Jennifer Mosher's Blog, page 4

An open letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Turnbull

Dear Mr Turnbull

I am an Australian. I am a business owner. As an Australian business owner, I am unable to discriminate against gay people on the grounds that they are gay. If they wish to use my services, I can���t refuse them simply because they���re gay. If they apply for a job with me, I can���t refuse them simply because they���re gay. And yet the Australian government, which has made it illegal for me to discriminate against gay people, openly passed legislation in 2004 actively discriminating against gay people. C���mon, you know what I���m talking about! Prime Minister Howard���s amendments to the Marriage Act��1961.

What I don���t understand is this:

As a country, we are (by all accounts) headed for financial doom if we don���t tighten our collective��belts.
As a country, we are being encourage on a daily basis to ‘be more inclusive��� and ’embrace diversity’.
As a country, we have one of the best and original gay mardi gras (mardis gras?) in the world.
As a country, we have wonderful legislation helping protect minority groups from discrimination.
As a country, we were a world leader in gun control legislation.
As a country, we are, for the most part, looked upon by the rest of the world as mature, inclusive��and forward thinking.
Our current Marriage Act was amended by an act of parliament in 2004 without a plebiscite.

So, if you get a moment, could you please explain:

Why do we need a very expensive plebiscite (during a time of financial restraint), which will probably fail, to overturn the��archaic and discriminatory��Marriage Amendment Act 2004����that was introduced by a 1950s-thinking parliament in contradiction of the very laws introduced by prior parliaments designed to prevent discrimination?
Why do we, as a people, have to continue to suffer international humiliation for our backward-thinking legislation on marriage equality when all it would take would be a reversal of whatever happened in 2004 to make it right again?

As an ordinary Australian who knows many wonderful gay people, I can���t understand why they should be prevented from engaging in the same publicly-acknowledged and recorded life-long commitment that I���ve been able to enjoy.

But what I find most difficult to understand is the fact that we, as a nation, enshrined in law an openly discriminatory attitude. How was that even allowed to happen?

Call me simple (you won’t be the first), but the way I see it there is only one way forward. Overturn the 2004 amendment. It won���t take long, it won���t cost much (certainly nowhere near as much as a likely-to-fail plebiscite!) and you might even win the next election as a result.

Go on, Mr Prime Minister. You know you want to …

The post An open letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Turnbull appeared first on Jennifer Mosher - Editor.

Know when to hold ���em, know when to fold ���em

When it comes to being in business for yourself, you���ve got to know when to hold ���em, know when to fold ���em, as that great philosopher Kenny Rogers once said in The Gambler. And by holding and folding, I mean the things that you do that make up your list of products and services.

Over the last few months we���ve been watching in (morbid) fascination as Woolworths has struggled with its Masters chain of hardware stores. They���ve invested an absolute fortune in an attempt to establish the brand as a viable alternative to Bunnings, but a few weeks ago, the board finally declared defeat, putting the chain up for sale.

There are lessons in this for businesses of all sizes, and I���m not the only to have recognised over the years that it was time to fold ���em, rather than hold ���em. But the important thing is to make the decision, before the decision is made for you!

Ironically, what I���m doing now business-wise is incredibly limited compared with what I tried to do when I first leased office space eight years ago. In those early, heady days of being the new business on the block people would say to us, ���What do you do?��� and we���d reply, ���Almost anything you want that involves a computer. We can type your letters, or do your bookkeeping, or build you a website …��� until their eyes glazed over and they had to stifle a yawn …

Fast forward eight years and we are more successful now, have less trouble finding qualified leads and clients, and enjoy our work a whole lot more. Why? Because now when people ask us what we do, we simply say, ���We help Australian writers self publish their books���.

While it is contrary to everything the new business person might think, being too diverse makes it too hard for people to understand what you do, and being able to encapsulate what you do is so important. Once a prospect gets their head around what you do, then they might start asking questions. But if they can���t process what you���ve just told them, they���re going to wriggle out of the conversation before you can even get it started!

If you���re thinking of branching out into new areas, think about how you���re going to explain that to others. Will it fit with your current business? Diversification is fine, but don���t be afraid to face the thought that you may also need to de-versify. (Is that a word? Does it matter? It says what I need and language is evolving all the time!)

So just to help you be brave about where you might need to fold ���em, here is a potted history of the hands I���ve dealt, folded held in my business over the last ten years:

Dealt

2005 ��� 2007: Proofreading and admin services from home

2007: Leased an office in the local village. Offered proofreading, editing, typing, Dictaphone transcription, computer lessons, bookkeeping, tax returns (having been an accountant there were ways I could offer these services with the backing of a local tax accountant), printing for locals, scanning, laminating, binding, emailing, graphic design, websites, data entry, spreadsheet creation, phone answering, resume preparation … and anything else we were asked for and could do …

2009: Added book publishing

2010: Added a quarterly writing competition in the form of narrator MAGAZINE

2011: Added ebook publishing and print on demand publishing via Amazon

2012: Converted the quarterly narrator MAGAZINE into the daily online blog narratorAUSTRALIA

2013: Added narratorUK, narratorUSA and a host of genre sites

2014: Converted all narrator sites to one, all-inclusive, narratorINTERNATIONAL

Folded

2008: Passed on the tax returns to the accountant who was sharing my office.

