PLR Time for UK Authors

If you're a UK author registered for PLR, you can now check your earnings for 2010/11 on the UK PLR website. Just log in here and click on My Statement.

This year (July 2010 to June 2011) they are paying 6.05 pence per library loan, with payment due between 13 and 24 February 2012.

For those who don't know, PLR stands for Public Lending Right. The UK PLR Office distributes money to UK authors based on the number of times their books have been borrowed from public libraries in Britain in the last year. This money is paid to authors as compensation for their presumed lost royalties on sales.

All UK authors are eligible for PLR (even if they don't currently live in Britain), but you do have to register with the UK PLR Office first. If you're a UK author with at least one published book to your name, therefore, you should sign up immediately to get what is due to you.

Non-UK nationals cannot claim from the UK PLR Office, but many other countries (though not the USA) have schemes in place to compensate writers for library lending. As I discovered in my recent interview with Ruth Barringham, Australia has what appears to be quite a generous program, though payments are based on the estimated number of copies of an author's book in libraries, not total loans. For more information on PLR schemes worldwide, visit the PLR International website.

In many countries there are also reciprocal arrangements to compensate non-nationals for lending in the country concerned. In Britain this is co-ordinated by ALCS (the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society), and UK authors should also register separately with them. ALCS also pay out photocopying fees to authors, incidentally.

I always find it interesting to study my PLR statement. One message that comes across very clearly in my latest one is that public libraries are cutting back on buying new books. By far my highest-earning titles for PLR are those published 5 to 10 years ago. My recent titles have fewer loans and some none at all, suggesting that not many libraries have them in stock. But even my oldest books, published up to twenty years ago, are still being borrowed in some libraries. Those copies must be pretty dog-eared by now!

Over the years I have made literally thousands of pounds from PLR payments; in the case of some books I have earned more from PLR than I have in publisher fees or royalties. So if you're a UK author, it is definitely worth taking the few minutes needed to register yourself and your book/s at the UK PLR site. Otherwise, you really are leaving money on the table!

Photo Credit: Stacks by Nrbelex on Flickr. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Licence.

myWritersCircle is now on Twitter!

I know quite a few readers of this blog are also members of my (free) writing forum at www.mywriterscircle.com.

So I thought you might like to know that myWritersCircle now has its own Twitter account. You can find and follow us at http://twitter.com/myWritersCircle.

The new account will be used to pass on news and information about the forum from me, the MWC moderators, and our admin team. There may also be the occasional commercial announcement from our sponsors, the electronic publishing house WCCL. Most messages will, however, be purely for information purposes, to help members get the most from MWC and keep up to date with what's going on there.

I don't expect there will be large amounts of traffic on the new account - maybe two or three updates a day, typically. Most updates will consist of information about the forum that we think you'll find interesting and/or useful - new contests, deadlines, market information, and so on.

The MWC Twitter account will be used primarily as a broadcast medium and it will not be closely monitored for replies or direct messages. If you have any comments or queries, it will therefore be better to raise them via the forum, or contact me or another moderator directly by PM (forum personal messaging).

You can also, if you wish, follow me on my own Twitter account at http://twitter.com/nickdaws, which I do of course monitor regularly.

I hope you will find the new MWC Twitter service useful, and that it will enhance your experience of using myWritersCircle (although you can of course follow us on Twitter without being a member of the forum if you wish).

If you have any queries or comments, as ever, please feel free to post them below.

Ten Top Tips for Making the Most of JustRetweet

My recent post about the free JustRetweet service (see screengrab above), which aims to help bloggers and Twitter users reach a wider audience, attracted a lot of interest.

So in this post I thought I'd share a few tips on getting the most from the service, based on my own experience and what I've observed of other users.

If you're not familiar with JustRetweet, you might like to read my earlier post before proceeding and watch the video embedded in it. Don't worry, I'll wait :-)

My ten top tips are as follows...

1. Don't retweet everything that's available on JustRetweet to earn credits. If you do, it will only alienate your Twitter followers and cause some to unsubscribe. There are lots of messages to choose, so pick the ones that look as though they would be interesting and relevant to your followers. In my experience - and I guess I'm a fairly typical user - you only need to retweet two or three messages a day to keep your account nicely topped up.

