Think Carefully Before You Write Your Book Blurb

A book blurb can be found in two places - on the back cover of a printed book and in the book's description on the sales page of an online bookstore.

Blurbs are written by the author and are incredibly important because what you write in your book blurb affects a customer's buying decision.

We all do it. Before we buy a book we turn it over and read the blurb on the back cover, flick through a few pages for a brief glimpse of what's inside and that's all it takes to decide whether to buy a book or not.

And it's the same with online bookstores like Amazon.

You go to the site, read the book description (the blurb), click on the "look inside" feature to read a few pages, and then decide whether to buy the book or not.

That's why book blurbs need to be thought about carefully before they're written.

First, you need to make sure it's the correct length. This means being concise, and a blurb is usually only 200 to 300 words on a back cover, more on an online description.

What you write needs to be compelling enough to make the reader buy the book.

So don't just tell them what's in the book, tell them why they should read it. Make what you write so irresistible that they feel they HAVE to buy your book to find out more.

Sometimes, if you have them, you can put customer testimonials as the blurb, especially those that talk about how the book helped them or how great it made them feel.

But whatever you write, just remember that your book blurb is just as important as any other marketing you do because it is the difference between a sale and no sale.



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Choosing Quality Over Quantity

A few weeks ago I bought a pack of 20 pencils for only $2. And because I do most of my writing by hand, and often with pencils, I thought I'd bagged myself a real bargain. Not only did I have so many pencils for not much money, but they even had erasers on the end. Woot! Woot!

But guess what?

They all broke. As soon as I tried to sharpen them, the lead broke. AND the erasers all fell off as soon as I tried to use them.

Humph!

So I went to a stationery shop and bought individual pencils that cost over a dollar each. Yeouch!

But guess what?

I'm still using them, and they don't break, and the lead lasts a long time in between sharpenings. They don't have erasers though, but it doesn't matter because the last lot were useless.

And that got me thinking about everything that I buy and that I produce.

You've probably heard it before that quality is better than quantity, meaning that it's better to have a few quality products than a lot of cheap products.

And this applies to everything - houses, clothes, jobs (better to have a high-paying career that you love rather than work for low pay), and tools of the trade (including pencils).

It all comes down to cost per use, as in it's better to have a $20 t-shirt that you can wear 50 times than a $5 t-shirt that you can only wear a few times before it goes baggy and wears out. Not only does it equate to a smaller cost-per-use, but it looks better because it doesn't deteriorate as quickly.

This is why I usually (except for the odd pencil slip up) choose quality products, and this includes ebooks and courses that I buy to help me earn more money from my writing. I always make sure that they're made by someone who knows what they're talking about (as opposed to unknown 'authors' who write about how to earn a million writing books when I can't find even one that they've written), even if it costs me more money.

I also use everything I buy over and over again because if I buy something to help me write more and earn more but I don't use it, then that is a complete waste of money. But if I use it over and over until I can easily follow what it says, and make more money as well, then it was more than worth the purchase. If I buy an ebook or a writing course, I expect it to more than pay for itself because it's an investment, not a purchase.

It's the same with books. If I buy a great book full of really good information, I'll re-read it over and over again, and even make lots of notes and try out the advice it's giving. On the other hand, I get rid of books that aren't really useful, because I'd rather own a few great books than a lot of useless books.

When it comes to making purchases, it's no good penny-pinching to buy a lot of poor quality or useless products.

It's far better IMHO to always choose to have fewer but higher quality products.

And more importantly, use them.

Don't buy what you don't need and get the most out of everything you own.


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What To Do When You Don't Feel Like Writing

Do you have days when you just don't feel like writing?

I have those days sometimes.

And do you know what I do?

I write anyway.

Writing is a daily job.

I don't always feel inspirational before I sit down to write, but once I start writing, the inspiration comes.

I think it was Stephen King who said (and I'm paraphrasing) that your muse doesn't show up for work until you do.

So when the same thing happens to you and you really, REALLY don't feel like writing, my advice is just sit down and start.

If you don't know what to do, re-read the previous day's work.

Look through your ideas book.

Copy out someone else's work that you admire.

Just start doing something. Anything. And the rest is easy.

Be professional about it. When you had a regular job and you just weren't in the mood for work, did you just simply not turn up?

Of course not. You went to work and once you got into the flow, it was easy to keep going.

And so it is with writing.

So treat it as a job, not a hobby.

And if you want to try something different, download The 10 Day Ebook course, follow the step by step instructions, and it will make it so easy to get your book written and published. And you can earn $1,000 a month from it. That's guaranteed, or you can have a full refund.

