I have decided to take the highly successful ‘Become A Published Author’ course live and online. Instead of just offering it at Macarthur and Nepean Community Colleges four times a year each, I plan to have it ongoing and online. So far the pricing and basic set up is yet to be finalized but I envisage a cost of below $160 including a copy of the published book delivered to each writer. This is what students pay for the face to face course, so I think a discount for the online delivery should be fair all round given the extra costs in having to ship each student their copy rather than share the shipping across all students and deliver them in person at the final session.

The benefits to be had include instruction and mentoring in short story writing (although memoir and other genre are accepted for publication) as well as being published both electronically here on Dangerous Ideas and also in print, on paper, for real, ISBN included. Once a writer is a published author, that hurdle is no longer to be leapt. It is behind them. They can now focus on their next book, polish their skills, improve their craft, sell something! Stay tuned for more details. The first course will commence soon!

John Locke recently sold 1.1 million copies of his books via Amazon.com. He is the first self published author to join the  Million Seller Club at Amazon. The other 8 members are all backed by mainstream publishing houses. Congratulations John.  John sells his eBooks via Kindle for just $0.99, of which he makes just $0.35. But 35% of 1.1 million is over $350,000. I would love to have to pay the income tax on a third of a million bucks. Made in just five months! John wrote a book about how he did this and has it for sale for $4.99. I bought a copy. Wouldn’t you?

I must say he was already a wealthy man when he started writing and he spends a couple of thousand dollars per title using a company called Telemachus Publishing to professionally edit, format and publish the books. His cover art is terrific, but you would expect it to be. Still, there is no reason cheap skates with no capital like yours truly can’t replicate much of what he does and get some similar results.

I won’t steal the guy’s thunder or give the game away. Buy the book like I had to. It really isn’t rocket science but it does prove that the method he used, and anyone can copy, does work. Put your prejudices aside and just follow the model like I am and let’s see where it leads. The penny finally dropped if nothing else. I knew all along I have to spend as much time and effort selling the books as writing and publishing them. OK. Now I will do that. I have rearranged my schedule to write of a morning when I am fresh and to market after 10pm when I usually sit at the writing machine for three or fours hours and just mess about and achieve very little. That leaves time inbetween to tutor and lecture (paying jobs, yee hah!) and also exercise. I started this yesterday and while early days, it feels right.

So, if nothing else, my $4.99 investment in the book and maybe an hour or so of my time reading it will be beneficial in ways other than a sudden, penny dropping epiphany leading to riches and happy ever afters. OK. The lesson has been learned. You have to work hard to sell the writing. That is why publishing houses have a large staff of sales, marketing, proofing, art department and editorial people working for the lucky few writers they deign to take on.

OI know it is a business, for centuries it was a processed paper selling business,now it includes downloads. But now we little guys can give the big fellas a run for their money. There is no excuse for not producing a quality eBook, edited, proofed, spell checked and formatted properly. One that doesn’t detract from the content by upsetting the reader with typos, gaps and orphaned words galore.

The more I investigate this topic, the more I find there is an industry out there preying on writers. Many Essay Writing sites are just scammers taking money and delivering plagiarized ‘copy and paste’ collations, often late and after demanding more money. While I have zero sympathy for those with more money than brains and organizational capabilities, these students are getting ripped off. Some pay hundreds of dollars for their essays and term papers and end up getting busted for plagiarizing, which is fair enough.

A legitimate custom essay writing company in the UK says it is not cheating if the student uses the custom written essay as a guide. Kind of like just another form of research notes, a guide to how their own essay could be written. If the student did that and didn’t hand the essay in as their own work then fair enough but we know most students will just hand it in and whine for a refund if they get a poor mark or caught out. There are links on that UK website to newspaper reports on this burgeoning industry that say many students will get access to such a service as a Christmas gift, so keen are many middle class parents for their children to do well at college. Pity they didn’t teach them some character traits like discipline, hard work and pride in one’s own achievements. But then this is so reflective of our 21st Century society it is pointless to expect things to change. The positive side, surely, is that it gives eWriters more opportunities to earn their living writing online. Well it does if they get paid for their work.

There are several essay writing providers claiming to be based in the UK or USA that are actually in the Ukraine or Hong Kong, with new ones springing up in Africa, both in Kenya and the infamous home of scammers, Nigeria. Some, like 4writers.net has a ruinous reputation of ripping writers off and must be avoided at all costs. I think most who fall for these scammers are ESL writers for whom English is a second language and they writer cheap. How some can write for three or even six months and swallow the lies given to them as to why no pay only means they are desperate for the work. But what good is a lot of work if they never pay?

