Writers On The Move: Memes and Themes

Writers On The Move: Memes and Themes: The young delight in everything new...and then think they know it all. We oldies delight in finding newer and newer words and concepts and ...

Make Money Writing

E-book sales are not as easy to come by as many marketers would suggest. A light-hearted and much more down-to earth view of e-book marketing written by Australian author Wendy Laharnar: My Pet Peeve--Marketing started me thinking of ways in which authors could make money and advertise their books at the same time.

Another Australian author, Ruth Barringham, is following her own advice this month and undertaking the challenge of submitting one piece of work a day for the next thirty days. An exhausting feat as she readily admits.

12 month challenge

Now if you follow my love of challenges, you may decide to take on Ruth's 12 month writing challenge. I have downloaded the first two months free while I think about what is involved. But Ruth certainly seems to be making a living. 

And it does seem that with several books to market, an author's sales  increase exponentially. But as always, how can we juggle marketing and writing and be successful at both.

As my guest blogger this week, I am delighted to welcome Ruth Barringham who has a surprising answer--but one I greet with overwhelming relief.

Over to Ruth.

30-Day Social Media Blackout

Have you ever noticed that great ideas always come when you least expect it and it’s always when you’re doing other non-work-related things?

Running your own online business means you’re always looking for more creative ways to increase your business. But it’s all too easy to waste time searching the internet, spending hours on social media sites or reading other people’s blogs.

But when you’re busy on these types of time wasters, you’re only thinking about and commenting on what others are doing and creating, but you’re not doing anything yourself.

Nothing creative is ever achieved online. Even when you run an online business you do most of your work off-line.

The Latest Vogue for Getting More Done

It seems to be that too much time spent online means getting less work done.

The latest vogue appears to be to have a social media blackout.
Bloggers and website owners all over the globe are taking one month to abstain from being online so that they can get more work done. The only thing they do is check their email every day to make sure there’s nothing urgent that they have to answer and then they go off-line for the rest of the day.

They keep this up for 30 days without visiting a social media site, emailing their subscribers or posting on their blogs.

And it seems to be working every time. They all come back online with stories of not only how much work they got done, but how many new ideas they have and how creative they were.

Many of them even plan to have an online blackout as a regular thing whenever they have a lot of work to do.

And I can imagine how great it must be to get off-line for so long and get creative. I always have my best ideas when I’m doing other things like dog walking, cleaning or even grocery shopping (a boring task that I don’t like so I just take my shopping list, buy what I need and get the hell out of there).

So if you want to get creative, stop following others and “liking” and “tweeting” their stuff.
Instead, get off-line and get busy doing your own thing.

About The Author: Ruth Barringham is a freelance writer and online marketer and has been writing professionally since 1999. She started her own publishing company in 2007 where she publishes all her books and ebooks. She also teaches others how to start and grow an online business at http://gettingrichslowly.net.

More Helpful eBooks for Writers

Find Ruth's books by Clicking here to visit Cheriton House Publishing Pty Ltd.
She uses marketing site e-junkie where you can also download three free e-books: Publishing Your First eBook, The Art of Blogging Debunked and Exploring Game-Changing Tactics of Online Marketing as well as innumerable helpful pdf articles for writers.

And of course I've downloaded all the free e-books and articles...it just means I spend the time I've saved on my social media blackout on reading. lol

Read an E-Book Week

E-Book Week

E-Books are here to stay--or are they? Remember cassette tapes? Remember videos? Are you still using CDs? With technology fast forwarding at dizzying speeds, predictions that e-book readers may soon be superseded are appearing on techy websites.

But, as always, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Nineteenth century French editor Alphonse Karr said it first --Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. 

Even vinyl is making a come back. The young read and write more than ever using the latest devices and social media sites. And those of us who are older are finding it so much easier to change up to larger fonts to read e-books rather than lugging around a heavy large print edition, if we could even find one.

Read an E-Book Week (3rd to 9th March), supported by authors and publishers, celebrates and promotes e-books all over the world.

The home page not only offers free e-books, competitions to win e-readers and gives you an option to recycle old Kindles, it links to articles on the future of e-books and e-book trends

Today's contest (March 7) is for a Nook Simple Touch Reader from Barnes & Noble. It's based on a simple question about an interface which will allow e-book readers to "page" through an e-book just like a paper book. lol. Plus ca change.....

read an ebook now

E-Book Recommendations

My e-book library started off gleaned from Project Gutenberg, then SmashWords and now is increased most weekends by selections from the Top Hundred Free books in the Kindle Store.

I also have some firm favorites from content editing at MuseItUp Publishing where Read an E-book Week extends from March 10-16. Indie publishers have opened up the world of books allowing some very talented authors a chance to make a name for themselves. 

What have been your favorite reads this week? Drop a recommendation in the comment box below. More books are sold through recommendations than massively expensive publicity.

Recommend a book or books. If we all help an author find another keen reader, we help keep good books on our shelf (or e-reader lol)

Why haven't I recommended a favorite author? I started listing best books and the list just went on and on and on.... :-)

So over to you...