2011: Stopped offering bookkeeping services due to the difficulty in signing up profitable clients.

2012: By 2012 I had realised that narrator MAGAZINE was not going to pay for itself. The only way to keep it going was to get some crowdfunding to help support it. Yet, despite all the people who wanted it to keep going, we were unable to raise the funds��we needed. I resolved to close it down. Within 24 hours of finally ���letting go��� in my mind, the idea for continuing the writing competition as an online daily blog with a six monthly print on demand book in the form of narratorAUSTRALIA came to mind. One door closes, another door opens. Or, you shut one door then open another with a slightly different sign on it!

2013: Printing, laminating, binding, scanning, emailing etc. After a three-week internet outage (thank you, Telstra!), I was forced to look closely at my figures when I decided to claim for losses incurred. One of the things I realised was that despite the amount of revenue we were bringing in with printing etc, the actual net profit wasn���t enough to cover our time at the hourly rate we were charging for services such as proofreading and websites. It was hard making the decision to withdraw these services as many of the locals had come to rely on them – a quick scan here, a quick photocopy, etc – but when I realised how little we were making, there was no choice – it all had to go.

2015: Although narratorINTERNATIONAL was slowly attracting more people from across the globe, its popularity wasn���t being reflected in sales of the book or ebook. During an out-of-the-blue ���A-ha��� moment in July 2015, when I was thinking about something else, I realised that the narrator project as a whole had to go. I hated doing it, but the moment the decision was made I felt so much better.

2015: December. Withdrew from our leased office space and set up home offices in our individual homes.

2016: For many years we have had an online shop ��� The MoshShop ��� in one way or another. For a while it was a CubeCart shop, and then it was an Ecwid shop, and more recently we���ve had a WordPress WooCommerce shop. Nothing wrong with any of them, but online retail is not what we do, it���s always just something we���ve done to offer our authors��� books to the Australian public. But again, during an ���A-ha��� moment in early February after reading an article about Booktopia being up against it with the impending opening of a Book Depository distribution centre in Melbourne, I figured, ���Why are we bothering? Let the big boys slug it out.��� Yes, we sold the odd book, but when I looked closely, the money we made on it wasn���t enough to cover the cost of hosting and domain name registration. Yes ��� our shop was doing that badly!

Held

So where are we now? Quite simply, we offer self publishing services to Australians via our IndieMosh site, including book cover design, layout and formatting and ebook creation. Ally now runs all our website and graphic design services under her own umbrella, and we each have a couple of legacy clients for whom we provide the odd typing or other job that they���re used to getting from us.

Life has suddenly become a lot easier. Thanks Kenny, I should have listened to you a lot earlier! But thanks to the decisions I’ve made over the last few years, I can find time to listen to you now:

The post Know when to hold ���em, know when to fold ���em appeared first on Jennifer Mosher - Editor.

Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em

When it comes to being in business for yourself, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, as that great philosopher Kenny Rogers once said in The Gambler. And by holding and folding, I mean the things that you do that make up your list of products and services.

Over the last few months we’ve been watching in (morbid) fascination as Woolworths has struggled with its Masters chain of hardware stores. They’ve invested an absolute fortune in an attempt to establish the brand as a viable alternative to Bunnings, but a few weeks ago, the board finally declared defeat, putting the chain up for sale.

There are lessons in this for businesses of all sizes, and I’m not the only to have recognised over the years that it was time to fold ’em, rather than hold ’em. But the important thing is to make the decision, before the decision is made for you!

Ironically, what I’m doing now business-wise is incredibly limited compared with what I tried to do when I first leased office space eight years ago. In those early, heady days of being the new business on the block people would say to us, ‘What do you do?’ and we’d reply, ‘Almost anything you want that involves a computer. We can type your letters, or do your bookkeeping, or build you a website …’ until their eyes glazed over and they had to stifle a yawn …

Fast forward eight years and we are more successful now, have less trouble finding qualified leads and clients, and enjoy our work a whole lot more. Why? Because now when people ask us what we do, we simply say, ‘We help Australian writers self publish their books’.

While it is contrary to everything the new business person might think, being too diverse makes it too hard for people to understand what you do, and being able to encapsulate what you do is so important. Once a prospect gets their head around what you do, then they might start asking questions. But if they can’t process what you’ve just told them, they’re going to wriggle out of the conversation before you can even get it started!