The great thing about the Internet is that it is so easy to read widely. The rhizomatic nature of the world wide web lead early on to the term ‘surf the net’. You surf in and out of web sites and blogs with the click of a mouse, going from cool to boring and back to fascinating in seconds.

In fact there are surveys out there saying you have between 15 and 45 seconds to capture the imagination of the viewer that just surfed in or else they will surf on out again. When you find a site that grabs your attention it is scary how much time you can spend there and never realise it. One such site I found after Googling ‘ewriter’  is The e-Writer’s Place.

The owners are obviously trying to make a living from their site and there is nothing wrong with that. They have it jam packed with free info to give value and I find the ads interesting also.One of the articles (on how Editors are not the enemy) led me to another resource loaded site, Writers Crossing . Com. This one is a little different and looks at work for writers and places to obtain it.

As I followed the various links I was sent to that rip off ‘Real Writing Jobs’ web site I reported about recently. This, if anything, reminds us all to be careful and never forget the admonition to ‘Caveat Emptor’, buyer beware. Just because you find it on an otherwise reputable and informative site, or through a series of hyperlinks to a site you trust, there is no excuse for switching off the scam detectors. The Internet makes reading widely simple, but that doesn’t guarantee everything you read will be totally legitimate and above aboard.

Best thing is to judge for yourself. Surf on over there  by clicking on the hyper link above and as you do, take a moment to savour the speed of light travelling you are undergoing from one spot to another in cyber space. You really have to love this Internet, it has changed all of our lives. It is what makes a writer an eWriter after all.

I did receive a reply from the site mentioned in the previous blog entry however upon pressing them further, they disappeared. Here is their reply:

From: RealWritingJobs <supportstaff@realwritingjobs.com>
To: perry@perrygamsby.com
Sent: Sunday, 1 May 2011 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: Please Explain

There is a mob out there that tried to comment and get that all important link to this site. They are a rip off site that makes out they have work for writers, real writing jobs dot con is their name. I won’t write it any better than that or else they get the link they want. Ah what the heck! in the name of passing on a warning, go visit real writing jobs and see for yourself.

It’s the old ‘if it seems too good to be true…’ deal. Writing jobs paying $100 an article… never happen. $500 a story? Tell me more! $25-$40 an hour to help improve movie scripts? Spielberg needs me! $25-$50 for a blog…. you have to be kidding! And they are. On the parent site (that link is to an affiliate I think) they just have $$$ instead of the actual amounts. Read the Terms and Conditions and Earnings Disclaimer. Plenty probably don’t.

Basically you pay ‘just’ $4.95 for the trial period.  If you don’t cancel within four days, on the eighth day they take out a one time payment of $77 from your credit card. There is no mention of what work you will get. The earnings disclaimer suggests they send you some ‘materials’ that you then use to obtain the work. I’m thinking an eBook on being a freelance writer, saying you can charge up to $100 an article etc. The disclaimer says there is no guarantee you make this money even if you follow the material etc.

Bottom line, another con job. Why do people do this and why do others fall for it? Those of us who are trying to help writers make a real living from their craft are often times dumped in the same sewer with these slime balls. If you want writing work, sign up on Elance.com or Odesk.com and compete for jobs that are listed with the budget in mind etc. You will see ‘articles’ go on average for $1 a pop for 150-250 words. You would be doing well to get $25 for a 300 word blog. I write eBooks of 12,000-15,000 words,including research and started off getting $450 for each one. I do better now I have established myself and am known for a quality product, but you have to start somewhere. I would like to get $1,000 an eBook and I am worth it but so far I haven’t found a client who will pay that for them. So you take what you can get.

These scumbags seem to have the same philosophy only they take and don;t give any value back. It is all a con, slippery terms and twisted words to make you think you are getting work when all you are doing is buying someone elses’. My bet is they plagiarized the ‘materials’ too.

I have sent in a request for more information. If they are genuine, I will not only apologize but make sure everyone I know who writes for money heads their way. But somehow I don’t think I will be writing that apology. Do you?

