Qualifying For Success

Spoiling even the best digital magazine is sadly very easy, even with the best work ethic in the world, with poor digital magazine software. When you’ve chosen to produce an online publication the key decision is to select your software vendor. This isn’t about merely picking a nice format for your creation - on the contrary, this is a crucial choice as it may easily mean success or failure for your overall venture.

The most essential feature to look for is, of course, ease of use. After all, no matter how marvelous the software is, it’s still junk if you or your staff can’t do anything with it… Ahead of you choosing a provider for the ezine, be certain to test it.

With hacking and spamming being an issue online, protection should be your next main consideration as you’re making a digital publication. Do you know whether your account has been secured? Will the content be secured? Can people simply copy-paste the magazine content or has the software vendor prevented such things? Is your content secure from copy-pasting by the common reader? Once you’ve produced a flash magazine that’s the point to outline a business plan. One consideration in this plan is what you do with modern media. What ad-handling is covered? Not that every single publication will have to take all this into account but your overall scheme definitely should. Thinking about search engines could also be essential as you consider how to market this ezine.

Something else to consider are previous issues. Will the publication be accessible? The service provider supplying hosting certainly has a certain amount of sense with a widely available publication. Teasers and summaries work well spreading the word about your ezine. Before it actually becomes a necessity, ypu’ll have to think about some potentially hairy issues. In other words, technical support. Is it just an FAQ page? Also check any how-to guide they may have. Do they print any response time? Is there a phone number that is easy to access? Tech-support may be your last consideration but it should be a decisive factor in your choice. Chances are you really don’t want to find out the hard way that they’re actually not up to par!

Your decision at this point will be what will decide whether your publication goes well or not - think carefully when you choose your provider. Search Bing, Yahoo etc. to look up the term “Zmags” for further ideas.

A low standard digital publishing software package will be the downfall of any imaginative online publication. Once you’ve chosen to make an online catalog the key next call is to pick out the software vendor. Formatting your brochure is simply a little part of their work.

Ease of use is the most important feature to look out for. Of course, it doesn’t matter how extraordinary the software is if you yourself can’t use it… Before selecting a supplier for the electronic magazine, make sure to try it out. As spamming and hacking are issues online, security should be your second concern after you’ve produced an online publication. Are there measures in situ to protect the package? How about the content? Can people simply copy-paste your brochure content or does the digital publishing software vendor have something preventing such things? Is your content secure? Have you made a plan to sell your digital publication yet? Social-media, ads, these are sections that ought to be covered never mind which marketing plan you’re using. Marketing this ezine will probably require search engine optimized content. What about paid content? What about the possibility of offering only copy and multiple possibilities for subscription? Also, the nature of your content - is it monetized ? Will you be using teasers to market this ebrochure? How accessible is your brochure? Will it be private: then you should be able to look into many hosting options or is it public? In which case you should host directly with your provider. What’ll you be doing about back-isues? The tech-support offered by the provider is a large consideration. How will you contact them? How long is their response time? What are their FAQ pages like? These are matters you should examine prior to any emergency, you will be glad you did! The final choice in hosting service may ruin this e-brochure. You may also Google the term “Zmags” to find some more hints.

Today, as a considerable number of companies and moguls are looking at internet video websites as a terrific place to upload content to grab the notice of their consumers, it’s critical to distinguish the key elements of using online video advertising portals.

Here are a number of vital bits and pieces you must be familiar with before you begin to upload professional videos on online video sites. Visit http://www.Vidify.co.uk for high-quality video production, distribution and marketing services.

Constantly make an effort to use professional videos that provide meaningful material to your customers - Scores of business people incorrectly believe you can merely put any brand of advertisement on a video portal, but nothing could be further from reality. Each and every video should offer some value added information to the desired market, or start topic of discussion.

Undertake some type of market research on the video sites previous to you adding your very 1st video - It’s a good plan to allocate some substantial time typing your market’s important keywords into the search engine on the site, in order to realise what competitor videos are currently available. Next make sure you have written down the profile names of the most important businesses in your niche. Possibly afterwards you can make a joint venture or have some kind of relationship with these firms.

It is important to keep in mind that every video website has a community built into it - You ought to value the other members & it’s advised that you add positive notes about your rivals’ videos. First & foremost you need to be a member of the community, supplying comment, ideas etc. And only then must you judge yourself as being a marketer and begin to distribute your very own 1 and firm.

Commit yourself to making numerous corporate videos - You ought to have an obvious strategy for developing and distributing numerous promotional videos. Or else, your organisation’s page on the video channels will appear blank if it just has one single video on it. Hence, provide time planning the creation of a number of short videos, rather than only one significantly lengthy video.

Online video marketing is one of the best & fastest manners of advertising your firm at this moment in time.

Videos on the Web are a brilliant way to expose your company. Of course there are numerous other types of marketing approaches which include content writing to blogging, from press releases to e-mail. But nothing says “cool, connection, & creativity” like a professional video.

