PETRONA

Inventing your book

Via Joe Wikert's blog, here is an article on how to "invent" your book, by Tamara Monosoff, who writes for a website called Entrepreneur.com. The author has written and published two books herself (the second of which has the title "Secrets of Millionaire Moms"), and in her article she compares the self-publish with the external publisher options for authors. I can't say I was as impressed with the article as Joe Wikert, whose post about it has the title "Great summary of publishing and authoring". (But he is a vice president of Wiley, so he should know.) I thought that much of it is self-evident, and says nothing about the challenges of marketing your book (extremely difficult, as pointed out in a comment here the other day by James Aach). And even I could write an article stating "get a literary agent" and "here's a good guidance website for self-publishing".

Despite the disappointing article, I did have a chuckle at the Amazon entry for Tamara's book (love the trademarks), so why not read this instead?

"What's the difference between the most successful mom entrepreneurs and you? They believed in their ideas enough to commit to them and even in the face of adversity rarely accepted “no” for an answer. In Secrets of Millionaire Moms, mom entrepreneur Tamara Monosoff interviewed some of the most successful “Millionaire Moms” of our time including the founders of Lulu's Desserts®, Baby Einstein®, Shabby Chic®, and Airborne Health®. What she learned will help you make that leap from great idea to booming business, including

• Priceless advice about business management, finances, and growth
• Tips on balancing the business with family
• What inspired the Millionaire Moms to take action-and what keeps them going

About the Author
Tamara Monosoff is founder and chief executive of Mom Inventors, Inc., a business she launched from her own kitchen table. She is the bestselling author of The Mom Inventors Handbook. For more information, visit her Web site at mominventors.com/millionairemoms."

Nerdish post on new tube map

London Underground Tube Diary - Going Underground's Blog.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed "Annie Mole" of Going Underground blog, you can have a sneak preview of the new London Underground tube map. This map, according to Annie, was put up on the TfL (transport for London)'s site for a couple of hours on 29 Oct, and then taken down (so presumably an accident). Annie points to a blog from the BBC, which notes the complexity of the new map. She also wonders why London Underground continues to show Shoreditch with a line drawn through it.

Marketing your book 2.0

Via Dave Lull, check out Michael Cart's witty article "Social Networking R Us" over at Booklist Online, which addresses a question that is rather relevant just now for Gawker but not at all for bestseller Bill Liversidge: "What if you published a book and nobody bought it?". Mr Cart looks at some of the ways publishers and authors are flocking to interactive websites et al. in the latest effort to ensure this doesn't happen -- or, as he succinctly summarises it, "think Michael Cart 2.0". A quotation from the article:

So say what you will about the Internet, it has given publishers a new tool for promoting their product. And the same is true for authors, of course. I was kidding when I made that “Michael Cart 2.0″ reference earlier, but in fact, Printz Award- and Printz Honor-winning author John Green and his brother, Hank, have started an electronic thingie they’re calling “Brotherhood 2.0.” Some months ago, they decided not to communicate for an entire year except through video blogs, and, as they-a bit disingenuously-note at their site, “They don’t mind if you watch them do it.”

The Sunday Salon - week 2

Hot off the press, we now have nineteen participants for The Sunday Salon. If you like the idea of a relaxing day on Sunday, reading and blogging about it, head on over to the link and sign up. See you there.

I missed a blog party

Link: A Party Invitation to 646 SOBs — Successful and Outstanding Bloggers! - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You\’re only a stranger once..

OK, you get the picture from the title of the link. So all I can do is to say--- check out no. 430. (It is an alphabetical list.)

The only problem -- I found out about the party today, but it happened on 24 October. Never mind, I hope everyone had fun.

The Carnival Continues

Mysterious Musings: The Carnival Continues.

Not much time tonight, so just a quick note that the Carnival of the Criminal Minds has moved on to Mysterious Musings, see link above. Mysterious Musings is a blog thus far unknown to me, so I'm grateful to the exercise for "drawing it to my attention", as they say. On looking at the list of links in the carnival post, MM is the blog of Julia Buckley, part of Poe's Deadly Daughters, a blog that I do know. Among the posts highlighted is one by the excellent Peter Rozovsky (note spelling, MM!) of Detectives Beyond Borders --a blog I highly recommend. Declan Burke may be particularly pleased about the post highlighted thusly (as he would write).