2. On the other side of the coin, when adding messages you hope others will retweet, be aware of what a reasonable reward is considered to be. Certain norms have evolved on the site, so I would suggest offering a bare minimum of 10 credits for an RT, and preferably 20 or more if you want to get the most from the service. Offering just 2 or 3 credits won't impress other members, and such 'low-paying' offers will quickly disappear from view on the site.

3. It's not just about credits, though. Remember that your messages will (you hope) be retweeted by other people who want to preserve their own good reputation. Make your messages sound interesting and useful - and if you offer a decent reward as well, there is every chance you will get an excellent take-up from other JustRetweet users.

4. Avoid being overly promotional in your messages. Twitter, as you should know anyway, is not the place for this. In addition, other JustRetweet members are unlikely to want to RT explicit sales messages, for fear that they will be accused of spamming. And JustRetweet also has rules against requesting retweets of some types of commercial messages, including those promoting trackback spammers and other products or services deemed undesirable.

5. Another thing that doesn't work on JustRetweet (in my opinion) is posting a barebones URL with no other message. When this goes out on Twitter, it will look like spam, and few people will want to click on it anyway. Always include a message with your link to explain why viewers should click on it. If it's a long link, shorten it first with a service such as Bit.ly.

6. Another approach to be wary of - again in my opinion - is the short and enigmatic message. I've seen a few of these listed on JustRetweet, and I can't believe they are productive, either of RTs or clickthroughs. I wouldn't retweet these messages, and even if I did I can't imagine that many of my followers would want to explore them further. I could be wrong about this. Maybe a few people will click through out of curiosity - but even then, it's pretty unlikely they will happen to be interested in whatever you are trying to promote.

7. Bear in mind that a message shared in someone else's Twitter stream is likely to be seen by someone who has never heard of you before. Messages that might work in your own Twitter stream - "Secrets of Better Novel Writing, part 26" - may be off-putting to such people, implying that this is something that has been running for a while and there is no point in a newcomer joining in now. The same applies with very personal sounding or enigmatic messages (see item 6).

8. JustRetweet now offers a PostLater option. This is a great resource for ensuring you don't deluge your followers with a series of tweets in quick succession. At present - in response to a request I made - the interval between PostLater posts is set to one hour, although I understand that an option to vary this may be added soon. I recommend mostly selecting PostLater when retweeting messages - you will still receive your credits for these immediately.

9. Bear in mind that JustRetweet offers other methods for earning credits as well as retweeting. You can sign up to follow other members listed on the site on Twitter (this typically pays between 2 and 10 credits), introduce new members (pays 25 credits per new member), visit other blogs and websites for credits (pays up to 10 credits), and so on. If all else fails, though, you can also buy credits for a very reasonable sum!

10. Finally, it's worth mentioning that you can choose the minimum number of Twitter followers a member must have to see your offer. It's obviously tempting to set this figure high, but doing that will drastically cut the number of potential retweeters. In addition, Twitter users with a small following may actually have more influence over their followers. Personally, I tend to set my minimum follower number to 200 or 250, but experiment to see what works best for you.

So those are my top ten tips - I hope you find them helpful. If you are already on JustRetweet, do you have any tips of your own you would like to share? Please do post them below!

How to Use Incentives to Get Extra Sales

Today's guest post is by Jimmy D. Brown of the website iBusiness Owner.

Jimmy is talking about a subject that I'm sure will resonate with many self-publishers, and especially with buyers of my 10-Day E-Book course (which discusses writing and publishing a money-making e-book on ClickBank).

Take it away, Jimmy...

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The vast majority of your prospects aren’t all that passionate about your offer.

Truth is, they’re kind of lukewarm. They’re interested, but they’re not taking their credit card out. Instead of making a buying decision, they decide to “think about it.”

Of course you know what happens: They forget about your offer. They don’t return to your store or sales page. Some of them may even make the conscious decision to NOT buy your product.

So what can you do to get your prospects to get excited and take action NOW?

Simple: Offer them an incentive if they order now. Do it right, and you’re virtually guaranteed to make more sales!

Generally, an incentive can take two forms:

1. You offer a discount. One idea is the straightforward discount, such as offering a percent-off. Another ideas is to offer a discount on the overall package, such as by offering free shipping.

Tip: You can even make it a limited-time discount so that your prospects feel a sense of urgency.

1. You offer one or more bonus products. Again, you can even make the bonus offer limited to increase the sense of urgency.

Offering a discount is a pretty straightforward incentive. So let’s talk about how to offer a bonus as a buying incentive.