Increasingly organisations of all sizes are making videos about their products. They’re not only adding them on their sites, but they are adding them to their official blogs. To gain international twenty four seven visibility, short format videos are being published to loads of video-sharing sites like that of You Tube and Google Videos. And why not ? it?s free, easy to undertake, & can have a major difference, in some cases, on the traffic it drives to your website.

There are a lot of other reasons why Internet videos are a tremendous way to promote your company.

Video commercials benefit from a large circulation: Videos by their very nature are easy to “package” which makes them suitable to slot into an array of different distribution channels. You can put them on your companies website or blog, you can load them onto your computer & show them over & over again at a chosen company show. You can add them to loads of Web video-sharing websites. You can copy them onto CDs and give them away or sell them. You can even forward them via email.

Videos online are a useful way to advertise. As our understanding with technology evolves, so do the ways in which people like to interact with others. Most people are visually oriented meaning that is how they best understand and interact with their world. This makes videos online the best advertise strategy to talk with today’s public.

These are just a number of the several reasons why Internet videos might be an amazing way to promote your firm’s products & services. Discover more about this area to see how you may make use of your time, finances, & energy to communicate with your target audience in an innovative & remarkable way. If you are looking for a company that specialises in corporate video production in London then look no further than Vidify.

When Arabella Magazine notified me they were buying “Popcorn Murders” I was ecstatic. After all, everyone was vying to be published in that magazine.

Then they told me to “look out for the contract soon”. My elation soon turned to terror. I knew nothing about contracts! And I sure wasn’t going to hire a solicitor to look the contract over - particularly for a short story contract - so I learned to read the contract myself.

Not a good thing I’m told, but how many writers have the money to rush out and hire a solicitor every time they receive a contract? (The majority of publishers issue contracts for each and every piece they buy these days.) I’ve now got a bulging file with all my contracts, and if I’d hired a professional each time, I’d be down a lot of money, believe me.

The information in this article is not intended to replace your solicitor or legal representative; it is meant only as a guide. (Some writer’s organisations will help you with this as part of your annual fee.)

Things that should be included in your contract:

Scheduled date of publication

Word count of ms

Title of Story

Author’s name

Rights Sold

Fee (either per word, or for complete works)

Legal obligations of each party

Kill Fee (if any)

Ownership of Copyright

Mediation and Arbitration (if dispute arises)

Some of the above are self-explanatory, so I won’t go into those at all. Others can be quite confusing, so we’ll look at each one individually.

Rights sold:

This can vary from publication to publication, and must be checked thoroughly. Never agree to sell ‘All Rights’ as this means you can NEVER sell the work again. Ever.

With Arabella, I sold first rights, with a clause that I would not allow the story to be re-published anywhere within thirty days of publication. That meant I was free to resell it any time I wanted after the thirty days.

So let’s look at rights:

First rights means it’s the first time the story has been published.
Second rights means it’s the second time it’s been published, and so on.

However, there can be a variation to this. You can sell (for instance) first Australian Rights, or First US Rights, First World Rights, etc. The same applies for second and/or subsequent sales.

Be absolutely sure what rights you are selling when you check your contract.

All Rights:

As mentioned above, selling ‘all rights’ is not a good thing. Basically, you can never sell your story again - not in any shape or form. There is only one way I would do that, and that’s if I was paid mega bucks.

But, there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?)

If you sell ‘all rights’ in a book contract - for instance - you can lose a lot of money by doing so.

Let me tell you a story: a friend sold her novel to a new publisher in the UK. Her contract stated she was selling them ‘all rights’. This was her first sale, and she accepted that. Around a year down the track, the publication went bust; her novel went down the gurgler with the publisher.

That was two years ago.

She recently found out that her book has been released in large print. That’s good, right? Well, no. Because she sold ‘all rights’ so got absolutely nothing for the subsequent sale.

And if anyone ever decides to make her book into a movie, the same will apply. Never sell ‘all rights’ if you can help it, unless, as I said before, you are being paid mega bucks.

Kill Fee:

A ‘kill fee’ is literally the fee you get if the publication ‘kills’ the story. That is, they decide not to use it after all.

A ‘kill fee’ may also apply if an editor of the publications asks you to do rewrites that you feel misrepresent your own opinions, or in the case of a piece of fiction, distorts the story.

I know someone who had the latter happen, and as he didn’t have the kill fee clause, asked the publication to use a pen name instead of his own.

Copyright:

It is extremely important that writers understand copyright laws. If you don’t, then please, go out and do some research.

In the case of your contract, it should always state that ownership remains with the author. If it doesn’t, you probably have a problem.

If you’ve sold ‘all rights’ then ownership is no longer yours.

Publication Date:

Many contracts will state the date that the publication expects to run your story. They may even give an end date. In my contract with Arabella, it stated that if the story was not run (published) within twelve months, the rights reverted back to me, and I still got to keep the payment.