If you’re thinking of branching out into new areas, think about how you’re going to explain that to others. Will it fit with your current business? Diversification is fine, but don’t be afraid to face the thought that you may also need to de-versify. (Is that a word? Does it matter? It says what I need and language is evolving all the time!)

So just to help you be brave about where you might need to fold ’em, here is a potted history of the hands I’ve dealt, folded held in my business over the last ten years:

Dealt

2005 – 2007: Proofreading and admin services from home

2007: Leased an office in the local village. Offered proofreading, editing, typing, Dictaphone transcription, computer lessons, bookkeeping, tax returns (having been an accountant there were ways I could offer these services with the backing of a local tax accountant), printing for locals, scanning, laminating, binding, emailing, graphic design, websites, data entry, spreadsheet creation, phone answering, resume preparation … and anything else we were asked for and could do …

2009: Added book publishing

2010: Added a quarterly writing competition in the form of narrator MAGAZINE

2011: Added ebook publishing and print on demand publishing via Amazon

2012: Converted the quarterly narrator MAGAZINE into the daily online blog narratorAUSTRALIA

2013: Added narratorUK, narratorUSA and a host of genre sites

2014: Converted all narrator sites to one, all-inclusive, narratorINTERNATIONAL

Folded

2008: Passed on the tax returns to the accountant who was sharing my office.

2011: Stopped offering bookkeeping services due to the difficulty in signing up profitable clients.

2012: By 2012 I had realised that narrator MAGAZINE was not going to pay for itself. The only way to keep it going was to get some crowdfunding to help support it. Yet, despite all the people who wanted it to keep going, we were unable to raise the funds we needed. I resolved to close it down. Within 24 hours of finally ‘letting go’ in my mind, the idea for continuing the writing competition as an online daily blog with a six monthly print on demand book in the form of narratorAUSTRALIA came to mind. One door closes, another door opens. Or, you shut one door then open another with a slightly different sign on it!

2013: Printing, laminating, binding, scanning, emailing etc. After a three-week internet outage (thank you, Telstra!), I was forced to look closely at my figures when I decided to claim for losses incurred. One of the things I realised was that despite the amount of revenue we were bringing in with printing etc, the actual net profit wasn’t enough to cover our time at the hourly rate we were charging for services such as proofreading and websites. It was hard making the decision to withdraw these services as many of the locals had come to rely on them – a quick scan here, a quick photocopy, etc – but when I realised how little we were making, there was no choice – it all had to go.

2015: Although narratorINTERNATIONAL was slowly attracting more people from across the globe, its popularity wasn’t being reflected in sales of the book or ebook. During an out-of-the-blue ‘A-ha’ moment in July 2015, when I was thinking about something else, I realised that the narrator project as a whole had to go. I hated doing it, but the moment the decision was made I felt so much better.

2015: December. Withdrew from our leased office space and set up home offices in our individual homes.

2016: For many years we have had an online shop – The MoshShop – in one way or another. For a while it was a CubeCart shop, and then it was an Ecwid shop, and more recently we’ve had a WordPress WooCommerce shop. Nothing wrong with any of them, but online retail is not what we do, it’s always just something we’ve done to offer our authors’ books to the Australian public. But again, during an ‘A-ha’ moment in early February after reading an article about Booktopia being up against it with the impending opening of a Book Depository distribution centre in Melbourne, I figured, ‘Why are we bothering? Let the big boys slug it out.’ Yes, we sold the odd book, but when I looked closely, the money we made on it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of hosting and domain name registration. Yes – our shop was doing that badly!

Held

So where are we now? Quite simply, we offer self publishing services to Australians via our IndieMosh site, including book cover design, layout and formatting and ebook creation. Ally now runs all our website and graphic design services under her own umbrella, and we each have a couple of legacy clients for whom we provide the odd typing or other job that they’re used to getting from us.

Life has suddenly become a lot easier. Thanks Kenny, I should have listened to you a lot earlier! But thanks to the decisions I’ve made over the last few years, I can find time to listen to you now:

The post Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em appeared first on Jennifer Mosher - Editor.

Why nobody cares about your book

One of the hardest things about being a self publishing facilitator is seeing the disappointment many of our clients have to face after releasing their first book, no matter how much effort they’re putting into book marketing and sales.

In my blog post Why publishing a book is like having a baby, I likened publishing a book to giving birth ��� how books and babies both start with a seed/the seed of an idea, which is implanted, nurtured and grown prior to being delivered to the world. But the similarities don���t end there.

The lead-up to��your book’s release

If you���ve ever had a baby, whether you���re a father or a mother, the first time around will have been almost all-consuming. There is so much to learn when you have a baby on the way, so much to discover, and everyone around you seems interested: Have you chosen a name? Will it be a boy or a girl, or aren���t you telling? What sort of birth are you going to have? Where are you going to have it? How are you feeling? Not long now, is it? The list goes on.

