Give Your Readers A SampleWritten by Jean Fritz
Manufacturers of food products are masters at marketing. When they launch a new product, they hire crews of merchandisers to pass out samples and coupons during peak grocery shopping times. The result – a large percentage of shoppers become first-time buyers after receiving their free sample and an incentive to buy. Many of those buyers will end up loyal customers.Self-publishers need to think like Frito-Lay. Realize that you, as a self-publishing and (probably) relatively unknown author, need to give your potential customers a reason to buy your book, and offering your readers free samples may be just sales boost you need. The great part about your particular craft is that you don’t have to hire merchandisers or deplete your resources; free sampling for writers is cheap or free, thanks to Internet and current printing technology. If you have your own web page (something I recommend), offer your readers a chapter or book synopsis as a free download. Your manuscript is probably already in .pdf format if you’ve worked with any of subsidy houses. Extract your table of contents, promotional copy from your back cover and first chapter of your book, and create a link to them on your site. Be sure to back-link to your sales page, or area on Amazon, Alibris, or other site offering your book for sale. If you do not have a web page but are internet-literate, you can submit your first chapter and Table of Contents directly to Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or to site FirstChapterFree.com. Use any of “click-for-hits” programs to drive traffic to your excerpts. As these programs are targeted, you can use keywords to drive targeted traffic to your sales page, which increases probability that someone will buy your book.
| | Making Better Word Choices – 4 Examples Written by David J. Clapham
Choosing wrong words can have a poor effect on your writing and on you. Whether you are writing a cover letter for a job, a business proposal, or an application essay for graduate school, using words poorly can result in negative feedback. One could find entire books regarding word choices for writers; this article will touch on some fundamental, but important ways to choose correct word for your situation. Our starting point will be use of “There are” or “There is” to begin sentences. Consider this; word “there” indicates “not here” (in other words, some other place). Now look at sentence below and think about what meaning is and what might be intended. There are four dogs playing with a ball. If writer meant that four dogs are over there and they are playing with a ball, then this would be technically correct. If intention was merely that four dogs are playing with a ball, here, there, or anywhere, then sentence could be worded better. The following sentence would show better wording on writer’s part. Four dogs are playing with a ball. The next two words that writers often confuse are “which” and “that.” If goal of your writing is to describe something and you have used commas to separate phrase from rest of sentence you want to use “which.” When a writer wants a word to define and reference is restricted then you want to use “that.” The first sentence below shows correct use of “that” and second sentence shows correct use of “which.” The Yodo is river that runs through Osaka. The Yodo, which is a major waterway, runs though Osaka. Our next word choice is between “while” and “although.” Another way of thinking about word “although” is to look at its meaning, as found on Merriam-Webster Online dictionary meaning is, “in spite of fact that : even though.”1 The definition of “while” indicates a relation to time, such as during a period when something else is happening. Two correctly worded sentences are below.
|
