Tag Archives: publishing

Another Scammer Looking for Free Content

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Business opportunity? Is that what you call it?

A few weeks ago, I received the following e-mail message from someone I didn’t know, with the subject line: “I like your work- Business Opportunity”:

Hi Maria,

My name is [redacted] and I got your contact info from Lynda.com and really like your work especially your blogging content.

I am involved in a start up company that is wanting to change the way entrepreneurs use and get content. We are composing information/articles in a platform for marketing, legal and financing and we are looking for great business content to provide our entrepreneurs. We are looking at several options to pay authors for their content.

One of the reasons I emailed you was because I really like your work and I wanted to engage you in your level of expertise and wondered if you would be willing to answer some brief questions about your work. If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity please email me at [redacted]@gmail.com or call me at [redacted].

Looking forward to hearing from you,

[redacted]

http://www.linkedin.com/in/[redacted]

A few things struck me about this:

  • Apparently the folks at Lynda.com had given this person my contact info. That meant this initial contact had an element of networking to it instead of being just a “cold call” e-mail. (More on this in a moment.)
  • This could be a lead on another good publishing opportunity. As print publishing declines and the beginner-to-intermediate user base I write for shrivels, I’m always looking for new opportunities to write or create content for paying markets.
  • There was no mention of a company name or a Web site name. The person contacted me from a Gmail account. That raised a red flag.

But heck, it was worth a shot. I e-mailed back:

What do you need to know?

Maria

The Questionnaire

The response came quickly:

Maria,

Thanks for the quick reply!

I have prepared these questions for you. If you would rather I called please let me know when you are available or if you would rather feel free to respond to these questions via email.

I know your time is very important so please feel free to be as vague or detailed as you want on the questions. I really appreciate your feedback and I hope when we launch, you will be apart of our expert authors. Any feedback you have regarding these topic would be great. We hope to be able to provide additional revenue streams for authors by breaking down content.

1. Would you be willing to resubmit your articles/book content in a 5 step format or less? And would this be doable for you?

2. What kind of opportunities are out there for you in regards to getting your work out?

3. Who are you currently partnered with right now?

4. How do you typically get your content published?

5. Is this your full time job?

6. What outlets do you seek to get your work published or do they come to you?

7. What products do you have? Do you have any content in any other format? Audio? Video?

8. How do you typically get paid?Is it a flat fee? Would you be interested in getting paid pay per click?

9. Would you be interested in getting an identity in our community and would it be useful for to you have a website on our site that allowed you to sell your work, that could connect to your Facebook and additional products? It would also have a fan reading for you too.

Thank you for your help in advance Maria!

[redacted]

By this time, the red flag was flying high. The questions proved that she knew little or nothing about me or what she was doing. After all, questions 3, 4, 5, and 7 could be answered by a visit to my Bio page. Question 1 clearly indicated that she had no knowledge of copyright and non-compete clauses that appear in standard book and other publishing contracts. Questions 2 and 6 certainly shouldn’t matter to her if she’s really offering me an opportunity. Question 8 told me she was going to try to pay me per click — which is something I’m not interested in, especially from a “startup.” And Question 9 told me (1) she had no idea that I already had two very well-trafficked Web sites, (2) that my publishers sold my work, leaving me to actually create content, (3) that she would attempt to tie me to a Web site her organization operated, and (4) that she’d likely try to sell me products.

But I played along to see where I could take it and whether I could get her to dig herself in any deeper:

I’m a freelance writer and have been since 1990. I’ve written 70+ books and hundreds of articles for dozens of legitimate print publishers (think McGraw-Hill, Macmillan, Random House, and Peachpit Press). My Mac OS X books for Peachpit have been bestsellers since 1999. I also produce audio and video — you’ve seen the video on Lynda.com; I’m working on another title for another publisher now.

You can get all this information and more about me on my Bio page: https://aneclecticmind.com/bio/
You can see a list of all my published work using links on my site, https://aneclecticmind.com/

I don’t have a “full time job.” That’s one of the benefits of being freelance.