If you���ve been there, you���ll know exactly what I���m talking about. And it���s the same when you���re writing a book. As soon as those around you know that you have a book in development, they���ll be checking in with you, keeping you accountable: What���s it about? Where will I be able to get a copy? How long is it? Will it have pictures? How much will it cost? When is it going to be finished? And yes, the list goes on.

Publication of your book

Then comes the delivery. The baby, the book, is delivered to the world. Everyone around you congratulates you, makes a fuss, tells you how wonderful it is, how clever you are. And then they go home and get on with their lives ��� leaving you holding the baby. And that���s when post-publication depression sets in.

The simple fact of the matter is this: babies are born across the world every minute of every day. Yours is special, 99 times out of a hundred, simply because it���s yours, which means it���s special only to you. And it���s the same with books. Thousands of books are being published every day across the world, and when yours is first released, chances are it���s special only because it���s yours. Which is why nobody cares about your book.

So what does that mean? When can you expect sales? The answer? Don���t. Don���t focus on sales. If that���s why you wrote a book, then you wrote it for the wrong reason. You are about as likely to make money from writing a book as I am for singing. Or dancing.

Don’t expect your book to be an overnight success

After you have a��baby, when all the excitement dies down and everyone goes back to their daily lives, it���s your job to look after your baby and to consider giving it brothers and sisters, if you feel that you have that in you. As your baby ages, if it starts to become relevant to the world ��� perhaps it provides a special sort of enjoyment to others with its piano playing, or its tennis playing, or perhaps it opens other people���s minds with its innovative take on reducing greenhouse gases ��� whatever special qualities your baby displays are what will get it attention. If it has brothers and sisters who also lead their own lives, then it will be easier for people to recall your baby���s name. It���s much easier to remember a new football player���s name if he already has a brother playing in first grade, isn���t it?

Your baby generally won���t be noticed by people who don���t already know you until it starts to grow and leave its mark on the world in a unique way. Some children leave a really big, positive mark. Others leave a tiny little grey scratch which most people, sadly, won���t notice, while yet others leave a big, horrible, ugly scar and are a talking point for all the wrong reasons for years to come. But it takes a while before people can see what sort of baby you���ve given birth to, what its impact on the world is, and how they feel about it.

And it���s the same with your book. If you write more books, along a similar vein, each book will help the others to get noticed ��� the way one sibling can draw attention to a whole family. Each book should be an improvement on the one before, the way your parenting should improve with each additional child. The more we have, the more we (should!) learn.

And if one of your babies starts to show promise, it won���t be at six months of age, it will be when they���re school age. Or perhaps high school age. Or maybe��when they���re 25. Or even older. Indicators of success don���t always show straight away. Some people are meant to make a lasting impression only at a certain point in time, and the same goes for your book.

So give it time. Don���t let it get you down if no one is buying your book. What���s more important is that people read your book, and that they like it, that they get something out of it ��� whether that���s entertainment, knowledge, inspiration, an emotional charge ��� whatever. And that they talk about it ��� over time, embedding your book in other people���s psyches.

Word of mouth is the best book marketing and sales technique

Let it grow. Yes, apply marketing techniques, but be circumspect. Stay in it for the long haul. I mean, would you give up on��your five year old if they weren���t showing signs of being prime minister one day? No. Listen to what���s said about your book. If you believe you need��to improve it, release a revised edition after a year or two, capitalising on what you���ve learned, and pull the original from the shelves. But give it time! We all know Rome wasn���t built in a day!

And don���t try to please everybody. Aim to write the best book you can for a niche audience ��� then you���ll get raving fans. If you write something to try to please everyone, it will just be a vanilla bland-out and no one will be interested.

My father used to say, ���Expect nothing from no-one and you won���t be disappointed���. I���d like to adapt��this to:

Expect no sales, and you won���t be disappointed. But celebrate every single sale you make until you���re averaging��at least one sale a day.

And��then you���ll know people care about your book.

*****

If you���re having trouble getting sales of your book off the ground, consider grabbing a copy of Rayne Hall���s Why Does My Book Not Sell? ��� 20 Simple Fixes for some assistance. I have a copy of this book and it���s very sensible and practical and written from experience, not theory ��� making it the best kind of book. Rayne is not a client of ours, we have never met, and I have not been asked to promote her book. I am mentioning it simply because I believe it offers great value to the beginning writer.

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Why publishing a book is like having a baby

Books are like babies. They start with the seed of an idea, germinated and implanted, and we nurture that seed and help it grow. Some seeds don���t make it to maturity ��� we have to let them die along the way, but others have healthy bones, and so we flesh them out and infuse them with colour and shape and texture until the day comes when we���re ready to deliver them to the world. And what an exciting time that is! But how?

