How to Fund the Publishing of Your Book: #BizBookAwards Chat |  |
- How to Fund the Publishing of Your Book: #BizBookAwards Chat
- New Copyright Alert System Won’t Impact Small Businesses – Mostly
- 9 Entrepreneurship Principles You Shouldn’t Forget
- Guy Kawasaki Joins Writer.ly Publishing Marketplace as Board Advisor
| How to Fund the Publishing of Your Book: #BizBookAwards Chat Posted: 11 Mar 2013 02:00 AM PDT
So you want to write a book? You’ve got a whole lot of challenges to face. For example, when you self-publish a book, there are costs involved. You’ll need to cover the expenses of cover design, typesetting/formatting, and editing, and that’s before you’ve even looked at potential marketing costs. So, how can you fund the publishing of your book before you’ve even sold your first copy? We’ll hear from authors and experts about your options. Our PanelThis is an open chat. Everyone will be welcome to attend and participate, so please share this announcement with a friend. We’ll be joined by a panel of guests who will also be adding to the conversation. Nancy Spooner Bsharah (@SurfDateBook)—Nancy is the co-author of Everything I Know About Dating I Learned Through Surfing with Tara Brouwer. She is also a small business person and owner of Tempo Live Events, Inc. Susan Payton (@eggmarketing)—Susan is the President of Egg Marketing, an internet marketing, social media, and communications services company. She's written two books: 101 Entrepreneur Tips and Internet Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs. Ivana Taylor (@DIYMarketers)—Ivana is the publisher of DIYMarketers and the book editor for Small Business Trends. She is also the co-author of Excel for Marketing Managers, a book "self-published" by MrExcel.com. Anita Campbell (@SmallBizTrends)—I’ll be very pleased to join the conversation too. I’m publisher of Small Business Trends, founder of the Small Business Book Awards, and the co-author of Visual Marketing. Invited Guests Jim Kukral (@JimKukral)—Jim was recently named by Dun & Bradstreet as one of "The Most Influential Small Business People on Twitter." He is the author of eight books currently available on Amazon.com and assists other authors with publishing and marketing their books. Phil Simon (@philsimon)—Phil is a sought-after speaker and recognized technology expert. He consults with companies on how to optimize their use of technology and is the author of five books. How to participateTaking part in the Twitter chat couldn’t be easier. Just log in at Twitter.com. Then do a search on Twitter for the hashtag #BizBookAwards to follow the conversation. To make your comments heard, add the hashtag #BizBookAwards to the end of your tweets during the hour. PS: This chat is in honor of the Small Business Book Awards. Cast votes for your favorite titles and book resources through March 26, 2013. The post How to Fund the Publishing of Your Book: #BizBookAwards Chat appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| New Copyright Alert System Won’t Impact Small Businesses – Mostly Posted: 10 Mar 2013 04:30 PM PDT
But if you run a home-based business, you might just want to be aware of this new system because there are circumstances under which it might impact you. And business owners will of course want to know how this system may affect their families. The recently launched Copyright Alert System (CAS), is an anti-piracy plan that some have called the "six strikes" system. By design it focuses on consumers. It is intended to help stop downloads of pirated, copyrighted works such as films and music. But small companies that are run from home using a residential ISP account to connect to the Internet, could find themselves in the crossfire if they, someone in their home or in their employ uses their Internet connection to download pirated material. How The Copyright Alert System WorksThe Copyright Alert System was established by something called the Center for Copyright Information (CCI). That’s an innocuous sounding name, but the Center is more than just a think tank or a website providing information. The Center is really a joint effort of groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). They’ve been joined by 5 major Internet service providers here in the United States – AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. Last week the group gave a series of public presentations available on CSPAN to explain the Alerts system, at the Congressional Internet Caucus. Essentially, groups like the MPAA have people go out and sign up for accounts at P2P (peer-to-peer) sharing sites — also called torrent sites. According to Marianne Grant, Senior Vice President of the MPAA, when one of these people see a copyrighted work being shared, they verify it and report it to the ISPs. In turn the ISPs notify the consumer or may take other action. The nature of the notices or actions varies, depending on whether it’s a first occurrence or repeat occurrence, and depending on the ISP. But in general terms, here is how it works:
Ars Tehnica has an image of what a Copyright Alert looks like, this one from Comcast. Small Business Supposedly Not Part of the Alerts SystemThe Center for Copyright Information has said that public Wi-Fi providers such as coffee shops and other small businesses will not be impacted by the new plan, contrary to some previous reports. Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the CCI, wrote in a statement on the group’s website that businesses and organizations providing legitimate open Wi-Fi connections (such as coffee shops) have specific business connections, not residential connections. Therefore, they are not part of the CAS network, so they should not receive notices based on customer activity. However, in her statement, Lesser was more specific about how some very small businesses might be affected by the new system:
The CAS has received a lot of criticism from consumer rights groups and others. Critics claim it violates privacy rights by giving ISPs access to user activity and the ability to penalize them. However, CCI has put some consumer safeguards in place. For example, consumers are allowed to challenge alerts they believe were sent in error. The following video explains the Alert System in more detail.