I’m definitely NOT interested in getting an “identity” in any “community.” I have an identity and certainly don’t need another one. I’m not the least bit interested in being tied to another Web site. My publishers are doing a pretty good job of selling my work, so I don’t see the need to use another Web site to sell it, too.

If you’re looking for a low-cost content creator, don’t look at me. I get paid very well for my work.

That said, let’s cut to the chase. What did you have in mind?

And maybe you can tell me who YOU are and why you are contacting me through a Gmail account. Doesn’t your company have e-mail?

Maria

As you might imagine, I didn’t get a response.

I contacted the folks at Lynda.com to see if they knew anything about this person. I forwarded them the initial e-mail. They all confirmed what I had begun to suspect: they hadn’t given this person my contact information at all.

So I sent [redacted] a final e-mail message:

It turns out that no one at Lynda.com gave you my contact info. I’ve warned them about you and what appears to me to be some sort of scam. Don’t contact me again.

What Writers Should Take Away from This

There’s a lesson here for writers, including bloggers and other content creators.

There are many “startups” out there in desperate need of fresh content. They’ll make all kinds of promises to get you to submit content to them. They’ll promise ad revenue from the pages on which your content appears, they’ll promise you payment per click on your content, they’ll promise to give you an “identity” and make it easy for your “fans” to find you. They’ll flatter you and tell you they love your work — without even knowing what your work is. Meanwhile, you’ll be required to upload and format your content on their site. You’ll be required to moderate or respond to comments on your content — perhaps even give technical support or answer other questions. Your “business partner” will also likely keep all rights to your work and republish it elsewhere without paying you a dime.

But you think it’s a good idea — they’ve hinted at thousands of hits a day! — so you give it a try. Your work appears on a slick-looking Web site that’s just jam-packed with advertising. But you soon discover that the majority of people visiting the site are the suckers like you — and their clicks don’t count. Your work appears among the drivel spewed out by other writers trying to cash in on a “business opportunity.” You’ve lost the rights to republish your work elsewhere and you’re not making enough to buy lunch once a month.

You think I’m making this up? I’m not. I was suckered in by one of these about five years ago. Sadly, I didn’t blog about it so I can’t remember the name of the company. But I did blog about eZineArticles.com, which is probably the biggest ripoff out there for serious writers. (Publish with them and you never know where your work will end up; mine appeared on porn sites.)

What do they get? Advertising revenue. Or maybe they repackage and sell your content to someone else.

My advice is to avoid any operation like this — even if you’re just starting out. It’s rare that any relationship like this can benefit your career.

A legitimate publisher will pay you for the content you create. Up front, before or at publication. They will accept First Rights or reprint rights or negotiate with you for rights — they won’t take all rights unless they’re paying big bucks for them. Although they might offer bonuses based on content popularity (hits), the revenue will not be completely tied into that. And, for Pete’s sake, they won’t compensate you based solely on clicks or ad revenue.

The Three Tiers of Writing

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Some thoughts from a top tier player.

Other posts that explore why writers write:
– Why Write?
– Why Writers Write
– BE a Writer

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with my friend and editor — and yes, it is possible to be friends with an editor — Esther. Like me, Esther also writes about computers and computing for a living. But while my audience tends to be end users, hers are of a more technical or managerial nature. In other words, she writes stuff I probably couldn’t understand.

We got to talking about writing and why people do it. During the conversation she (or we?) said something that was so profound to me at the time that I wrote it down on a notepad I’d brought along. It was the only note I’d jotted down during our lunch:

Notes

Why People WriteI see these reasons for writing as three separate but overlapping groups that a writer might be part of.

Do you remember set theory back in high school math? You can have multiple groups of people, some of which belong to more than one group while a limited number belong to just one group. I’ve created this image to visualize what I mean. Keep this image in mind as you read the next three sections.