Strange as it may sound, it actually does happen. I have another friend who sold a story to a major women’s magazine in Australia, and two years after she sold it, the story still hadn’t run. She called them, and was told they’d ‘lost’ the story.

They sent her a letter of confirmation that the rights had reverted back to her. And yes, she sold it again - as ‘first rights’ again, since it was never published.

Other things to look out for:

For book contracts, make sure there’s a clause in case the publisher goes bust. In my contract it states that if the publisher closes its doors, or goes into liquidation (or similar) the rights refer back to me.

This is a very important clause to check. A number of writers have had to wait for seven years for their books to revert back to them after a publisher has gone bust. Some writers have gone to court over the clause, but still had to wait for the period to expire.

Please, for your own peace of mind, ensure your contract includes the liquidation clause. (Remember the writer whose book was sold in large print? She had that seven year clause too. She can’t resell that book, and she’s still got another five years to wait before she can shop it around.)

I also have a clause stating my publisher only has the rights to my book for two years. That means I can shop the book around after two years if I’m not happy with my publisher. Or, if I’m happy, I can renew my contract with the same publisher, and they can continue to sell the book.

Also check that the contract has a ‘release’ clause. If, for example, your book is due for release in February 2005, but still hasn’t been released in December 2005, if it’s covered in your contract, you can pull out from that publisher without penalty. If there is no mention of it, then you’ve got no come-back whatsoever; you’ll just have to wear it. And if that’s the case, and they decide to release it three years down the track instead, there’s not a thing you can do about it.

One more clause that you may wish to consider is in regard to royalties. You need to have the right to have the publisher’s accounts reviewed if you feel your royalties have been paid incorrectly, whether erroneously or intentionally. In most cases, if it is found that the royalties have been withheld, costs are the responsibility of the publisher. If they are found to be correct, costs are paid by the author. (And this should be stated in the contract)

Summary:

Ensure you understand the aspects of your contract. It is desirable that it’s in layman’s terms, and not legal jargon - which will make it impossible for you to understand without legal representation.

* Check over your contract at least three times.

* Highlight anything you don’t understand or are unhappy about.

* Discuss them with your publisher.

* Keep all correspondence to and from your publisher for future use.

* Always keep a ‘paper trail’ that can be followed. (Even if it’s on the computer!)

* If you don’t feel comfortable with something, there’s probably a reason.

Cheryl Wright is an award-winning Australian author and freelance journalist. In addition to an array of other projects, she is the owner of the Writer2Writer.com website and the Writer to Writer monthly ezine for writers. She is also the author of a series of ebooks for writers. Her romantic suspense novel “Saving Emma” was released January 2005 by Whiskey Creek Press. Check out Cheryl’s website: http://www.cheryl-wright.com

I cannot contain this wrath anymore
Let me release this globule hollow
Let this be one of those that will move up
from under the rivers of Inferno
that will prick your heart like a needle
as you swim and clamor in the angry waters

The liquid’s heat will strip off
my sanguine suit you forced to wear
on your malancholic existence
The water’s putrid will be part of your breath
as you swallow and vomit its pollution
And as you desire to have acknowledged
(even by uttering in simple words) that you are a mimic

You dwell in that circle
only because I wish you to–
For my bubble to prick your heart in pain
For myself to be removed from you
For my wrath today to turn into anger, and then calmness,
and then satisfaction

You will then go to the eighth circle

And I (just wanting to make you suffer employing my own capacity),
will move out of the Inferno.

About the Author: Nicole is a hyper person who wants to get published in her college’s next portfolio. She is basically an optimistic creature who loves Italy and the beach. This is actually her first anger poem. Well, temporary, short-term anger, for that matter (as in, just a 30-minute one). (She got guilty after writing it.)

Source: www.isnare.com

Everyone wants to work with the expert. It only makes sense. The expert is the one that knows what they’re talking about, is extremely knowledgeable about the topic, and has specific insight into the topic that the average person or non expert does not have. People are naturally attracted to the expert. It’s in our human nature to want to be around the one that is perceived to be at the top or number one.

So how can you position yourself as an expert in your particular field or industry. One way to do it is with the small business marketing article. These are informative articles that discuss industry specific information written by you, the business owner. The benefits of writing a small business marketing article are numerous. But the main one is to position yourself as an expert in your particular field of industry.

Publishing your small business marketing article is actually very simple these days. Everything can be done electronically via the internet through online article directories and submission websites. Publishing your own original content allows you to display your knowledge on a topic and builds credibility and your reputation as an expert.

When people perceive you as an expert in your field you will become more attractive. This will result in an increase in the number of clients and referrals to your business. You get all this from writing small business marketing articles. To top it off it doesn’t cost you any money to do it. All that you need to write a small business marketing article is a little time and effort. I can’t think of a better way to generate new leads for your business that writing these types of articles. So get started writing yours today!