Here then are the seven keys to offering bonuses that generate extra sales:

• Make sure the bonus is desirable. Point is, if your prospects don’t care about the bonus product, then it won’t help you generate any sales. So make sure it’s something that your prospects already want. Something that gets them excited!

• Create a valuable bonus. Just because you’re giving the product away for free with a purchase doesn’t mean this bonus should be worth little to no money. Quite the contrary – it should have a high perceived value in the prospect’s mind.

• Choose bonuses that are easy to deliver. This is particularly true if you’re selling downloadable products online, such as software or information. Point is, you want to be able to deliver the bonus instantly – right alongside the main product – without you having to manually deliver the bonus.

• Supply an exclusive bonus, whenever possible. If the prospect can get the bonus somewhere else, he might just do that. So try to offer exclusive bonuses to help make the buying decision easy.

• Offer a bonus that compliments the main product. For example, let’s say you’re selling a book about retirement planning. Offering retirement-planning worksheets and software as a bonus would be a great incentive.

• Sell the bonus. If you’re selling via a sales page, don’t just list the bonus. Instead, sell it just the way you’re selling the main product, meaning you should list the benefits of this bonus product or service.

• Remember that you can offer products OR services. Let’s say you’re selling exterior landscaping supplies and information. As a bonus you can offer a free consultation where you provide specific landscaping ideas for buyers. Or if you’re selling a copywriting product, you can offer a sales letter critique.

Conclusion

Offering an incentive is a simple, yet highly effective way to generate more sales and grow your business. To discover still more ways to grow your business, visit http://tinyurl.com/6rtt8sl – you may just learn strategies you never even knew existed!

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Thank you to Jimmy for an interesting article.

I do agree that offering extra bonuses is a powerful selling technique. My publishers, WCCL, always include a few extra bonuses with the products and courses they offer. In addition - as with my Kindle Kash course - I quite often add a few extra bonuses myself when people order from me personally!

If you have any comments or questions about this post, as ever, feel free to leave them below.

Photo Credit: Scared Candy by Enokson on Flickr. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.

Review: CreateSpace for Profit

CreateSpace for Profit is a report currently on sale via the Internet Marketing Warrior Forum as a Warrior Special Offer (WSO). It's written by Alan Petersen and Peggy Baron.

CreateSpace is, of course, the popular print self-publishing service operated by Amazon.com (see screengrab above). As this is an area of publishing I haven't particularly explored, I decided to shell out the modest fee of $4.97 to see what it was all about.

So I can reveal that what you get is a concise, well-written 28-page PDF that sets out five different methods for writing books for CreateSpace without totally starting from scratch. All are interesting, and I was impressed to see that the authors include links to examples of CreateSpace books they have written and self-published using the methods described.

The methods involve a combination of using and adapting PLR (private label rights), public domain material, and material bought or commissioned from other authors. It wouldn't be fair to give away all the details here, but I was pleased to see that none involves simply copying and pasting low-cost (and low-quality) PLR/public domain books. The authors point out that Amazon has been cracking down hard recently on low-quality, duplicate-content books. Interestingly, their examples show that by removing the spammy books and e-books, Amazon has actually done genuine authors a big favour.

CreateSpace for Profit doesn't include much information on how to publish to CreateSpace - it's essentially about quickly devising and creating non-fiction titles with good sales potential. The methods could just as well be used to create Kindle e-books, and in fact the authors do recommend publishing to this and other formats as well. If you want in-depth advice on the actual CreateSpace publishing process, though, you will need to look elsewhere (the actual CreateSpace site would be a very good starting point, of course).

Overall, I found this an eye-opening report with some clever ideas I am certainly going to consider applying myself in future, even if I choose not to go down the CreateSpace route. For $4.97 (around 3.50 UK pounds), I have no problem recommending it.

CreateSpace for Profit would also be a good purchase for anyone interested in publishing e-books for the Amazon Kindle, including buyers of my own Kindle Kash course. Bear in mind that the report is currently on offer as a WSO, so I don't know how long it will remain available at the current low price (or at all).

Any comments or questions, as ever, please leave them below!

Disclosure: I am an affiliate for this WSO, so if you buy it via one of the links above a proportion of the (modest) fees will go to me. This has not affected my review in any way.

Five Literary Devices to Make You a Better Writer

I'm pleased to welcome to my blog today writer and blogger Chris Campbell.

Chris believes that writers in all genres, fiction and non-fiction, can improve their work through the judicious use of literary devices...

