10 Points To Check Before Buying A Motorcycle by: Timothy Rudon

Buying a new or used motorcycle is serious business. It needs thought and careful selection. A motorbike is sacred to many and just a vehicle to some. However no motorcycle buyer should be without a check list that will help him or her make a great selection.

10 musts before paying for a motorcycle:

1. Check it out and do so with a motorcyclist friend in tow. Check if the motorcycle is clean and straight down centerline and forks.

2. Take along a list of models and their pros and cons. Discuss the nuances with the friendly sales person.

3. Find out about gears, brakes, clutch, and all other mechanics.

4. Determine engine specifics and details of gas tank and wheels.

5. Ask about service and warranties.

6. Get details of accessories and other musts like helmets, rear view mirrors and so on.

7. Sit on a lot of bikes to get a feel of height and riding position.

8. Read up on bikes in discover Today’s Motorcycling. Get all the information on types of bikes, financing, bike care and more.

9. If you are new to motorcycles choose a light-weight bike rather than the coolest, sexiest bike that only pros can ride. New riders should aim for a four-cylinder of less than 600 cc or 75- cc for sports machines and 150cc for everyday use.

10. Ask about safety gear and budget for this too in the cost of the motorcycle. Use pants, helmet, gloves, and jacket meant for motorcycling.

All motorcyclists must consider safety and reliability. Get a valid motorcycling license and insurance too. Be wise and take a Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) course see: http://www.msf-usa.org/ .

Refer to magazines like beginner Bikes magazine for recommendations on good starter bikes. According to dedicated bikers, a good choice of a motorcycle for a beginner would be Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Buell Blast.

Choose a bike that suits you and not one that looks good on the cover of a magazine. The rule of thumb is the motorcycle and its rider must fit like hand in glove. Test ride the motorcycle and get a feel. A large part of selecting a motorcycle is comfort and instinct. So choose a motorcycle with care so that you get long hours of riding as well as comfort and safety.

Never buy a bike on first sight or visit. Take your time in making a selection. Visit the many motorcycle websites on the internet and comparison shop. Find out what offline prices of motorcycles are and compare features as well as prices, service contracts, and warranties. Many people find that the best deals are available on the internet. Others feel a motorcycle must not be bought without viewing and test riding. So get all your thoughts and options in order before you make a choice.



About The Author

Timothy Rudon is a writer for http://www.1855motorcycles.com , the premier website to find motorcycles, motorcycle parts, used motorcycles, motorcycle accessories, motorcycles for sale, motorcycle insurance, electric motorcycle and many more.