So try it.

You've got absolutely nothing to lose.

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Writers Who Don't Write?

Believe it or not, I keep discovering writers who never write.

It seems incredible to me that there are people who say they are writers and ask me about how I earn money from my writing while they don't seem to be able to earn anything at all.

And when I dig a little deeper into why they aren't making any money from their writing, it's because their writing doesn't exist.

They simply never write anything.

They think about writing every single day.

But they do nothing about it. Except, of course, read about others earning money from their writing and wondering why it never happens to them.

I think the problem often stems from silly ads that can be seen everywhere online that show someone sitting on a beach doing nothing, or they're somewhere exotic sipping a glass of wine. And the ad will be all about working from home and being your own boss or earning money as a writer.

Those stupid kinds of ads really annoy me because it makes it look as though working from home, or writing for a living, means sitting around doing nothing all day long or being on a permanent holiday.

Yet the reality is that writing is work. No unpleasant work, but still work.

That's why so many give up because they didn't understand the reality of working as a writer.

The truth is that all successful writers write.

Stephen King writes every day for 90 minutes. He even writes when he's on holiday.

Top copywriter, Eugene Schwartz, used to write 3 to 4 hours every day, and he wrote 7 days a week.

And prolific novelist, Dean Wesley Smith, writes for hours every night from around 10pm or midnight and he writes until dawn (and then sleeps until lunchtime, but these hours suit him).

All writers work differently and at different hours of the day.

And all prolific writers are successful one way or the other.

But they all write.

They write every day.

And they all realised long ago that writing is a job, not a hobby.

So what are you going to do for the next 10 days?

How about writing and publishing an ebook?


http://ruthiswriting.com/links/10dayebook.html

A Full-Time Income Writing Short Articles

I was reading recently about a writer who earns $175/day writing blog posts.

She charges $35 per post of around 400 to 500 words. Her client pays for 5 daily posts (M-F) a week.

So she writes them in one day and submits them weekly.

On the other 4 working days of the week, she writes short articles for other clients.

With this regular work, she's earning a full-time income.

Not bad for writing a few short articles and blog posts every week.

But she couldn't do it if she didn't have a great writing system so that she can write articles quickly.

That's why I use my 15-minute article writing system that I teach in my ebook How To Write an Article in 15 Minutes or Less.

It also comes with two bonuses:
How to Write 1 Article in 7 Different Ways
and
10 Ways to Make Money Writing Articles.

It's for anyone who wants to earn money from writing articles either for paying clients or their own website or blog or for writing marketing articles.

And being able to write 1 article in 7 different ways gives you a week's worth of daily articles from just one idea.

And 10 different ways to earn money from them.

Not bad for 15 minute's work. :)


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We All Understand Things In Different Ways

One morning recently, a young girl of about 9 or 10 years old, wearing a school uniform, stopped me in the street and anxiously asked me what time it was.

There was an even younger boy with her who kept repeating, "We've missed the bus! We've missed the bus!"

I looked at my watch and said, "It's ten to eight."

She looked confused and asked, "What time is that?"

I said, "It's ten minutes to 8 o'clock."

She then looked even more confused. "I don't understand what you mean."

"It's ten to eight."

She thought about it for a few seconds and then asked, "Is that like 7 something?"

I said, "Yes, it's 7.50."

She suddenly looked relieved and said to the young boy, "Come on. We haven't missed it yet," and off they both ran.

I was quite amused by it. She didn't know what 10 to 8 meant, but she did understand 7.50.

How were they teaching kids in school these days? Not very well if kids don't know what 10 minutes to 8 o'clock means.

But then I figured that we all simply understand things differently.

Sometimes just reading something that's written a different way can give you a completely new understanding of it.

And that's helpful when it comes to writing articles too because you can take just one article idea and write it several different ways. That makes it fast to write and saves a lot of time.

Not only that, but it helps people to really understand what you're trying to tell them.

So when you have an idea for an article, see how many different ways you can approach writing it.

For example, you can write it as a list article, a story or write about mistakes, such as, "The Biggest Fatal Mistakes That..." And all three articles are explaining the same thing, but simply in different ways.

This not only saves time coming up with ideas, but it can also improve your search engine rankings because when people search for information in different ways, one of your articles will keep showing up.

So when you're writing an article, think of different ways you can say the same thing.

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How to Write An Article in 15 Minutes
Comes with 2 bonuses:
How to Write 1 Article in 7 Different Ways
And
10 Ways to Make Money Writing Articles
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