The post New Copyright Alert System Won’t Impact Small Businesses – Mostly appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 9 Entrepreneurship Principles You Shouldn’t Forget Posted: 10 Mar 2013 12:00 PM PDT
The reasons as to why businesses fail can be many. Here’s what I think. The reason most businesses fail is because entrepreneurship is a lifestyle shift, which most entrepreneurs do succeed in. It is, however, the mind shift that's an integral part of entrepreneurship that remains incomplete. Most entrepreneurs do make mistakes during the startup phase. Below are 9 entrepreneurship principles you shouldn’t forget, to help you be more successful. 9 Entrepreneurship PrinciplesIt's Never About the Economy; it's Always About YouIt's easy to blame everything on the economy. The reality is that entrepreneurship has nothing to do with your idea, previous experience, education and training. Although all of these do help you later on. Entrepreneurship is always about you. It's about how you organize resources and manage them. It's about how you market your business and it's all about your commitment to see it through to the end. You Aren't Playing if You Aren't Playing by the NumbersIf you are in business, you have to make those sales happen. The first hat you wear as an entrepreneur, apart from conceptualizing and designing your products and services, is that of a sales person. A sale manifests itself in various forms and doesn't always lead to a financial transaction. Wooing investors, convincing customers to buy from you and roping in beta testers for your new startup are all successful sales closures. As long as it's about sales, there's a cardinal rule that applies to it: It's always a game of numbers while you focus on doing it right. The more customers you talk to, the more you'll sell. Apply that rule to first hires, venture capitalists and everyone else involved in the startup phase. Needless to say, rejections will come with 9 out of 10 interactions. It won't matter since the 10th person is likely to buy. Rejection is the fuel that should keep entrepreneurship alive. Are you letting it fan that flame in your belly? Use TechnologyThe new economy demands new approaches to business. The Internet has already turned the tables around. So when you are starting up, is your approach going to be contemporary or traditional? The contemporary route is going to pull you towards the rewards of using technology. You'd typically start a website; create a blog, set up social media accounts and one of the many tools available to run your business. The traditional way still holds (depending on your business), but it still plugs itself into the contemporary way of doing business. That is, even brick-and-mortar business models will end up using technology. Customers Are Humans; Not CRM EntriesCustomers are not serial numbers. They aren't entries in your CRM solution or on your accounting ledger. When entrepreneurs come up with ideas, they could fall in love with their own ideas, concepts and product prototypes that they forget that they are selling it to humans with the aim to solve a pressing problem with an effective solution. That process ought to reverse. Find the problem, come up with solutions for it, launch your product or service and then look to serve customers for life. The story isn't over after the sale. Serving customers to the best of your ability kicks in and stays over. In a Sales Process, You Aren't ImportantEntrepreneurs are people too. They have needs as everyone does. That's where the fault line is. Nowhere is it more visible than in the sales or deal making process itself. If small business owners need a better conversion ratio in their sales process, they'd have to do the gargantuan task of "removing themselves" from the equation. Your idea might be unique, you'd have invested millions in product development and you'd have hired the best people your money could buy. Still, you aren't important in the process; the customer is. Just Shut UpEntrepreneurship doesn't earn you bragging rights. Nothing ever does. The more you tend to give away in a sales process or while making deals, the more you stand to lose. How familiar are you with these elevator pitches?