How to Write a Book in Five Easy Steps by: Stephen L. Nelson, CPA

Because I’ve written more than a 100 books and even been a book publisher, people regularly ask me how one writes a book. I always shrug and say it’s not that hard. But this little article attempts to provide a better answer to the question by describing the easy five-step approach that I use and that I recommend you use.
Step 1: Research Your Topic
Your first step in writing any book is to research your topic. Obviously. To begin any constructive development work on a book—that early thinking about what might make for an interesting book and that planning about what should go into a book—you need to know your topic very well.
This situation leads to a pretty interesting conclusion if you gnaw on this idea a bit. How do you know what you should research if you haven’t yet actually come up with the idea for your book.
Here’s the reality: You can’t know. You can’t practically know what you should research until you possess a pretty good idea about what you should into the book. And yet you can’t have a good idea about your book--a professional quality idea-- until you have your research done. It’s another Catch-22.
Which means that economically, practically, emotionally, the next book you write needs to be one for which you’ve already completed the basic research. You’re only going to be able to come up with a good idea for a book on something when you know the topic well. And you’re only going to be to organize the book’s material into some structure that really works when you know the topic well.
The good news is that for many types of writing—and I argue for anything you should write about—you have largely completed your research. If you’re going to write fiction and use a collage of the people and places and ideas that you’ve collected over your life, your research may be essentially complete. If you’re writing an autobiography, you have completed your research. If you’re going to write about something that’s been part of your work for years, again, you probably have completed your research. The same thing is true if you’re writing about something you teach in college.
Step 2: Come up with the Idea
The second step in the process of writing a book is coming up with an idea for some really useful or interesting book. Based on your research and creativity, you need to come up with a good idea. Here are some tips for how to do this:
Don’t pick something big and obvious…
The first thorough book on any important topic—the last war, the current big business success, the next medical breakthrough—can be a good book that succeeds even to the point of becoming a bestseller. But I respectfully suggest that you leave the big topics to the big writers. The problem with big, well-known topics is that they are well-known. And that means, very probably, that big publishers are already talking to big authors about writing books.
Find your own space…
A related point to this idea of staying away from the really big topics is that you need to find your space. You will find it very hard to succeed—especially as a new writer—if you’re doing what’s already been done. Publishers, booksellers and readers will too easily respond to your book or book idea with the feeling, “Well, yes, but hasn’t [insert name of well-known, bestselling writer here] already done that?” By innovating, however, you may be able to find your own empty space—a niche that isn’t already occupied by some successful book or series or author.
Test the market appeal of your idea…
Here’s another technique for filtering and refining your ideas: You ought to write a press release for your idea to verify that the ultimate book sells well as a concept. A press release is a one-page news story that touts your book and proves to people who will help sell and promote your book—distributors, wholesalers, booksellers and magazine editors—that your book is special and unique and worth looking at. Your press release gives your book a chance to break out from the pack of other books and get noticed. Any idea that can’t be distilled into a great press release is risky. (You can see what book press releases are by visiting publisher web sites.)
Build a list of periodicals that will blurb your book…
If you’re considering a nonfiction book, you ought to be able to come with a list of a handful of special interest periodicals (magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and so forth) that prove people are interested in the topic of your book. If you want to write a book about raising Guinea pigs, conspiracy theories concerning the last president, or monetary policy in emerging economies, for example, one of the best ways you can confidently predict people will buy and read your book is to verify that people are already buying and reading periodicals about the topic.
Try to fit your idea into an existing series…
Here’s another technique. If you can fit your idea into a publisher’s existing series, you ought to try that approach. While of course, we writers find it most satisfying to go our own way creatively, you’ll find it much easier to sell another idea that fits in an existing successful series.
I’ve always written about how to use technology for business and for personal finance. That’s my space. And I’ve got lots of good interesting ideas for books. But my bestselling book has been Quicken for Dummies (Hungry Minds 1993-2005). Would I like to write a different sort of personal financial management book? Yes. But to date Quicken for Dummies has sold one million copies in its numerous editions. The royalties on those salve away any creative disappointment.
Focus on a small niche…
That last number I mentioned, the one million copies of Quicken for Dummies, raises an interesting point. As you consider book writing opportunities, know that you can make good money on a book that sells ten thousand copies. Maybe as much as $15,000. A book that sells twenty thousand copies or more is a big hit for both you and your publisher. And that means your best bet is often to go after niche.
Don’t just write another whodunit mystery, write a whodunit for children. Or better yet, write a whodunit mystery for Christian children or Muslim children or Jewish children. And then promote your book not just like all the other mystery publishers do but also using religious education periodicals that go out to churches or mosques or synagogues.
Verify your idea is big enough for a book…
One final idea and this is especially important for new writers. You need to make sure that your idea is big enough for a book—the content you’ll create is big enough to fill 250 pages or 500 pages or whatever. Experienced authors can do this intuitively. I know which ideas of mine support two hundred pages or four pages of writing. But new writers often can’t gauge this very well. Ever read a book where by the third chapter the author just rehashes material already covered in chapters 1 and 2? That’s a book where the idea wasn’t big enough.
Especially for nonfiction books, you ought to try writing a couple of example chapters—maybe chapters 1 and 4—to make sure you’ve got a big topic. Your chapters don’t need to be pristine or perfect. But make sure that you can write a couple of good, rich chapters that aren’t redundant. When you’re done with those chapters, look at what other topics you want to cover and make sure that there’s still stuff left for at least two or three more interesting chapters. A bit of rehashing is okay, I think. But you don’t want people reaching for the television’s remote control in the second chapter.
Step 3: Create a Rough Draft Outline
After you have your idea, I’m going to argue that your third step is to create a rough draft outline. This rough draft outline isn’t the detailed outline that your high school English teacher talked about. A rough draft outline doesn’t go into exquisite detail about your book.
A rough draft outline, instead, just lists chapters and provides some idea of what goes into each chapter. Perhaps the outline includes just a few sentences about what you plan to stick into a particular chapter.
Because this seems very strange to writers who have only written short works, let me explain why the rough draft outline works. At the point when you’re ready to organize the content at a very granular level—when you truly know exactly what you want to say in a chapter—you might was well spend a few more minutes and get down the words. The composing doesn’t take much time at all. You don’t need to worry about redundancy across chapters as long as you’ve got a good idea of the boundaries that separate chapters.
Step 4: Create Your Rough Manuscript Draft
After you complete your rough draft outline, you should begin writing the chapters of your book. Sometimes, you’ll flesh out the rough draft outline a little in order to begin writing. Sometimes admittedly, you’ll need to collect just a bit more data or do a small amount of research to fill in some hole. But don’t delay. You want to get into a situation where you can produce large chunks of writing as quickly and easily (and, yes, as sloppily and slipshod) as possible.
The big challenge of writing a book is the book’s size. What you need to do first, therefore, is get your book in rough draft form. Worrying about grammar and spelling and word choice at the very least slows you down. At the very worst, this worry prevents you from finishing your book. Therefore, write your rough draft as fast as you can. Hurry along without concern about whether you’re being sloppy. Don’t worry about spelling. Don’t worry about quality. Don’t worry if you’re redundant or obtuse or meandering. You can and will fix all of this later.
What you have to do is get the rough draft manuscript done. That’s the Holy Grail. And, paradoxically, worrying about things like grammar actually impedes your progress.
Step 5: Self-edit Your Rough Draft Manuscript
After you complete your rough draft, you need to ruthlessly self-edit your rough draft. If you can cut some word or sentence without changing the meaning, cut. If you can tighten some description, tighten. If you can remove a section or a chapter without taking away from the book’s purpose, remove.
New writers commonly limit their self-editing. They’ve spent perhaps months finishing up the book. Writing one hundred thousand words has seemed like building the Great Wall of China. The prospect of ruthlessly hacking away at all those words is sickening. The effort of all those early mornings or late evenings?
And yet you have to do this. The biggest mistake you can make in your writing is thinking that everything you put down on paper is worth some reader’s time. It isn’t. Some large percentage of what you or I roughly draft is garbage. And if you or I don’t clean the garbage out of our books, it spoils the book.
One final tip about self-editing: Respect your reader. The point of you writing a book isn’t to express your feelings or share your expertise or to (finally) impress your father. You might get these things indirectly. But they aren’t the point of a book.
The point of a book is to supply a reader with useful ideas or information or literary art or good entertainment. It’s all about the reader. And when we writers lose sight of this point, bad things happen to our writing. And our books aren’t very good. In our self editing, mostly what we’re doing is making sure that everything we put on the page is there for the reader.
Closing Comments
When you distill it down to just its core ideas, this article doesn’t actually say that much. I suggested that you write about something you already know. I suggested some tips for identifying which of your ideas is good enough to turn into a book. And then I provided some advice about how to grind out a book—advice which largely boils down to outline very roughly, write very quickly, and ruthlessly self-edit.
About The Author