If you���re (very) lucky, you���ll be able to go what I call the ���private hospital��� route: you���ll get a publishing contract with a publishing house ��� a ���traditional publisher��� ��� and they���ll take you in, make you comfortable, and deliver the baby for you. (Yes, I realise there���s more to it than luck, but these days, finding a publisher who will help deliver your book does require a healthy dose of luck.) Going the ���private hospital��� route will mean that all your editing, proofreading, cover design and other production issues will be taken care of. You just sit back and give them the rights to your first born.

If your baby isn���t displaying the equivalent of the prospects of a supermodel, but perhaps will only appeal to a more select group of people (think A History of Concreting in Sweden), then you���ll have a hard time getting the doors of that private hospital open. Which leaves you with one of two self-publishing options:

1. You can go the true DIY option where you give your book a ���home birth���. You engage the services of Dr Google and find out all you need to know about formatting, layout, editing and proofreading, margins and bleed, crop marks, CMYK and RGB, paper weights, spine widths, distribution, ebook conversion, ISBNs, barcodes, legal deposit … (the list goes on) …

OR

2. You can ���call the midwife��� and engage a self publishing facilitator such as IndieMosh to help you do all the stuff you don���t know or don���t want to learn, leaving you to focus on what you���re best at.

Your book will be with you for a long time ��� if you let it ��� and so if you are following the home birth or midwife route, it behoves you to nurture it as well as you can with lots of revisions, beta readers, editing, proofreading and professional cover design ��� whatever your budget will stretch to, before letting it out.

And when your baby is delivered, should you choose to have a book launch, think of it as a naming day party, a christening or a debutant ball, where you present your baby to the world, announce its name and set it free. Don���t think of it as a place where your baby is going to find a spouse or lots of other families to go live with. While people do buy books at book launches, these events are very rarely profitable, so don���t have a book launch for sales prospects, have it simply to share your happiness with those closest to you (and anyone else you care to invite).

Whichever delivery option you choose (or are forced to choose), the end result should be the same: delivery of a book which you���re proud of, and proud to promote, to introduce to people; a book which has taken your blood, sweat and tears to produce, and a book which bears your name (or pseudonym, if you happen to be, say, a kindergarten teacher who likes to write violent crime novels!).

And when you reach that point, I offer you congratulations and send my best wishes to your baby for a long and influential time here in this big old world of ours.

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Reasons to self publish, 1, 2, 3

Isn���t it funny how we look at things from our own point of view, and are then surprised to discover that not everyone shares that view? This was the case with our IndieMosh brand, where we help Aussies self publish. We initially thought that there was only one reason to publish a book, but over the last few years, we���ve noticed that our authors have pretty much one of three reasons to self publish …

1. Fame and fortune, spreading the word

When we first started helping people self publish, the aim for everyone ��� ourselves and our authors ��� was to publish a book that everyone, or at least lots of people, would want to buy. The general thinking was, ���Why would you write a book if you���re not aiming to sell to as many people as possible and enjoy the fame and fortune that follows?��� And so we would all be looking at what the author should be doing to market, to sell, to follow up, to maximise their chances of ���livin��� la vida literary���.

As publishing facilitators, we have learned that, for many authors, writing a bestseller and making lots of money isn���t the only reason to write a book. Sure, it���s a good reason, a damned good one (in our book!), but not the only one.

So, if not for fame and fortune, why else would you write a book?

2. To be heard, to have a say, to share knowledge

One of the main reasons people seem to be writing is simply because they have something to say and it really, truly doesn���t bother them whether it sells or not. They just want to be heard, to have the satisfaction of publishing their theories, their thoughts, their feelings, their experiences and learnings, their stories and poems, and if a few punters out there are interested, that���s just icing on the cake. If more than a few are interested, well, that���s like winning the lottery!

Not all, but many of the IndieMosh authors falling into this category are retired. They���ve lived a life, learning many things along the way, and now in their senior years feel that they would like to leave their mark, however small it may be.

When we first came across this phenomenon, it saddened us. We charge people to develop their book ��� there���s the formatting, the cover design and creation, and a long list of other things that go into the publishing process ��� and taking money from these (mostly) more mature folk made us feel guilty. We knew they���d be lucky to sell more than a copy or two, mostly because they were people without an online presence or a ready built audience, but they each assured us that no, selling wasn���t the aim, it was simply to do it, to be published, to have their say.

And do you know what? We���ve learnt that it���s actually a really good reason to publish. Over the last year we���ve published people aged 75, 82, 85, 86, 88 and (almost ready for release) 92. The thrill, the boost to their self esteem, their sense of satisfaction are all so rewarding that it is, truly, one of the best reasons to self publish. And where originally we were trying to avoid this market because we felt it was a dishonourable thing to take money from someone whom we figured would probably never recover it, we now enjoy helping those with a realistic view of their commercial chances and an authentic desire to simply ���be published���.