Write

One group of people write to fulfill a desire or need to write.

If you’re one of these people, you know it. You’ve likely been writing or at least telling stories since you were a child. Perhaps you were the queen of the campfire with your original and frightening ghost stories. Perhaps you told yourself stories to get to sleep. Perhaps you always had at least one notebook filled with the never-ending saga of some characters you’d dreamed up to populate your made up world.

There are many thousands of people worldwide who belong to this tier. They write primarily because they need to. There’s something in their head and they need to get it out.

Some of these people share their work with others, but I’m willing to bet that a good percentage of them — perhaps even half or more — don’t. They don’t need to share. They just need to create, to get the words out.

But some of these people also belong to one or more of the other groups.

Get Published

A large (but not as large) group of writers write because they want to get published. Creating isn’t enough for them. They want to see their work in print. They want to have a book or magazine they can hold in their hand and show off to friends and family.

Although they might not realize it, having a published work is a lot like getting a trophy. It’s a symbol of an accomplishment.

Esther and I talked at length about how easy it is to get published these days. Yes, I did say easy. While vanity presses have been around for a long time, blogging and print on demand publishers make getting published cheaper and easier than ever before. Now anyone who wants to get published can get published — no matter how good or bad his work is.

This just reinforces my trophy analogy. After all, you can get a trophy two ways: by having it given to you by someone else who believes you’ve earned it or by going to the trophy store and buying it for yourself. That’s the difference between being published by an established publisher who is publishing your work because he thinks it deserves to be published and self publishing your work because you think it deserves to be published.

Some people write solely because they want to get published. They have no desire to be writers at all; they just want the end product — a published work — in hand. Who might be in this group? How about a professional in a non-publishing field who wants to look like an expert in that field? A doctoral candidate? A college professor?

While just being published is enough of a motivation for the people in this group, some want to take it the next step and are part of the last group.

Earn a Living

An even smaller group of writers write because they want to earn a living as a writer. Perhaps they are interested in the perceived lifestyle or the ability to earn a living from their creative efforts. They imagine working in their pajamas whenever they feel like it, doing book signings where they’re surrounded by adoring fans, and raking in enough dough to buy homes and cars and perhaps even helicopters.

(Ah, if only it were that easy!)

Some people write soley for this reason. They don’t care about the writing itself and the idea of having a published book is meaningless without the cash. They just think it might be an easy way to earn a living and heck, who wouldn’t want that?

But most really do want to write and do have a desire to be published.

The Reality

Unfortunately, motivation doesn’t always match reality.

You might write because you want to get published, but can you achieve this? Although it’s easier now than ever before, it’s still beyond the ability of many writers.

And what if you want to earn a living as a writer? A very small percentage of writers do.

Why People WriteSo rather than using set theory to illustrate the realities of writing, it might be better to use a pyramid shape with multiple tiers, as shown here.

At the bottom are the people who are writing but have not yet achieved publication.

Next up is a smaller group of writers who have achieved publication but have not yet written or published to the point where they can earn a living as writers.

And at the top is a much smaller group of writers who can actually earn a living as writers.

If you’re a writer, it should be pretty easy to figure our which tier you’re part of.

What this Means

What does this mean to the folks whose circle doesn’t match their tier level? For many folks, it just means you need to keep trying or try harder.

Let’s look at the folks in the Get Published or Earn a Living circle who are in the bottom tier of the pyramid. Have you tried to get your work published? It’s quite difficult to go any further until you do. If you have, but haven’t succeeded, why? Putting self-publishing aside for a moment, are you being rejected because you aren’t meeting the needs of publishers? Is the quality of your work sufficient for publication? Are you being reasonable and understand that an established publisher knows more about the industry and what will sell than you do? Or, if you have a niche market for your work, have you considered self-publishing?

