A Training Camp for Aspiring Book Authors

A Training Camp for Aspiring Book Authors A Training Camp for Aspiring Book Authors A Training Camp for Aspiring Book Authors By Daniel Scocco I met Jonathan Fields last year. We were both speaking at the Blog World 2010 conference, and he also attended a small meetup I had organized for online entrepreneurs. During that meetup I was quite impressed with his business and marketing ideas, so I started following his work. Last week he sent me an email saying hes about to launch a training camp for aspiring book authors, and I figured it could be the right program for some of our readers, especially because I know his success stories. Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur and marketing consultant, and a couple of years ago he decided to write a book. He figured that the traditional book publishing model was broken, though, so he went on to develop new strategies to promote his. By leveraging the Internet and his innovate marketing methods he managed to reach a #1 Amazon rank for his category, keeping it for over one month after his book launch. If you want to check it out for yourself heres the Amazon link to his boo, called Career Renegade. He also got featured on many mainstream publications, include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and NewsWeek. The program hes launching is called Tribal Author Camp, and it runs from August 1st until September 29th. During the first 3 weeks youll learn how to create an online presence, which will be the foundation of your book launch. The following 6 weeks cover all the tactics and strategies you need to know to promote and sell your book. Heres the structure: Weeks 1 3: Digital Author Platform 80/20 your online platform-building efforts to get the biggest return for your efforts Choose your tribal home base and core evangelist channels Mine social media to make your book more buzzable WHILE you’re still writing it Choose between WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, forums, podcasts, webcasts, teleseminars, and more Understand the pros and cons between email lists, RSS, followers, fans and friends Learn the unwritten rules of online social communities; break ‘em and you’re dead in the water Weeks 4 6: Building Pre-Launch Buzz Conditioning the market – how to build interest months in advance Developing your pre-order campaign to drive advanced amazon sales, brick mortar pick-up and early buzz Finding and recruiting high-likelihood amazon reviewers Creating your advance copy reviewer list – what metrics guide this critical task How to get big name people to blurb your book – who to ask, who never to ask and why How to integrate traditional PR into the mix (working long and short-lead media and how much not to spend) Creating time-bomb flagship/viral content to drive advance buzz/pre-orders Laying the foundation for mass-exposure blog-coverage and engaging blogger reviews and interviews Weeks 7 8: Launch and Building Critical Mass Compressing coverage into your Critical Window, so that the marketing energy begins to feed on itself and get the world talking and buying books Driving the digital media blitz – coordinating social media mentions, reviews, interviews and emails. What to work like crazy to accomplish and what to avoid like the plague The pros and cons of contests, live streaming launch promotions and the critical mistakes to avoid Creating evangelist contests – what do do, who to include and what never to do Repositioning your book as an irresistible â€Å"key to the castle† buy – how to stack an irresistible offer around your book to sell way more books and build your list a lot faster Limited-time bulk sales launch offers and bundles – do they really work? Week 9: Sustained Growth Getting hyper-creative and keeping your momentum alive Bundling speaking and bulk book orders for maximum sales effect Weekly strategies to fuel ongoing sales and continued buzz Piggybacking major monthly news stories Partnering with organizations causes Negotiating bulk and specialty sales going forward, how to tap the corporate premium market As you can see its quite comprehensive. As I mentioned above the training camp starts on August 1st (i.e., this Friday), so click here to check the official website if you are interested. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Fiction Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know44 Resume Writing Tips50+ Words That Describe Animals (Including Humans)

A New Theory of Dinosaur Evolution

A New Theory of Dinosaur Evolution Its not often that a scholarly paper about dinosaur evolution shakes up the world of paleontology and is covered in major publications like The Atlantic and The New York Times. But that is exactly what has happened with a paper published in the British magazine Nature, A New Hypothesis of Dinosaur Relationships and Early Dinosaur Evolution, by Matthew Baron, David Norman and Paul Barrett, on March 22, 2017. What makes this paper so revolutionary? To grasp this requires a quick briefing on the currently existing, widely accepted theory about the origin and evolution of dinosaurs. According to this scenario, the first dinosaurs evolved from archosaurs about 230 million years ago, during the late Triassic period, in the part of the supercontinent Pangea that corresponds to modern-day South America. These first, small, relatively undifferentiated reptiles then split off into two groups over the next few million years: saurischian, or lizard-hipped, dinosaurs, and ornithischian, or bird-hipped, dinosaurs. Saurischians include both plant-eating sauropods and meat-eating theropods, while ornithischians comprise everything else (stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, hadrosaurs, etc.). The new study, based on a lengthy, detailed analysis of dozens of dinosaur fossils, presents a different scenario. According to the authors, the ultimate ancestor of dinosaurs originated not in South America, but in the part of Pangea roughly corresponding to modern-day Scotland (one proposed candidate is the obscure, cat-sized   Saltopus). The first true dinosaur, moreover, is proposed to be Nyasasaurus, which originated  in the part of Pangea corresponding to modern-day Africaand which lived 247 million years ago, ten million years earlier than previously identified first dinosaurs like Eoraptor. More importantly, the study completely rearranges the lowest branches of the dinosaur family tree. In this account, dinosaurs are no longer divided into saurischians and ornithischians; rather, the authors propose a group called Ornithoscelidae (which lumps in theropods along  with ornithischians) and a redefined Saurischia (which now includes sauropods and the family of meat-eating dinosaurs called herrerasaurs, after the early South American dinosaur Herrerasaurus). Presumably, this classification helps account for the fact that many ornithischian dinosaurs possessed theropod-like characteristics (bipedal postures, grasping hands, and in some species, even feathers), but its further implications are still being worked out. How important is all this for the average dinosaur enthusiast? Despite all the hype, not very. The fact is that the authors are looking back to a very opaque time in dinosaur history, when the earliest branches of the dinosaur family tree had yet to be established, and when it would have been virtually impossible for an observer on the ground to distinguish between a profusion of  two-legged archosaurs, two-legged theropods, and two-legged ornithischians. Turn the clock ahead tens of millions of years to the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and everything pretty much remains unchangedTyrannosaurus Rex is still a theropod, Diplodocus is still a sauropod, all is right with the world. How have other paleontologists reacted to the publication of this paper? There is widespread agreement that the authors have done careful, detailed work, and that their conclusions deserve to be taken seriously. However, there are still some objections being voiced about the quality of the fossil evidence, especially as it pertains to the earliest dinosaurs, and most scientists agree that additional, confirming evidence will be needed before books on dinosaur evolution have to be rewritten. In any case, it will take years for this research to filter out to the general public, so theres no need to worry just yet about how to pronounced ornithoscelidae.