I came across this amazing clip, well kind of creepy, really. It is a computer generated talking head singing the praises of realwritingjobs.com. This site makes out they have all these great writing jobs you can go after when really all your money buys is a collated list of work already advertised and accessible for free elsewhere. Yes one might argue they save time but only if they source jobs from more than one location. The point is, they use slippery terms to give the impression they have the work, it pays very well and you can get it just by joining them.

Well, they don’t have any work, most of the jobs you can go for are competitive and low end and you still have to compete with everyone else on Elance and oDesk and similar sites. Where’s the value in that? So why use a CGI? Why? Because then nobody can drag the person telling the lies into court, can they? What is sad are other clips where naive young do-gooders think they are doing the world a favour by saying it all looks pretty good to them. Yes, it would, sonny, you haven’t been out in the big bad world long enough to know better. You grew up on that teat they call the internet and think you know the dangers, but do you?

A lot of people, too  many, seem to think if it is online and there is a web site and YouTube clips and a Facebook Like icon to click on it must be legitimate. Look, just because you are decent and law abiding doesn’t mean everyone is like you.

This term I am not presenting my Eat Your Words or Become A Published Author courses at either of the two community colleges I usually present at. I guess it is the colder weather that has killed the keeness. Or it might suggest the need to take a new look at what is offered versus what is wanted. I have developed two new courses. One is ‘Writing Better Fiction’ which will lead up to the Become A Published Author course and give people who are not confident their writing is up to snuff just yet. The other course is ‘Creative Writing For Migrants’.

This course was inspired by a student on my Online Writing Online eLearning course who has English as a second language. She asked me to help correct her English as she dreamt of being a writer. Then when I did very gently correct her mistakes she complained I had criticised her since the first week! She then resigned and demanded a refund so I guess no good deed goes unpunished as it was not part of my role to provide ESL teaching services on that course.

I think a lot of migrants will have some great stories to tell and may be just too shy or too worried their English is not good enough. This course will teach good writing skills while also giving some tips on where most migrants miss out. Prepositions and tenses are the key. Saying ‘marry’ when they mean ‘married’ as in ‘they were marry last week’. Saying ‘on’ instead of ‘in’, as in ‘he had lived in the island for a year’. I think in time any writer will self-correct but for now they need a confidence boost and to mostly focus on crafting a good story. The rest is basically just editing. I know the ESL writers that have joined the Rorschach School in the Become A Published Author course have given us some great new reading and I am sure there is more out there.

I feel the Anglo-centric world we have lived in for some time now is no longer going to be the dominant model. In Australia the Australian face hasn’t been an Anglo one for some time and yet many still equate ‘Aussie’ with Anglo-Saxon/Celtic. Part of what writers can achieve is to offer alternatives, to change opinions and if nothing else, to make people think. If we only have writing by writers who come from the ‘mainstream’ then we can only expect mainstream writing. The thing is, as scary as it may be to some, the mainstream is now made up of a lot of people who don’t fit the Anglo template and the country isn’t coming to a crashing halt, nor is society falling apart. Fancy that.

I went to a Writer’s Group the other day and met a bloke who is putting out a not for profit literary review, a magazine for writers called Mosaic. It will be an A5 print item with colour cover and some great writing within. They will have a web site and eventually an online presence, maybe even an eZine version but to begin with it will be traditional and on paper.

I will assist by advertising my Online Writing Courses and my Become A Published Author courses as well as offer my expertise in various ways as I support the initiative. Writers need more outlets for their work and this will be put in the hands of up to 2,000 readers via free distribution at bookshops and other locations.

Rob and his partner Nick also run a Writer’s Group called Novel Ideas which I hope to attend and perhaps be able to pass on some of my knowledge about ePublishing and what have you. Who knows what talent is waiting out there to either be discovered or learn how to get in front of readers.