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While the fiction writer often uses literary devices to move his story along, these writer's tricks are not limited to fiction. A non-fiction writer working on a blog or a feature article can utilize them as well to infuse a story with life and action.

Metaphor

Very often the best way to help people understand something or someone is to use metaphor. Metaphor involves the pairing and comparison of two things that are unrelated, but give the reader deep insight into the person or thing being described. For example, in "The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, the metaphor "In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood" reveals that the manager's uncle is a rough character. He's used to living a hard life on the streets without directly saying as much. While a writer can literally tell the reader that he has these qualities, metaphor offers a richer and more visceral glimpse of the person.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism relies on the principles of metaphor, but in a specific way. The definition used to pertain to giving human-like qualities to a deity or god, but now is largely used for any inanimate object. An author trying to explain conditions leading up to a hurricane might use a sentence like this to set the scene, "The unrelenting storm battered the travelers back with vicious sheets of rain as they prayed for the vengeful skies to clear." This tool provides a dimension of character to an otherwise mindless force or object.

Foreshadowing

The prophesies of the three witches in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" provide a good example of how a writer can use foreshadowing. Macbeth consults with the three several times throughout the play. However, their latter prophesies are ignored, because they don't seem to make sense. The quote "The power of man, for none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth" foreshadows MacDuff who was taken c-section, so he was technically not born of a woman. Using foreshadowing sets the story up for the readers, giving them an invisible framework for understanding not only the story, but more specifically where things are headed for a particular character.

Doppelganger

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde represent one of the most famous examples of the doppelganger in literary history. This device allows a writer to explore the two sides to a person's character and often has a supernatural element to it. Additionally, a doppelganger can also foretell of a tragedy that will befall a person; the doppelganger that appears to the dying person can be that person's future spirit self foretelling of the character's demise.

Archetypes

Archetypes represent universal character types, offering the writer the ability to quickly develop a character. For example, Romeo and Juliet not only symbolize tragic, eternal love. A feature writer who refers to Shakespeare's famous couple tells the reading audience that the people in the writer's own story are doomed lovers as well.

Conclusion

A writer - regardless of the genre - can create mood and characters more quickly and realistically if she uses a few literary devices. This is especially valuable to the writer who's limited by the constraints of a short piece of writing.

About the author: Chris Campbell is a blogger for GradeSaver, who really enjoys writing posts about reading, literature, and learning.

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Thank you to Chris for an interesting article. I agree that the careful use of literary devices such as those mentioned can lift a piece of writing from the ordinary to the memorable.

My one extra tip would be to strive to ensure that any such devices you use are original (one definition of a cliche is an over-used figure of speech) and apt. Forced metaphors that don't really work are a particular embarrassment!

If you have any comments or questions for Chris or myself, as always, please feel free to leave them below.

Photo Credit: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble by Jeff Hitchcock on Flickr. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.

Interviewed by Ruth Barringham, my co-author on The Wealthy Writer

A little while back I was interviewed by Ruth Barringham of the websites Writeaholics and Cheriton House Publishing.

I'm pleased to say that the audio is now available as a podcast via Ruth's site, and you can play it from here or download it.

As you'll discover, our discussion was quite wide-ranging, covering everything from my working methods and how I market myself, to my attitude toward housework and cats in the office!

The whole interview is a shade over an hour, so if you want to sit and listen to it all the way through, I recommend getting a cup of tea and a slice of cake first :-)

As indicated in the post title, Ruth and I collaborated on The Wealthy Writer, a guide for writers on making money writing for online markets. The Wealthy Writer is published by my regular publishers (and blog sponsors) The WCCL Network. More information about the course can be found on this page of my website.

During our discussion we mentioned a number of other websites as well, so for convenience I've listed all the ones I could think of below. If there are any I've missed out, please let me know and I'll add them as well...

The Authors Licensing and Copyright Society (ALCS)

The UK PLR Office

Nick Daws' Homepage

The Nick Daws Daily

MyWritersCircle forum

Write Any Book in Under 28 Days

Kindle Kash

Think Yourself Lucky (audio course)

I do hope you enjoy listening to the interview - here's the link to it again. I certainly enjoyed talking to Ruth, and was pleased that she wanted to discuss so many aspects of my work.

If you have any comments or questions, as always, please feel free to leave them below.

Photo: My office desk, on one of my tidier days. Photo by yours truly.