Bellevue-Seattle accountant Stephen L. Nelson, CPA has written more than 150 books about computers and business for publishers such as Random House, McGraw-Hill, and John Wiley & Sons. He has also been a book packager and an independent publisher. His web address is http://www.stephenlnelson.com.

Tips To Becoming A Successful Artist & Craftperson by: Johnny JW Morlan

The world and the Internet are filled with artists. Artists are everywhere! Because of the competition, only a few get noticed and make money at it.
Take these for instance, on the Internet, www.wwar.com, www.yessy.com and www.fine-art.com. Sure they receive an immense amount of visitors per month, www.wwar.com, has almost 16,000 artists and over 100,000 pieces of art, www.yessy.com has at least 10,000 artists and over 90,000 pieces of art and www.fine-art.com has 8,000 artists and 62,000 pieces of art!
It takes numerous traits to be an artist and businessperson! Some can be taught and some can not.
The Tips Are Not In Any Particular Order, Each One Is Important
You Will Find Out, The More Tips You Initiate,
The More Successful You Will Become!
* Choose a medium that you have a passion for.
* Do your homework. Study that medium; study the style of all the artists in the world in that medium that you can.
* Do what 99% of people won't do.
* Give yourself a business name, example: {First Name Last Name Acrylic Painting Artist} and open a completely separate bank account for the business.
* Create your own style! Be different and stand out from the crowd. TV show producers and magazine editors look for this and it also eliminates most of the competition.
* Offer your art in a wide price range. Have something for all wallet sizes.
* Always give the customer more than they expected to get.
* People love to deal with professionals. Present a class act. Always present yourself, art and business in a professional matter. That includes having a logo, letterhead, business card and the merchandising that accompanies your art.
* Sell your artwork merchandised with a certificate, folder and a brief biography/profile, especially if it is a one of a kind piece. People appreciate this and it also documents the piece for future reference. Tell a little about the piece in a description such as the title of the piece, what type of medias were used in creating it, the style of art it is, its size, the year it was created and always sign it.
* No matter where you are selling, if you give the majority of people too many choices, they get confused, overwhelmed and can't make a decision on what to buy. Depending on the size of artworks you create, Exhibiting 25-50 should give enough of a selection without being overwhelming.
Keep an album portfolio handy and if people wish to see more, you can let them browse through it. Better yet, you can leave it close to you and people will look through it. Just keep a close eye on it. Make sure that all the photos are marked with the artwork name, medium and price. They have albums with room above the photo so you can place 1" x 3" white or transparent labels. You can even write sold on the ones, you have sold.
You can also direct and help people decide which will create more sales by for example if you sell limited edition prints, marking the prints that sell best. Actually with the above, people will go one of two ways, they will either decide to go with something that is marked that they like or decide not to follow the crowd and purchase something that isn't marked. All artists have favorites of their artworks, just mark your favorite ones. If you have a lot, alternate them with each show or exhibition.
* Get a Merchant account so you can accept credit cards. A lot of people like using them to make purchases. 75% of my sales are paid with a credit card and 9 out of 10 of my credit card sales, people use either Visa or MasterCard. It is rare that anyone gets denied a Merchant account, the reason being you are not applying for any type of credit. The credit card companies will get 1%-3% commission on every one of your sales.
* From years of experience, the best way to sell your artworks is retail, you selling them directly to customers. Selling wholesale, to retail stores and galleries, you are only going to get approximately 50% of the retail selling price. Artist agents {managers} usually receive 10%-25% in commission fees of each sale they make. If they get a gallery to sell your artworks, their commission comes out of your net profit. With the extra money you are receiving, you can do a lot of self advertising and promotional stunts. Besides, unless you have a lot places and they are vastly spread out or they are in tourist traps that are selling your artworks, you are only promoting your artworks and name to a minute percentage of people in a very small area.
The three best ways to sell retail are at art festivals, arts and crafts fairs or via through the Internet {WWW}.
Art festivals and arts and crafts fairs have their disadvantages. Each one you attend takes you out of the studio {shop} 3- 6 days depending on how far away it is. You have to setup and tear down your booth, you can do well at a particular one, one year and the next year have hardly any sales at all, because this year, the economy is bad, the promoter did not promote the event very well or just that they had it on the wrong weekend, and another event drew more people's interest. Sometimes you have to carry large sums of money around, the lighting and security at some events leaves a lot to be desired. Again, in all reality, you are only promoting your artworks and name to a minute percentage of people in a very small area.
Even if you do get accepted to exhibit and sell at one of the countries fine art festivals or arts and crafts fairs, it will cost you $1000-$1500 for the booth fee for 3 to 4 days and there will be 300-500 booths. Yes, 50,000-100,000 people may walk through in that short time, but the majority of artists either do not sell enough to even cover the booth fee or just enough to cover the booth fee along with their travel, lodging and dining. Only a small percentage will actually make money {profit}.
The Internet is the best way to sell retail. You are promoting to many people in a vast area. Below is a text link, going to a page that displays a world and United States map indicating the approximate location of my websites last 1000 trackable visitors. It may take 30 to 40 seconds to fully load, the maps are large.
http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/storefront.asp?pageno=112
There are numerous online websites that are inexpensive to sell your artworks on that get a fair amount of traffic {visitors}. They charge $0-$100 annual fee and 10%-15% commission on each sale. Excluding my personal business website, I have my artworks on 50 or so websites around the world. I do get a few sales, referrals that led to a sale or inquiries. The one that I have received the most sales {excluding my website} from or referrals that led to a sale, is http://www.architecturals.net. They do not charge an annual fee and they only charge a 10%- 13% commission fee. 100% of my sales come from the Internet and approximately 95% from my own website.
You really do not know who could be looking at your site or your artworks featured on another site. I have received numerous e-mails asking me If I would be interested in exhibiting my artworks on other websites, interested in exhibiting in a brick and mortar gallery, brick and mortar retail stores telling me they were interested in selling my pieces, gallery owners and managers, magazine and book editors, TV show producers and even art managers wanting to know if they could represent me.