That pitch does sound nice but it's got "you" written all over it. It's not personable, it's not customer-centric and it doesn't even say how it benefits your client or customer. All it does is brag about how quickly you grew. Entrepreneurship Without Vision is AbortiveEntrepreneurship itself is a visionary endeavor. While your broad vision for the company can change as you grow and explore opportunity, it should have one to begin with. What do you aspire to be? How do you purport to serve customers as you grow? What, exactly, do you want to achieve? What's Your Plan?No, you don't need a business plan. At least, you don't need to create a 67-page business plan with financials forecast for the next decade. Your business plan puts your ideas onto paper. It gives you a document to go back and refer to when you need to refocus your entrepreneurial efforts. It's not etched in stone. It's printed on paper or it might even sit as a document on your computer hard drive. Change plans if you must. Dump the original plan and go for a completely new one. Whatever you do, print it on paper and keep it with you because it guides you along your way. Not Knowing Is No ExcuseMost successful entrepreneurs are well-read, knowledge-hungry, information addicts. Reports, magazines, books and countless hours on the Internet are all in a day's work for the typical new age entrepreneur. It's actually a pretty simple trait that's still so powerful. Entrepreneurs cannot rest on their laurels. Changes are the only constant that everyone has to deal with. The only way small business owners can keep track of changing trends is by keeping on top of what's happening in the world, in their industry and elsewhere. Entrepreneurship keeps the world's economy spinning. It's the reason why jobs are created and new products and services are launched. Entrepreneurship is the sum of all the work that goes behind the scenes to bring us everything we enjoy, use and experience. None of that would have been possible if any of those entrepreneurs behind everything we have today had not acceded to even one of these fundamental entrepreneurship tenets. So what's the plan, entrepreneur? Principles Photo via Shutterstock The post 9 Entrepreneurship Principles You Shouldn't Forget appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Guy Kawasaki Joins Writer.ly Publishing Marketplace as Board Advisor Posted: 10 Mar 2013 09:51 AM PDT
Writer.ly, which debuted in late 2012, is a website where writers can assemble a team they need to publish and market their books. On the site, writers can sign up for a free account. They build their own profile and post biddable job requests for a copy editor, book designer, ebook specialist, book marketer, and other professionals. Professionals can find work on Writer.ly.com by bidding on the jobs that writers post. Kawasaki made his name first at Apple, and then by becoming an investor in tech ventures. Along the way, he became a best-selling author. His “Art of the Start” published in 2004 is still one of the most all-time-popular startup books, according to our statistics here at Small Business Trends. A Shifting Book Publishing LandscapeRecently Kawasaki has become an advocate and leading voice for writers in a dramatically shifting publishing industry. It’s no longer your father’s publishing industry, where traditional publishers rule the roost. Today, publishers pay smaller up-front advances. They invest less in marketing, except for a handful of books. Thus, it’s up to the author to market the book. More books are being published today. Often they are self-published with authors intentionally bypassing traditional publishers. Another key trend is a surge in popularity of ebooks, with some authors choosing to publish in ebook-only format. And increasingly authors are trying out new techniques to market their books, such as marketing heavily through Facebook as Kawasaki did with his book “Enchantment.” Kawasaki calls this role of the author being in control and publishing on his or her own, as “artisanal publishing.” In an interview here at Small Business Trends last month, Kawasaki also spoke about the challenges of publishing and funding a new book. Kawasaki said:
Writer.ly: A Publishing MarketplaceIt takes a lot of book sales to just break even against $2,000 to $25,000 in costs – let alone make money. So finding good talent at a reasonable cost is important. Writer.ly doesn’t appear to be about driving costs down to levels that are unsustainable for writing professionals, however. Its focus is more on finding talented people who are expert in particular niches, so that you bring in someone who helps you with many of the things publishers traditionally have done. Writer.ly charges a 10% fee for using its marketplace. Kelsye Nelson, CEO and co-founder of Writer.ly, is an author herself, as is co-founder Abigail Carter (pictured below, Nelson right and Carter left). Nelson (@Kelsye) told us that the two came together through their writing interests:
Writer.ly is broader than serving book authors. According to Nelson, it covers “the services marketplace infrastructure for the entire publishing industry. Everyone from writers, to magazine and journals, to publishers may post jobs on Writer.ly to find the help they need.”
And just how did Writer.ly manage to snag someone as high-profile as Kawasaki as a board advisor? It turns out that Nelson didn’t need to ambush Kawasaki as she initially intended at the recent San Francisco writer’s conference where he was keynoting. Instead, she checked her contacts. One of them introduced her via email, and she and Kawasaki ended up having lunch at the conference. Writer.ly came on the scene in late 2012. In the four weeks since it has been accepting writers, Writer.ly has had over 900 writers and writing professionals sign up, according to Nelson. Writer.ly was founded after Nelson and Carter attended The Founders Institute, an early-stage startup accelerator. Image still for Guy Kawasaki from ReadWriteTV. The post Guy Kawasaki Joins Writer.ly Publishing Marketplace as Board Advisor appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
The founders of a system created to cut down on Internet piracy assure us it won’t catch small businesses in the crossfire. For the most part that’s probably true.
Businesses fail all the time. 
Guy Kawasaki, the famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur, has just been named the new board advisor for 
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