But there���s an added reason for these people to publish. One day, in the distant future, someone may be adding leaves to their family tree, and when they discover great grandma���s book, they���re going to have more than just a name and a couple of dates. They���re going to have her thoughts, be able to hear her ���voice��� in her writing, and feel closer to her and her ideas and personality, regardless of whether she���s written fact or fiction. What a lovely legacy to leave your descendants!

3. Marketing purposes

Some of the people we help publish are business people, and so a book that they can sell at their workshops, seminars etc, is a great asset to have. The flip side of the coin is that a published author has an edge when pitching for speaking engagements. And for some of our authors, their books are non-fiction manuals on their topic of expertise, which are much easier to market and therefore sell, creating a nice little income stream on the side.

For entrepreneurs and other business people, writing a book as an asset, as a part of their business, rather than being the main game, is a great way to help them develop their ���street cred���. And additional titles ��� on their topic or theme ��� only help to reinforce their level of expertise and their place in the pecking order of ���go to��� people.

~~~

So there you have it ��� my three reasons why people self publish. I keep looking at our author list and every author��falls into one (occasionally two) of these three categories. Which category or categories would you fall under, I wonder?

Thanks for reading, and because you���re probably already singing it, please enjoy Reasons to be cheerful, 1, 2, 3 … courtesy of the brilliant and irreverent (and brilliantly irreverent) Ian Drury.

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TLAs, emoji, emoticons and business communication

When I first started in business a decade ago, I was still of the opinion that emails and other cyber correspondence should be formal, that emoticons and emoji (see Julie Bishop’s wonderful emoji face here) should be reserved for private text and email messages between consenting loved ones. Having commenced my office career in the 1970s in the legal branch of the NSW Department of Main Roads, and having been brought up by a mother who worked as a stenographer with the London County Council, being formal in my business communications was always second nature. (And can’t you just tell by this introductory paragraph?!)

Fast forward 10 years and I find that I often have to restrain myself from adding a smiley face to every second line in my business emails. Not only that, but BTW has become a common standard when I’m in a hurry.

WTF happened to me?

I’ll tell you. I let go. I stopped clinging to the past and realised that, as society changes, it was important for me to relax and change, too. I pick my audience carefully – if I’m not familiar with someone��I’ll be sensible and somewhat restrained until such time as the relationship eases into its comfort zone, but generally speaking, most of my clients get the TLA + emoji/emoticon treatment in��most of my communications these days. And why not? If it puts a smile on their dial, if it��floats their boat, then where’s the problem?

My only problem is working out where to punctuate a sentence which ends with an emoji/emoticon.��

Or, should that be:

My only problem is working out where to punctuate a sentence which ends with an emoji/emoticon��.

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Moving on after death on social media

Last week, my wonderful mother passed away. At the age of 94, she��succumbed to a melanoma lesion on the brain. She had half a dozen of us by her bedside for the three hours before she passed, and I was holding her hand as she ever so gently stopped breathing, so as sad as it is, we have much to be grateful for.

As her health had been deteriorating and we knew the end was near, we had been able to warn most of those closest to us and her in the preceding weeks, so when we left the nursing home and came back to our house to ���debrief��� I was able to send messages to most of those who should be told first. I made about three phone calls, but the bulk of the message was spread via text, email and Facebook message. No one complained about me using electronic means to inform them of Mum���s passing.

I had one cousin I was having trouble reaching and so once that contact had been made I needed to consider a more ���public��� message, about 24 hours after Mum had passed. The Facebook post.

Now, I have an issue with people using social media as a ���Woe is me, give me attention��� tool, so I needed to craft an announcement which wouldn���t elicit a load of ���Sorry for your loss��� and ���I feel your pain��� comments. I just needed to let an awful lot of people know in a hurry so that they could let their parents or others know. After 94 years, Mum knew a lot of people, but a lot of people also knew her and would have wanted to know that she had passed on.

I managed to create a post which conveyed the information without sounding (hopefully) like a plea for attention. Judging by the (lovely) comments, I think I succeeded. As comments were made, I made the effort to ���Like��� them so the people knew that I appreciated their sentiment, but I didn���t get involved in trying to answer them ��� I didn’t want to get drawn into conversations about it, I just wanted to spread the word.

A few days passed, and then I felt it was time that Mum���s photo and my post were moved down a notch from the top of my timeline. But how?

What do you do to follow up a post where you���ve announced someone���s death?

Do you post something maudlin, in keeping with the theme? Or something humorous to lighten the mood and let people know ���I���m ba-ack!��� or something else about your dear departed loved one, so that you gently ease them off the headlines?

I struggled for a day or so and then accidentally reposted��a meme on my own timeline without adding any words myself. I had intended to share it on my daughter���s timeline but clicked the wrong thing ��� something I rarely do ��� then realised to my horror that just 48 hours after announcing Mum���s death, I���d pushed her off the headlines with an image of a chair piled high with clothes!