How about the folks in the Earn a Living circle who are in the middle tier of the pyramid. Why isn’t your work selling well enough to earn you a living? Is the target audience too small? The book too expensive? Has the publisher — who may be you! — dropped the ball as far as marketing and promotion is concerned? Is there too much competition? Not enough interest? If a published work doesn’t sell, there won’t be enough money coming in to earn a living.

It all comes down to you. You need to write what people want to read. You need to get it published and marketed in a way that’ll sell it. It’s not an easy task and the work never ends. Unless you’re talented and fortunate enough to write and publish a best-seller, the work never ends.

The View from Near the Top

I’m sitting in the middle of the top tier right now, but I could slip down within my tier — or even to a lower tier — at any time. I have to keep working, keep writing, keep getting my work published by organizations that can sell it. I’m a cog in a wheel and that wheel is changing its shape as the publishing industry evolves.

Yes, I come to work in my pajamas sometimes and yes, I’ve even bought helicopter. But I also work harder than 95% of the people I know — people who whine and complain about their bosses as they stand chatting around the water cooler. People who know at the beginning of the year exactly how much they’ll make by year-end. People who have health benefits and weekends off.

It’s skill and hard work that got me where I am. And it’ll be skill and hard work that keeps me here.

And there’s room up here for anyone who’s not afraid of the climb.

Creating a Photo Calendar with InDesign

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An overview of how I did it and the results.

This year, I decided that I needed an affordable yet memorable holiday gift to send out to all my customers and the folks I do business with. I wanted this gift to be an in-your-face-all-year-long item. That means it had to be something the recipients would want to keep and refer to.

A calendar seemed to fit the bill.

Now every year, I get sample calendars with my company name on it from various printers who print promotional items. They’re usually pretty boring; certainly not the kind of calendar you’d want to use all year long. Clearly, I had to do better than that.

The solution was a custom calendar using the photos I’ve taken over the years to show off the places I fly to and my helicopter. The challenge was to make a professional-looking, attractive calendar that was cost-effective to print.

iPhoto’s calendar printing option was the obvious choice for creating the calendar. It offers several different formats, many of which would meet my needs. What did not meet my needs, however, was the price: $19.99 per calendar. Since I figured I’d need at least 50 of them, that was far more than I wanted to spend.

My husband suggested MagCloud, which I’ve been using for other print-on-demand needs. At first, I didn’t think it would work out. After all, MagCloud produces stapled magazines sized just under 8-1/2 x 11. But then I held a sheet of paper up to the Robinson Helicopter calendar on my wall. And guess what? It was the same size.

So I decided to go with MagCloud for printing.

At that point, it looked as if I’d be creating a 28-page calendar from scratch. Not something I looked forward to. But I did a Google search for 2010 InDesign Calendar Template, which directed me to the 2010 InDesign Calendar Template by Juliana Halvorson on the Adobe Web site.

I downloaded it and discovered that it was almost what I needed. The template assumed a landscape orientation. I wasn’t sure if MagCloud would accept the document created that way. So I modified the template to make it portrait orientation and rotated all the calendar grids. A few adjustments to the margins and bleeds (which I initially got wrong) and it was a good starting point for my own project.

First up was reviewing the holidays. Juliana had included several extra religious and “Hallmark” holidays that just weren’t appropriate for a general use calendar. I removed them. I also changed the wording of some holidays — for example, changing Thanksgiving Day to just plain Thanksgiving.

Then I needed to redo the thumbnail calendars for the previous and next month that appear on each calendar page. The type was just too small. That turned out to be a time-consuming chore, as I had to basically reformat each little calendar individually. But it was worth the effort; the numbers are now far more readable.

Here’s a little movie of the calendar’s pages. You’ll need QuickTime to view it.

Then the big task: finding the images I needed in my calendar — 12 full-page images and about 16 smaller ones — cropping them for the right proportions, saving them as TIFFs, and dragging them into my working file. It took me two full days to get the job done. In the end, it was very tedious and I just couldn’t wait to finish it.