Yahoo Business has their Merchant Solutions Starter website service for $39.95 a month. You can create your website with no HTML knowledge. You can have sales up to $12,000 per month. You get 10GB's of space and 200 GB's of data transfer {bandwidth} a month. For $22.95 per month you can get the Paymentech account that is a merchant account that allows you to accept credit cards. Both total $754.80 per year. As 99% of artists have their studios in a basement, bedroom, unused room of their house, a one or two car garage, or a shed or building on their property, you can see that is not much overhead, for a website!
* On the Internet, it is wise to have and display a toll free number people can call. It will increase your sales almost immediately! My sales and inquiries increased by 25%, in just the first 6 months after getting one. It gives people more confidence about purchasing from and dealing with you because a lot of times most people associate toll free numbers with buying something or getting information from a business entity. From experience, a very high percentage of people will not call your business long distance if it is their dime. Most of my calls are to place an order. A lot of people are very apprehensive about using a websites shopping cart, even though it is secured, but will not hesitate to give their personal and credit card information over the phone.
Some people just like speaking to a real live person. Stop and think about it, if you talk to a person, say for 10 minutes, at 7 cents a minute, that is 70 cents. If you only get a $25 order, it was worth every penny of it! You will have to shop around, but you should be able to find a plan for a monthly fee of $5 per month or less and 5-7 cents per minute.
* Always include a minimum of 6 business cards with each piece sold. The majority of people have an inner circle of 6-9 friends. You can bet those friends are going to see your piece probably in the next few months. Believe me, people give those cards to their inner circle of friends. In fact, several times over the years, I have had people contact me and ask if I could send them some more cards, because they had more friends that had seen the piece they had and were interested in my work.
* Don't be afraid to be different. Do not follow a trail, make the trail for others to follow you.
* Always price your art so you have room to barter. Leave yourself say 10% for this. A certain percentage of people love doing business this way. It makes them fell good. Caution do not take this too far!
* Give a small percentage {3% is good} discount for customers paying in cold cash versus say credit cards.
* If you accept credit cards and the customer is paying for the artwork with a credit card, offer them a two or three-payment plan if the purchase is say over $100.00. This will generate more sales and give some of your customers a chance and way to buy and own your art. This is especially good during the Christmas season.
* Have a quantity buying discount schedule. This works well for companies and corporations that like to buy gifts for their employees and during the Christmas season.
* Always respond and return phone calls and e-mails as promptly as possible. It makes one extreme difference! Preferably within 24 hours. When I phone or e-mail people a lot of times the first response over the phone or line they write in their e-mail is thank you for contacting me back so quickly.
* Hard work! Long hours! These are the two most important factors that will help you create your own luck.
* Remember all criticism is are people stating their opinions. Should go in one ear and out the other. After all, you are the one expressing yourself! Only a small percentage of people are going to like your art. All artists have their followers.
* Remember that there are three ways to do anything in life the wrong way, the right way and your way.
* Believe in yourself and know when your art is among the best. You will know this from the body language, facial expressions, and the eyes {eye contact} of the people viewing your art.
* Convey a positive attitude at all times and only associate yourself with people that have positive attitudes about you and your work. Get rid of the nonbelievers and pessimists!
* Never give up no matter how hard it gets. Have persistence and determination.
* Don't listen to relatives, friends, neighbors, and coworkers or any one else that gives you that line of bull that artists starve!
* Be a jack-of-all-trades master of none. Learn as much as you can about business, self-promoting, advertising, merchandising, photography or any other subjects they will help and save you money in your business. After all an artist is an entrepreneur. The only one that can truly sell your art is you!
* Treat all clients as if they were made of gold because they are precious.
* Never do commissioned work without a written and signed contract!
* Even with a written and signed contract never start work on a commissioned job without first receiving 30%-50% deposit upfront of the total price!
* Never sign or sell a creation you are not proud of!
* Pricing their artwork is very difficult for most artists! There are so many variables involved. If you do #2 & #4 above you should be able to command the price you want. If you are doing the same style as other artists, price your work competitively to theirs. With limited editions, the fewer that you will be creating, the more money you can charge. With one of a kind, custom made and commissioned pieces, you should be able to argue and command the price you want, as there will be no other like it.
You should always price your work, regardless of where it is being sold. You should include shipping and handling in the USA in the retail price. Most people will not take the time to contact you for a price and they hate to ask. Also people will think you are playing the price game. Here's how it goes. The first person or couple of people that contact you, you quote a price. If they accept without hesitation you will probably assume you are not asking for enough and raise it. The next contact you raise the price. Vice versa if you do this say a couple or three times and they do not buy you will probably assume you are asking to much and lower the price. The problem is that customers know this.
Pricing your work shows professionalism, shows you have confidence in yourself, you have put a price on yourself and that you are not playing the price game. Remember price is a matter of opinion; you are not going to please everybody!
* Have an unconditional 100% money back guarantee, the longer the time period from the time of purchase the better. Include that shipping and handling will be paid by you to return the piece back to you within that time period. Your customers will believe that you must have a lot of confidence in the piece to sport such a powerful guarantee, which in turn gives them a lot of confidence about buying from you.
* Never sell your pieces on auction places like ebay or Ubid. You are not going to get anything for them. The majority of people that place bids at such auction places are only looking for bargains. Handcrafted and art pieces have no place at these types of auctions. Once you start selling at the low price levels, you will have one heck of a time ever getting more for your work.
I once had an art critic and appraiser tell me when he looks at a piece, he arrives at a certain price in his mind, if the price the artist is selling the piece for is under priced he turns around and walks off, never giving the piece or artist another thought. The reasons being are, the artist could not possibly know their self, have very much confidence in their self, know how much talent they actually have and apparently are not too worldly as to know what the finer material things in life sell for.
* Never stop learning!
About The Author