Now, I can hear you asking, ���Why didn���t you just delete it?��� And it���s a bloody good question. It would have been so simple! But I had a look at my timeline and do you know what? It was okay. I had written no words, just hung out a simple ���back in business��� sign, albeit accidentally. A couple of people commented, and so I ���Liked��� their comments and several people ���Liked��� the meme.

And so life on Facebook returned gently to normal. But I wonder what I would have done had I not accidentally hit ���Share��� instead of ���Write post���. I wonder how many days it would have taken me to find something suitable to post.

Social media is a wonderful tool. It allows us to reach many people with one message. But until last week, I had never realised that sometimes we might need to consider how we move on from one message to the next. How do we change the tone of our timeline to ensure that we don���t bore people, drive them away, have them think disparagingly, ���Is she still on about that? Have some dignity!���

I still don���t know what the answer is, and it will be different for each of us. I am just grateful to Purple Clover for posting the image below. Thank you, you saved me hours and perhaps days of anguish!

Purple Clover meme
https://www.facebook.com/purpleclvr

 

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Self publishing: predictions to 2020

Each January I devour the publishing forecast for the coming year from Smashwords CEO and founder, Mark Coker. (See 2015���s forecast here: http://blog.smashwords.com/2014/12/2015-book-publishing-industry.html) I find it not only necessary from the point of view of my job (as MD of IndieMosh) but also intriguing to see if what I���m seeing is reflected in the Australian marketplace and in the minds of Australian authors contemplating self publishing.

Generally speaking, I find it hard to disagree with the points Mark makes each year ��� he���s mostly ���on the money��� and where he���s not spot on, he���s rarely far off. What���s fascinating to me, though, is still how far behind Australian attitudes are. We���re catching up, but ever so slowly. When I reach a six month period when no new author asks me which bookstores we sell in, or how to get their books into bricks and mortar stores, then I���ll know that we���ve begun to take the changes in publishing on board!

But in the meantime, while Mark makes predictions that tend to favour those who are (self) publishing, I���d like to make some predictions for those working in publishing, too. Because what happens between authors, publishing houses and retailers is going to keep affecting what happens to the ���tradies��� like me ��� the editors, formatters, graphic designers etc who have in the past worked for traditional publishing houses and for companies subcontracting to those publishers. So here are my predictions for the next five years:

Self published books will begin to naturally divide into two categories: those which have been truly self published by the author, and those which have been facilitated. The difference is that facilitated self publishing (like our IndieMosh service) helps the author publish their book while the truly self published author manages all the steps and subcontracts select elements, such as cover design, if they consider they need it. This will give the authors three options: truly self publish, self publish with help, or pitch to literary agents for a ���traditional��� publishing experience.
Authors will start to wield more power. In the 1930s, the Hollywood movie studios ���owned��� the actors, forcing them to change their names to something more palatable, leasing them out to other studios when they didn���t want to use them etc. (���Renee Zellweger��� would never have been printed on a movie poster back in the 1930s!) And so it will be with authors over the next five years. They will take more interest in owning the asset ��� their writing ��� and with it, they will own the power.
Australian authors will stop seeing traditional publishing as the end game, but be satisfied to simply publish their stories their own way, and connect with their audience their own way.
If you wish to publish a book, you will have basically one choice: do it yourself. The only way you will get a ���traditional publisher��� to take you on is if you have a track record of previous publications that you can interest them in, or you���ve managed to write something so potentially successful, with more in the pipeline, that they can see the benefit of investing in you. Now don���t get me wrong ��� I don���t blame them one iota. It takes a lot to develop and publish a book, and traditional publishers invest heavily in bringing a book to market, so they���re not going to say ���yes��� to you unless you can prove that there are serious reasonable grounds for them to expect to make money. And I don���t want to hear you whingeing about that! They are businesses, and if they don���t make money, they go out of business.
Traditional publishing will shrink back to those books which are almost guaranteed to sell. The risk taking of the past, the nurturing of new authors, will be wound right back and replaced with publications such as celebrity biographies and books which complement reality television shows so as to ensure their survival. They will also move to ���picking up��� indie authors who have been successfully self publishing, but will need to offer them something new as more and more self publishing successes decide that they want to retain their autonomy ��� and their income.
We will see more and more retired people writing. Those who have left fulltime employment and have a few dollars to spare from their pension or income stream will derive great satisfaction from writing the book they always wanted to write, and doing it properly.