Since the calendar’s pages had to be in multiples of 4, I had to stretch my 26 page document to 28 pages. That also meant filling in 2 more pages with something. I decided to put information about Flying M Air’s services, along with thumbnail images from the big pictures.

Once completed, I created the PDF MagCloud needed to print my calendar. The first upload (which took 4 tries on my miserably slow Internet connection here in Wickenburg) resulted in an error. I’d gotten the bleed measurements wrong. I fixed them and (fortunately) did not need to adjust the layout. Two hours later, after about 8 upload attempts, the file was online. The preview looked good.

I ordered the free proof and am now waiting for it to arrive. If it passes muster — and I’m about 95% sure it will — I’ll order about 50 copies to give as holiday gifts to clients and friends.

In the meantime, I’ve “published” the calendar so others can preview and (hopefully) buy their own copies. There is one caveat, however. Because MagCloud publishes magazines and not calendars, if you buy from MagCloud, you’ll have to punch your own hole in the top of the calendar.

I’ll be doing a lot of hole-punching next week.

MagCloud

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On-demand magazine publishing.

I need to start this blog post by thanking RickHap for his comment on my blog post, “Marketing Madness.” My post whined a bit about the chore of putting together a 12-page package of information about Flying M Air‘s helicopter tours and day trips for Phoenix area concierges. Rick told me about MagCloud, an HP service that can turn a PDF into a slick, bound, full-color magazine.

The deal seemed too good to be true: only 20¢ per page for full color printouts with no minimum purchase. Just create the PDF, upload it to the site, and get a free proof. If it looks good, click the Publish button. Or, if you’re confident about your PDF production skills, simply publish it without waiting for the proof.

So I tried it. I threw together a quick PDF of the files I’d been printing at my local print shop for 80¢ per page and painstakingly slipping into special binders. I went away on a trip — have you noticed how much I’m traveling lately? — and when I got home, the proof was there.

And it was pretty damn good.

The print quality was better than I’d been getting from the local print shop’s fancy printer. It was smartly bound with staples, so it wouldn’t fall apart. And on the back page was an address area to make it easy to mail the materials out.

Not only was I hooked, but I began to see the possibilities in using this service to meet my own publishing needs.

Exploring Arizona by HelicopterFirst up (after the concierge package was properly done) was a newsletter for Flying M Air that I’m calling Exploring Arizona by Helicopter. I had to come up with a new design that utilized my company colors. The resulting PDF looks pretty good for a first effort, if I do say so myself. I can’t wait to see the printed version.

Although this first issue is a bit heavy on the marketing content, some comments from Miraz will help me focus on content with more universal appeal in the next issue. This issue does feature a few of my better photos, though, many of which can be found in my photo gallery. (Hey, a girl has to pay for this photo equipment, doesn’t she?)

I’ve ordered 20 copies to send out to former clients and hopefully entice some of them to submit photos and first-person accounts of their experiences flying with me. I’ll also be dropping off copies with some of the concierges I’ve been visiting to get them interested in what’s new.

If you have a newsletter or magazine you’d like to get printed on demand, I highly recommend MagCloud. And again, I’d like to thank Rick for sharing this info with me. I think it’ll really help me get the word out about all kinds of things in the future.

What Editors [Are Supposed to] Do

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And what they’re not supposed to do.

As I travel across northern Arizona by helicopter, escorting two paying passengers among Arizona’s natural and semi-natural wonders, I find myself working remotely on a book project I started before I left and will finish when I return. I promised to keep the ball moving while away and that means reviewing edits of chapters I’ve completed.

It does not mean getting angry about editors overstepping their bounds and making manuscript changes they have no business making.

In an effort to educate writers and editors about the various editing jobs out there, I decided to put together this list of editor job types and duties. I’m hoping that my project editor and the miscellaneous editors she’s managing will read this and learn.

Rather than discuss all kinds of editors, I’ll concentrate on just two: technical editor and copy editor. These are the ones I work with directly most often — and the ones that give me the most headaches.