Johnny JW Morlan
As a young boy helping his father with carpentry jobs, Johnny Morlan could never guess that one day his gorgeous wood pieces would adorn not only the finest American and European homes, but would even be presented to the President and First Lady of the United States.
When Johnny was just seven years old, living in Moberly, Missouri with his family, he began assisting his father, working on various carpentry projects. By the time he was a teen, the artistry that would later make him such a success was already apparent. "My dad would get annoyed with me because I would always want to make the finish moldings and cabinets more intricate," Johnny chuckles. He loved making small wood objects, but was often told by his father and others that there just wasn't a market for such items. "Well, in 1989, I stopped listening to the nay-sayers, "Johnny says, "and I've never looked back."
Having already worked for a furniture contractor and in the lumber and hardware businesses, he had a solid base of knowledge as he founded J.W. Morlana's Unique Wood Gifts. But he also had a passion to keep learning and growing in his craft, reading over 220 books on the subject and constantly striving for perfection. Now working in Lubbock, Texas and a recognized master in his trade, Johnny Morlan has worked with over 500 species of wood and keeps more than 125 species in stock. He cares deeply about the environment, works with woods endorsed by the Rainforest Alliance Smart Wood Program, and in the last few years was nominated for several distinguished leadership awards.
Johnny has worked with unique woods since 1983. People from over 130 countries have viewed and admired his creations. He is a member of the International Who's Who Historical Society {his short biography is featured in the 2001-2002 edition of the International Who's Who of Entrepreneurs}. He is a member of the following organizations and associations: Rainforest Alliance Smart Wood Program, National Arbor Day Foundation, International Wood Collectors Society, Woodworker's Website Association, Woodworkers Book Club and a lifetime member of Handyman Club of America.
Some of Johnny's creations have been bought by or given as presents to professional people, foreign dignitaries of state, celebrities and even the President and the First Lady of the United States.
morlanwoodgifts@fastmail.fm