Amanda Hocking, the 26 year old eWriter who sells 100,000 copies of her teen vampire romance eBooks as downloads on Amazon and Barnes& Noble every month has snagged a $2million deal with Macmillan. The major New York publishing house beat several other major  publishers to the deal and Hocking is of course, rapt. She says she can now write full time rather than have to spend many hours a week formatting, designing covers, managing sales, returns, enquiries and all the other things that come with selling your writing. She has gone from being an eWriter to a Z Writer (end of the alphabet, nowhere to go from here but back to ‘N’ for Nobel Prize!)… it doesn’t get much better than that, Amanda.

I bought Amanda’s ‘My Blood Approves’ and found it to be well written. Not my genre but the book itself has all the right elements and that is important. While the technology of the web and eBooks makes it simple enough that anyone can figure out how to do it, selling your books as well as writing then yourself isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort and dedication. It is a full time job until eventually the writing becomes the relaxing, leisure component!

The good news is, everybody can do it. You write a good story in a genre that is selling and then you put the effort in to get your book in front of your market. Easy! Easier to say than achieve but if you don’t try then it will never happen, no matter how brilliant your prose maybe.

This is the icon for the 2011 Aussie Author Challenge. I think it is a worthy initiative and one all Aussies should support, not to mention literature lovers everywhere. I got this off a web site owned by one of the participants in my ‘Eat Your Words – How To Make A Living As An Online Writer’ course that I hold at Macarthur and Nepean Community Colleges.

I have just submitted (and received payment for) the fourth eBook in the ten book series for my client. I have also been asked to start work on their Canada and UK series of eBooks on this topic so that means lots to learn and lots to write but lots of work to keep me busy.

As well as the eWriting, I am also starting to get work as a tutor, mostly for high school students but I will tutor university and post graduate if the work is there. This is a good ‘gig’ but you do have to be flexible and willing to run it as your own business. I like that and plan to register a Pty Ltd company again. The additional paperwork is well offset by the tax advantages of being a company and hiring yourself.

The company can do anything it wants to. It can send you to a Writer’s Retreat in Colorado if it can afford the expense. That expense is completely tax deductible for a company but harder to justify for a sole trader. For any writer looking to make their living from their words, they should get that business education that lets them make more informed decisions about the best structure for their circumstances.

I did the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme in 2008-9 over the Xmas holidays. You end up with a viable business plan and if you do the work, a Certificate IV in Business (Small Business Management). You then get some assistance for a year to run your business, including the equivalent of the dole every fortnight and mentoring from a business advisor. My year is up next week and while the consultancy/public speaking side of the business never really took off, the writing/teaching side of it has.

I earn income from developing and teaching community college courses on writing subjects, tutoring English, geography, History and Maths to Stage 4 or Year 8 and my online writing activities. These include writing eBooks and other work for clients as well as selling my own eBooks, printed books and advertising space on web sites I provide the copy for. It is yet to make enough to worry the Tax Man but with my five kids and supportive wife to look after, we are doing very well. I also spend a few hours every week getting around the traps to introduce a terrific new cleaning system called ActiveIonator. We use it at home and swear by it. The secret is not to make $1,000 a week (or whatever amount) from one source but to make say $200 from five sources, or $100 from ten sources. If one source dries up it is not so devastating that way, and easier to replace a $200 a week job than a $1,000 one.

The secret to living your dream as an eWriter, then, is to live within your means and keep writing and be flexible. Plug away, stick at it. It is not easy but it is better than working for ‘Da Man’, swapping your hours for his dollars and hoping he doesn’t go bust, decide to downsize or simply take out his frustrations on his staff.

One other moment of joy just yesterday… I came across an old 1970s-1980s era Adler Tippa 100 portable typewriter. I was told it didn’t work as the carriage was stuck but I could have it for five bucks. I bought it and flicked the carriage lock lever across to free it up, tapped some keys and away the thing went. The young lad at the charity store had no clue how to get it to work. To be honest it is a little ripper, but did I ever write an entire book on one of those things? Yes, I did. Reports, invoices, newsletters and all my correspondence were all created on something pretty similar.

Later that day I bought a new wireless ergonomic keyboard and mouse. I am not impressed with the flash wireless unit that came with my latest 27 inch i5 iMac. The wireless mouse is neat but the batteries died within a couple of weeks. The keyboard is too small and has not got a separate number pad on the side. This Microsoft keyboard is bigger, which my fat fingers appreciate and has a decent mouse to go with it so I am happy once more. Much happier than trying to write this using the Adler!