With self publishing becoming more and more accessible to writers across the country, more and more people will take the opportunity to publish their memoirs, their philosophies, their stories, not as a money-making endeavour or to feed their egos, but simply to have the satisfaction of ���putting it out there��� and recording their story or thoughts for posterity. Family tree research in a hundred years��� time will be so much more fulfilling when we find a book written by great grandad and we actually get to hear his ���writer���s voice���, to ���hear��� his thoughts ��� we will know so much more about him than just his date of birth, who he married, where he lived and how many children he did or didn���t have. We will have more than just third party facts, we will have a little piece of him, a little ���piece of his brain��� (as Basil Fawlty once said).
The quality of self published books will improve. More and more authors approaching IndieMosh are asking for proofreading or editing services, or are bringing an already edited manuscript to the table. Self pubbed authors will care more and more what people think of their efforts and so will make the effort to respect their readers and, in turn, earn their readers��� respect by delivering a quality publication.
Authors will become more cognisant of the fact that readers want a solid, well-written ���story��� (whether fiction or fact), and that while things like cover design, layout etc are important, none of that will help if the story itself is not of some quality. And some enjoyment!
Less people will expect to make any ���real��� money from their books. They will publish for pleasure, for the ability to say ���This is me and what I think���. There will still be authors who do make viable money, but they will be those who work at it, like a plumber learning his craft, releasing quality books regularly and building their audience one book at time. But on the whole, I believe the bulk of people will publish simply because they can and because they need to, for their own personal reasons.
The expectation of being an overnight success after one book will fade for most new authors. Most self publishers by 2020 will know that ���one book does not an author make���!
With (traditional) book, newspaper and magazine publishers continuing to evolve their products as they adapt to technological change and successive Australian governments encouraging small business and sole traders, we will see more and more editors, proofreaders, graphic designers etc setting up as freelancers. With that will come increased awareness of the ���publishing pipeline��� as independents form relationships and refer clients on to the next provider in the process.
Authors will have more choice about how their books are developed. Rather than having to enter into agreements with self publishing facilitators who have a set pattern and system for publishing where the author is required to add on in-house editing and proofreading packages, marketing packages etc, more and more facilitators, such as IndieMosh, will offer the author the ability to bring their own suppliers to the table.
For freelancers in the publishing industry, work opportunities will change. Instead of working for one large employer, such as a publishing house, newspaper etc, freelancers will build up a clientele of smaller clients. At IndieMosh, we are building a network of editors, proofreaders, formatters, graphic designers, trailer makers etc to help our authors find freelancers who are a ���fit��� for them and their books.
And on that point, more and more service providers will focus on being a ���fit��� for their clients, rather than focusing on the hard sell. Getting it right for the right client will become more important than trying to sign up any and every client.
Where caveman used to write his stories on the wall of his cave many thousands of generations ago, to be stumbled upon by those traversing his territory, we will see a move towards modern man writing his stories on and for a variety of devices which will enable his story to be accessed in different forms by billions of people across the planet. As China and India open up, and more and more people in non-Western nations learn to read English, the market for Western writers will expand dramatically.
Those who can write stories which cross cultures with authenticity will benefit greatly. Migrants from non-Western countries to Western countries in particular will write tales across the divide and publish them in dual languages, giving them double the market potential of single-language, single-culture authors.
Self published authors will finally realise that Amazon is not the devil, that KDP is simply ���Kindle Direct Publishing��� which requires no exclusivity, and that it���s the optional ���KDP Select��� program which means they have to be exclusive to Amazon. And as that realisation dawns, they will stop Amazon-bashing, realise that it is simply another avenue of distribution, and get back to their ���real��� writing!
Smashwords will develop their own app for iOS and Android, plugging that one last hole that exists in their distribution network. Well, maybe not, but they should be considering it before someone else does it for them.
People will pay less attention to literary reviewers and more attention to crowdsourced review sites such as Goodreads etc. Readers will be more trusting of reviews of other readers who like what they like, and so will trust those reviews to guide them towards books they are likely to enjoy.

So there are my thoughts on where we���re headed for the next half a decade. Don���t forget to check back in 2020 to see how far off I was!

If you���re in the Blue Mountains and interested in hearing a discussion on publishing decisions, on 21 May I will be sitting on a panel at the inaugural Blue Lab Creative Industries Symposium at the Carrington Hotel, Katoomba. The panel discussion is called To E or not to E: is independent or traditional publishing the way to go? and will be chaired by Jo Chipperfield. It features yours truly (a self publishing facilitator), J-L Heylen (a self published author), Bianca Nogrady (a traditionally published author) and Anna Maguire (an author and crowdfunding specialist). Hope to see you there!

 

 

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A condensed history of publishing

In February 2015, I gave the presentation below at a Pecca Kucha night at the Carrington Hotel, Katoomba. It seemed a waste not to do more with it after all that effort, so here it is for you to enjoy. Or be bored by. Depends on how interested you are in the history of publishing, I suppose!!

 

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