How to Write a Book in Five Easy Steps by: Stephen L. Nelson, CPA

Because I’ve written more than a 100 books and even been a book publisher, people regularly ask me how one writes a book. I always shrug and say it’s not that hard. But this little article attempts to provide a better answer to the question by describing the easy five-step approach that I use and that I recommend you use.
Step 1: Research Your Topic
Your first step in writing any book is to research your topic. Obviously. To begin any constructive development work on a book—that early thinking about what might make for an interesting book and that planning about what should go into a book—you need to know your topic very well.
This situation leads to a pretty interesting conclusion if you gnaw on this idea a bit. How do you know what you should research if you haven’t yet actually come up with the idea for your book.
Here’s the reality: You can’t know. You can’t practically know what you should research until you possess a pretty good idea about what you should into the book. And yet you can’t have a good idea about your book--a professional quality idea-- until you have your research done. It’s another Catch-22.
Which means that economically, practically, emotionally, the next book you write needs to be one for which you’ve already completed the basic research. You’re only going to be able to come up with a good idea for a book on something when you know the topic well. And you’re only going to be to organize the book’s material into some structure that really works when you know the topic well.
The good news is that for many types of writing—and I argue for anything you should write about—you have largely completed your research. If you’re going to write fiction and use a collage of the people and places and ideas that you’ve collected over your life, your research may be essentially complete. If you’re writing an autobiography, you have completed your research. If you’re going to write about something that’s been part of your work for years, again, you probably have completed your research. The same thing is true if you’re writing about something you teach in college.
Step 2: Come up with the Idea
The second step in the process of writing a book is coming up with an idea for some really useful or interesting book. Based on your research and creativity, you need to come up with a good idea. Here are some tips for how to do this:
Don’t pick something big and obvious…
The first thorough book on any important topic—the last war, the current big business success, the next medical breakthrough—can be a good book that succeeds even to the point of becoming a bestseller. But I respectfully suggest that you leave the big topics to the big writers. The problem with big, well-known topics is that they are well-known. And that means, very probably, that big publishers are already talking to big authors about writing books.
Find your own space…
A related point to this idea of staying away from the really big topics is that you need to find your space. You will find it very hard to succeed—especially as a new writer—if you’re doing what’s already been done. Publishers, booksellers and readers will too easily respond to your book or book idea with the feeling, “Well, yes, but hasn’t [insert name of well-known, bestselling writer here] already done that?” By innovating, however, you may be able to find your own empty space—a niche that isn’t already occupied by some successful book or series or author.
Test the market appeal of your idea…
Here’s another technique for filtering and refining your ideas: You ought to write a press release for your idea to verify that the ultimate book sells well as a concept. A press release is a one-page news story that touts your book and proves to people who will help sell and promote your book—distributors, wholesalers, booksellers and magazine editors—that your book is special and unique and worth looking at. Your press release gives your book a chance to break out from the pack of other books and get noticed. Any idea that can’t be distilled into a great press release is risky. (You can see what book press releases are by visiting publisher web sites.)
Build a list of periodicals that will blurb your book…
If you’re considering a nonfiction book, you ought to be able to come with a list of a handful of special interest periodicals (magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and so forth) that prove people are interested in the topic of your book. If you want to write a book about raising Guinea pigs, conspiracy theories concerning the last president, or monetary policy in emerging economies, for example, one of the best ways you can confidently predict people will buy and read your book is to verify that people are already buying and reading periodicals about the topic.
Try to fit your idea into an existing series…
Here’s another technique. If you can fit your idea into a publisher’s existing series, you ought to try that approach. While of course, we writers find it most satisfying to go our own way creatively, you’ll find it much easier to sell another idea that fits in an existing successful series.
I’ve always written about how to use technology for business and for personal finance. That’s my space. And I’ve got lots of good interesting ideas for books. But my bestselling book has been Quicken for Dummies (Hungry Minds 1993-2005). Would I like to write a different sort of personal financial management book? Yes. But to date Quicken for Dummies has sold one million copies in its numerous editions. The royalties on those salve away any creative disappointment.
Focus on a small niche…
That last number I mentioned, the one million copies of Quicken for Dummies, raises an interesting point. As you consider book writing opportunities, know that you can make good money on a book that sells ten thousand copies. Maybe as much as $15,000. A book that sells twenty thousand copies or more is a big hit for both you and your publisher. And that means your best bet is often to go after niche.
