Top Five Writer Misconceptions about Online Publishing

I’ve run into many writers recently who are under the impression that online publishing is the same thing as print publishing. You publish on the web — no one else would “dare” pick up your article or content — and readers will flock to your article or blog post because of your reputation as a writer.

Misconceptions about online publishing form because many writers have years of experience with print media, which is more static than the ever-changing world of online publishing. In the world of print publishing, writers typically have more control over content and often benefit from built-in circulations for whatever print media they are going with. Since print publishing is more static than online publishing, and if writers aren’t familiar with how online publishing works — they can often end up with hurt feelings and huge misconceptions about how a publisher, blogger or reader feels about their work.

Top 5 Writer’s Misconceptions about Online Publishing

Here’s a list of my top five writer’s misconceptions about online publishing:
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September 10, 2008
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Small Press Publishers: Creating Smarter Business Plans

I’d like to start shining the spotlight on small press publishers, and talk about some of the behind-the-scenes factors that affect writers, editors and business owners. Many of these mistakes can be applied to other small businesses as well, but in the publishing world — these pitfalls can affect how and when contributors get paid, the success of a book and the financial solubility of a publisher. One of the most common scenarios, is when a publisher either doesn’t create a business plan, or neglects to revisit it even when there are changes and fluctuations within the industry.

It’s not uncommon for a small press publisher to produce books for the sake of producing books or for a small press publisher to regard their business as a “hobby.” From all outside appearances, it appears that the small press publisher knows what they’re doing — they publish a book or imprint that appears to be of decent quality, and they do so when they can. While we writers may never know if their numbers are “there,” if the small press publisher doesn’t have a plan, anything that happens beyond the status quo (success or failure) can hurt their business. A huge spike (or drop) in sales can cause small press publishers to have knee-jerk reactions that affect everyone involved with the business. Reactions can range from cutting communication to public attacks or halting production, affecting more than just the people that are involved with the business.
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September 3, 2008
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Job hunting? Here’s a Search Engine you Can’t Live Without

Monster. HotJobs. Your local paper. Company websites. If you’re looking for a job, conventional wisdom almost always says that looking for work is a job in itself. With so many places to hunt for listings, job hunting isn’t always a quick-and-easy thing to do — especially if you start adding multiple websites to your list.

Enter http://www.indeed.com, a specialty search engine that pulls jobs from multiple websites. Also known as a “vertical search engine,” this type of search engine offers job hunters precious time by pulling in results from all over the web. Earlier, I had mentioned how important it was to use keywords to sell your articles. Here, hunting for jobs is no different.

After a few weeks of trial-and-error, you’ll want to make sure you have a list of different combinations of keywords available for the job you’re looking for. Because some listings may appear on multiple sites, I generally only went about three-to-five search result pages deep to find what I was looking for. You can search by income level and location, but be forewarned that the results are only as good as the listings. Sometimes, the same job can appear in the low and high income stratospheres. Anecdotally, this might be the case because positions often don’t list the salary for the job so Indeed might default to offering the listing in every category.

For my fellow prolific freelancers, Indeed.com does list contract positions and freelance writing and editing opportunities in places you’d expect like http://www.problogger.com and places you certainly wouldn’t. Highly recommended, this vertical search engine is useful, focused and saves me time. If you’re interested, check out some of the links at the bottom of Indeed.com’s search engine portal; you’ll find the “trends” graphing capability to be quite interesting.

August 26, 2008
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How to Run a Booth at a Con

Back from four days in Indy, I thought I’d share with those of you who have never run a booth before some tips on how to manage your time effectively and reach out to new customers.

Bring Proper Documentation

First things first. Make sure–before you go–you have a centralized location for all the con paperwork. Next year we’ll be updating our stack to include email correspondence with the staff as well. We found out the hard way it’s not always a good idea to rely on in-house staffers to track communication–especially when there’s last minute changes.

Know Your Product

I can’t tell you how important it is to know what you’re selling. Sometimes it’s easy to come across like you don’t–especially when you’re nervous or encounter a difficult question. But if you can’t sum up what your project does, what it’s about, and what it costs? To your customer it’s going to look like you have no idea what you’re doing.
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August 20, 2008
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How Search Engine Technology is Catching Plagiarists

Plagiarism, the very word strikes fear into the hearts of writers everywhere, forcing them to clutch their precious stories to their chests and never show them to a single, living soul. In ye olde days, there was no Google, no MSN, no Yahoo! There were simply two, little gems called “ethics” and “copyright.”

If you were lucky enough to drill down to the bottom of the ethics mine, you consciously knew that you’d be influenced by other writers–but you would expect Thor’s hammer to fall down on your head should you rip one of them off and sell a story using their words. Copyright, on the other hand, is that piece of fool’s gold that everyone buys but no one knows what to do with, because they forget that once you have it–you have to protect it or you lose it.

Enter the internet era with its torrent of words and images. Ever copy an image that you’ve searched for? Used it in a blog post? Did you check to see whether or not you legally could? What about an article? Have you ever used one or two sentences in an assignment because you were rushed and didn’t bother rewriting them?

Personally, I don’t believe that writers are malicious by nature, but I do think that we’ve forgotten to hunt for the copyright, to remember what rights it gives us, because there is so much material out there on the web. Well? I’m certainly not the first to worry about such a thing, nor will I be the last. Fortunately, people a heck of a lot smarter than me found a way to catch plagiarists using search engine technology.
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August 13, 2008
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