Technical Editor

A technical editor’s job is to ensure that a book’s content is accurate and instructions are easy to follow. Technical editors are widely used in the computer books I write, although for many of my titles, I’m responsible for my own technical accuracy. When a technical editor is put on a job, his duties include the following:

  • Reading the entire manuscript.
  • Reviewing all statements of fact to ensure they’re correct.
  • Trying all instructions to make sure they work.
  • Reviewing all screenshots to ensure that they’re correct.
  • Asking the author for clarification on something that’s not clear.
  • Informing the author of inaccuracies in text or screenshots.
  • Suggesting additional information that the author may have missed that’s within the scope of the book and may be useful to readers.

A technical editor should not — I repeat, not — do the following:

  • Make changes to information or instructions. That’s the author’s job on reviewing the technical edits. An exception would be to fix an obvious typo.
  • Add information or instructions. That’s the author’s job on reviewing the technical edits.
  • Ask the author questions about how the program works. The technical editor should know how the program works. If the author got something wrong, it’s the technical editor’s job to tell him — not to ask him if it’s right or wrong.

Under no circumstances should the technical editor make changes to the manuscript to introduce information or instructions that he has not verified. The author should never be required to perform technical editing chores on text introduced by the technical editor. It must be assumed by the author that the technical editor’s comments and suggestions are accurate and correct. Otherwise, why have a technical editor?

Copy Editor

A copy editor’s job is to review the manuscript and make sure the text is grammatically correct and conforms to the style guidelines established for the publication. The copy editor’s job is to improve the book, not change it. Specifically, his responsibilities include:

  • Reading the entire manuscript, or, for a revision, the portions that have changed since the previously published edition.
  • Identifying and fixing typos and spelling errors. If there are a lot of these, the author is simply not doing his job.
  • Identifying and fixing grammatical errors. One could argue that if there are a lot of these, the author probably shouldn’t be writing. I’ll agree with that. But every author is prone to making a few grammatical errors and should probably be forgiven. The copy editor needs to fix it.
  • Identifying and fixing style errors. I’m talking about usage like e-mail vs. email, Web site vs. website, and press the OK button vs. click OK. Style should be established in advance and adhered to by the author, so there shouldn’t be many of these problems, either.
  • Point out sentence constructions that aren’t clear. If a rewrite is necessary to clarify, the author should be allowed to do it. If it’s an easy fix like adding punctuation or a few words, the editor should be able to do it.

The copy editor should not do the following:

  • Change the author’s voice. It is the author’s book, not the copy editor’s. The only exception should be in the event that the author’s voice is so far off established standards that it needs changing. That’s a problem that needs to be resolved by the editor in charge of the project, though.
  • Change the author’s common usage to something the copy editor prefers. If the author likes to use a phase such as “If desired, you can…,” the copy editor should not change the phrase to “If you want to, you can….”
  • Create awkward sentence reconstructions to remove prepositions from the end of a sentence. While old-time grammar rules say you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, it’s commonly done in casual voice writing. An author should try to avoid this, but should not be required to make his sentences sound like those in a college text book to do so.

There are good copy editors, bad copy editors, and copy editors who should not be copy editors at all. I love having a good copy editor; I love feeling that a revised sentence remains in my own voice but is improved. I love to learn from that. A bad copy editor, on the other hand, won’t find the errors he’s supposed to find. It’s embarrassing when they’re found in the printed book. A copy editor who makes changes for the sake of changes — as if to justify his own importance to the project — should not be editing. He should be either writing his own books or doing something that has nothing to do with writing. These copy editors create bad feelings for experienced authors and make their work a real chore.

What Do You Think?

What are your thoughts on this? Are you a writer with some editor stories to share? Or an editor with some author stories to share? Please share your comments on this post. I’d like to get a discussion going about this. I think I’m on track with this assessment, but maybe you have other ideas?

In the meantime, I’ve got to make a phone call. One of my editors needs to be reminded of her responsibilities and their limitations.