Don’t just write another whodunit mystery, write a whodunit for children. Or better yet, write a whodunit mystery for Christian children or Muslim children or Jewish children. And then promote your book not just like all the other mystery publishers do but also using religious education periodicals that go out to churches or mosques or synagogues.
Verify your idea is big enough for a book…
One final idea and this is especially important for new writers. You need to make sure that your idea is big enough for a book—the content you’ll create is big enough to fill 250 pages or 500 pages or whatever. Experienced authors can do this intuitively. I know which ideas of mine support two hundred pages or four pages of writing. But new writers often can’t gauge this very well. Ever read a book where by the third chapter the author just rehashes material already covered in chapters 1 and 2? That’s a book where the idea wasn’t big enough.
Especially for nonfiction books, you ought to try writing a couple of example chapters—maybe chapters 1 and 4—to make sure you’ve got a big topic. Your chapters don’t need to be pristine or perfect. But make sure that you can write a couple of good, rich chapters that aren’t redundant. When you’re done with those chapters, look at what other topics you want to cover and make sure that there’s still stuff left for at least two or three more interesting chapters. A bit of rehashing is okay, I think. But you don’t want people reaching for the television’s remote control in the second chapter.
Step 3: Create a Rough Draft Outline
After you have your idea, I’m going to argue that your third step is to create a rough draft outline. This rough draft outline isn’t the detailed outline that your high school English teacher talked about. A rough draft outline doesn’t go into exquisite detail about your book.
A rough draft outline, instead, just lists chapters and provides some idea of what goes into each chapter. Perhaps the outline includes just a few sentences about what you plan to stick into a particular chapter.
Because this seems very strange to writers who have only written short works, let me explain why the rough draft outline works. At the point when you’re ready to organize the content at a very granular level—when you truly know exactly what you want to say in a chapter—you might was well spend a few more minutes and get down the words. The composing doesn’t take much time at all. You don’t need to worry about redundancy across chapters as long as you’ve got a good idea of the boundaries that separate chapters.
Step 4: Create Your Rough Manuscript Draft
After you complete your rough draft outline, you should begin writing the chapters of your book. Sometimes, you’ll flesh out the rough draft outline a little in order to begin writing. Sometimes admittedly, you’ll need to collect just a bit more data or do a small amount of research to fill in some hole. But don’t delay. You want to get into a situation where you can produce large chunks of writing as quickly and easily (and, yes, as sloppily and slipshod) as possible.
The big challenge of writing a book is the book’s size. What you need to do first, therefore, is get your book in rough draft form. Worrying about grammar and spelling and word choice at the very least slows you down. At the very worst, this worry prevents you from finishing your book. Therefore, write your rough draft as fast as you can. Hurry along without concern about whether you’re being sloppy. Don’t worry about spelling. Don’t worry about quality. Don’t worry if you’re redundant or obtuse or meandering. You can and will fix all of this later.
What you have to do is get the rough draft manuscript done. That’s the Holy Grail. And, paradoxically, worrying about things like grammar actually impedes your progress.
Step 5: Self-edit Your Rough Draft Manuscript
After you complete your rough draft, you need to ruthlessly self-edit your rough draft. If you can cut some word or sentence without changing the meaning, cut. If you can tighten some description, tighten. If you can remove a section or a chapter without taking away from the book’s purpose, remove.
New writers commonly limit their self-editing. They’ve spent perhaps months finishing up the book. Writing one hundred thousand words has seemed like building the Great Wall of China. The prospect of ruthlessly hacking away at all those words is sickening. The effort of all those early mornings or late evenings?
And yet you have to do this. The biggest mistake you can make in your writing is thinking that everything you put down on paper is worth some reader’s time. It isn’t. Some large percentage of what you or I roughly draft is garbage. And if you or I don’t clean the garbage out of our books, it spoils the book.
One final tip about self-editing: Respect your reader. The point of you writing a book isn’t to express your feelings or share your expertise or to (finally) impress your father. You might get these things indirectly. But they aren’t the point of a book.
The point of a book is to supply a reader with useful ideas or information or literary art or good entertainment. It’s all about the reader. And when we writers lose sight of this point, bad things happen to our writing. And our books aren’t very good. In our self editing, mostly what we’re doing is making sure that everything we put on the page is there for the reader.
Closing Comments
When you distill it down to just its core ideas, this article doesn’t actually say that much. I suggested that you write about something you already know. I suggested some tips for identifying which of your ideas is good enough to turn into a book. And then I provided some advice about how to grind out a book—advice which largely boils down to outline very roughly, write very quickly, and ruthlessly self-edit.
About The Author

Bellevue-Seattle accountant Stephen L. Nelson, CPA has written more than 150 books about computers and business for publishers such as Random House, McGraw-Hill, and John Wiley & Sons. He has also been a book packager and an independent publisher. His web address is http://www.stephenlnelson.com.

Write for Markets that Pay $1 per Word by: Gary McLaren

I guess you would love to receive a check for a thousand bucks. You’re not the only one. An exciting challenge for freelance writers is to break in to high-paying writing markets. I’m not talking about all the magazines that pay twenty or thirty cents per word. I’m talking about publications that pay a dollar per word and more.

A thousand words. A thousand dollars. That’s what you could earn if you sell your thousand-word article to the right publications. But before you send off that manuscript there are a couple of things you should know.

First, most high paying publications prefer to assign articles after receiving a query, rather than receiving unsolicited manuscripts. So you will need to sell your idea and your ability very well. Which brings me to the second point.

It is very rare for an unpublished writer to break in directly to top magazines. These publications have built their reputation with readers over the years by publishing only the finest writing. The editors are unlikely to give you the time of day if you have never had an article published previously. You need to work your way up.

As with many other careers, it is important to work your way up, proving your ability as you climb each step. So if you want to write for high-paying publications, plan your strategy. Start by building up a few clips with local publications. Next, work your way towards regional publications and medium-paying markets. If you already have your heart set on being published in a particular magazine, try to identify local and regional magazines that will give you appropriate and relevant clips.

Finally when you have built up a good portfolio of published clips, and a reputation as a writer who is reliable and great to work with, you’ll be ready to pitch to the editors of the high-paying markets.

So which markets pay top dollars? Here are several examples, and there are many more listed at my web site.

AARP The Magazine, USA
AaRP was formerly known as the "American Association of Retired Persons". Features and departments in this magazine cover Finance, Health, Food, Travel, Consumerism, General interest, Profiles or first-person accounts of people who have made a dramatic change in their lives. Pays a minimum rate of $1 per contracted word. Guidelines: http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/i/61.htm

Boy's Life, USA
A general-interest monthly magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America. All articles must interest and entertain boys ages 6 to 18. Major articles pay $400 to $1,500 for 500 to 1,500 words. Departments run 100 to 600 words; payment is $150 to $600. Department headings are science, nature, earth, health, sports, space and aviation, cars, computers, entertainment, pets, history, music and others. Back-of-the book pays $250 to $500. Short stories run 1,000 to 1,500 words and pay $750 and up. Guidelines: http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/i/62.htm

Coastal Living, USA
A lifestyle magazine for people who love the coast. Content looks at homes, destinations, activities, and people along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf shores of North America, Hawaii and Alaska. Also coastal Canada and Mexico, and the U.S. Great Lakes. Published 7 times per year. Departments cover homes, travel, lifestyle, and food & entertaining. Pay is typically $1 per word, plus reasonable expenses agreed upon in advance. Guidelines: http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/i/63.htm

Enroute, Canada
Air Canada’s award-winning bilingual (English/French) inflight magazine. An upscale travel lifestyle magazine interested in everything from wine to design, popular science to pop music. "As many travellers’ first introduction to Canada, we are proudly Canadian but never parochial about Canadian content." Pay: base rate is CDN$1 per word upon acceptance. Guidelines: http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/i/64.htm

Entrepreneur Magazine, USA
Magazine covering innovative methods and strategies to help readers improve their business operations. Also current issues and trends that affect entrepreneurial companies, as well as new business ideas and opportunities. Features are 1,700 words. Columns (250-400 words) are paid at $1 per word in the following sections: Money, Marketing, Management, Technology, Viewpoint, Miscellaneous. Guidelines: http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/i/65.htm

These are just a few examples, but you should be able to find many more publications that pay high rates like these. I’ve listed quite a few more in a list at http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/onedollar.htm

If you plan your writing strategy carefully, and strive towards producing writing of the highest quality, then a thousand dollar pay check could be on its way to you soon.


About The Author

Gary McLaren is the editor of Worldwide Freelance Writer. For more information on freelance writing and a database of more than 1,700 writing markets, visit http://www.WorldwideFreelance.com.