Book Publishing – Common Terms and Definitions

As I mentioned my writing resources article, there’s more to writing a book than just writing. There are two parts to getting your book idea into the hands of eager readers. First, you must create your masterful work of fiction (or whatever else) and second, you must reproduce your work and distribute it for sales.

While creating a great book is a really tough thing to do, it is just as hard to get a book published. Publishers are very picky about what they print and sell, and to make things even more difficult, the world of publishing is filled with their own set of terms and acronyms. This can be a very intimidating front to a new writer. So, I’ve assembled some of the more common terms and acronyms on this page. Let’s start first with the acronyms and work our way into the terms and definitions. Read more

Photoshop Tips – Create a Custom Halftone Design

The halftone pattern is one of those design elements that never seems to get old. You can make your designs even more timeless by getting creative with your halftone patterns. Let’s take a look at a quick and easy way to add a custom halftone effect to your images or designs.

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Learning to Write – Top Resources

Since my interest in writing began about a year ago, I’ve spent many hours searching the web for useful information on the subject. The amount of information I found was surprising. For some reason, I thought that writing as a career was unpopular. Boy, was I wrong. I discovered countless books, forums, and blogs all about writing.

It wasn’t long before I learned that writing is just half the battle. In my ignorance, I assumed that once you had written a book, fat checks were around the corner. “After all,” I told myself, “most people don’t write well or at all. Publishers are probably glad to see a book come their way.” I quickly learned that while many people don’t write well, publishers have enough books to keep them busy. Wait, let me rephrase that last part. Publishers have so many book submissions that you probably won’t see a book deal for a long, long time. That doesn’t mean that your shouldn’t try, it’s just going to be harder than you may have expected. Read more

Flash Photography Tips – Intro to Photographic Umbrellas

The photographic umbrella is one of the fundamental tools of off-camera flash photography. Because of the low cost, ease of use and effective ability to increase the size of the light source, an umbrella (or brolly) is a useful utility for new and experienced photographers alike.

An umbrella is a light modifier; it modifies the size and intensity of light emitted from your flash and gives you more control. Over the next few articles we’ll be looking at different light modifiers and the benefits of each. Let’s start now and look at the benefits that umbrellas give us.

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Beginner Blogging Tips: Sticking With It

So you’ve decided to start a blog. That’s great and all, but I have some bad news. One year from now, most of you probably won’t have looked at your blog in several months, let alone updated it. Now, I know it can be tough to dedicate some quality time to your blog, especially if you’ve got real life things to deal with. So, what’s a blogger to do? Stick with it!

I tend to do best when I set myself a good schedule. I am most productive in the mornings and the weekends. So, I try to get up an hour earlier than normal a few days out of the week to work in some blog time. My weekends are all over the place, so when I find myself planted on the couch, I’ll boot up the laptop and get to work while watching the latest home decor transformation on HGTV (Did I mention I’m married?). Take a look at your week and see what works best for you. If you can work in a post once a day, great! If you find that you can only get in three good posts per week, that’s great too. The key is to be appear to be consistent in the eyes of the search engines. If you have a light week now and then, don’t fret. Just pick up where you left off and try to get back into the groove. Read more

Why the Sound of Music Sucks Today – Part 3

In Part 2 we learned how the loss of dynamic range has helped make music today sound like a bag of butt-holes. Now we’re going to talk about the worst thing to happen to sonic quality since the cassette . . the dreaded MP3!

We all know how the MP3 has helped change the entire music industry. The file size of an MP3 at 128kBit is one/tenth the size of 44.1kHz WAV or AIFF file (CD quality audio). One minute of CD quality audio is about a 10 megabyte size file. The MP3 of the same audio takes up only 1 megabyte. By reducing the file size the MP3 made it easy to send and receive music over the internet and revolutionize the industry.

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Midweek Geek Links for 9-18-2008

It’s time for this week’s Geek Links!

• Chase Jarvis recently worked on a promo for the Kung Fu HD Network. He posted a behind-the-scenes video on his site along with some stills that he took. Incredible stuff.
• The guys over at Wired interview with Charlie Kaufman about his work on the upcoming movie, Synecdoche, New York. This guy is very interesting and the interview is pretty cool.
• Patrick Lavoie gives us an inside look at his Digital Photography Workflow for Fashion Photography.
• Here’s a mass of other tutorials recently found around the web:
  • 30+ Adobe Illustrator Tutorials
  • 50 Creative Photoshop Text Effects
  • 40 Icon Tutorials for Photoshop
  • 40 Dark and Futuristic Effects for Photoshop
  • 37 Creative Photography Portfolios

Get It Local – Pocket Wizard Sync Cables

One thing that’s kept me in a perpetual state of wonderment is how in the world Radio Shack is still in business. Seriously. I remember buying some walkie-talkies from them when I was 12 years old and they seemed to be on their last leg even then. Please don’t get me wrong; I don’t particularly have anything against Radio Shack, I just fail to see how they’ve remained in business all these years. I mean, in the present day economy we’ve got the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy and the sale of Merrill Lynch, yet we can still trust Radio Shack to ask for our phone number when we buy batteries.*

I pretty much had to eat my words this past weekend. I had a portrait session coming up and realized I was a sync cable short for connecting my Pocket Wizard to my Alien Bees AB-1600. I usually order my sync cables from FlashZebra.com, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to get it delivered. I couldn’t trust Walmart or Target to have the cable I needed. Thus, my only hopeful source: the local neighborhood Radio Shack. Read more

Viral Networks Prelaunch Contest

ViralNetworks, a new social networking site built for online businesses and marketers, is holding a pre-launch contest. All you have to do is sign up and start referring people. It’s a race to the finish, though, and the first person to reach 1000 referrals wins the top prize. All other prizes (21 of them!) will be distributed according to the remaining participants current position in the race. Read more

Make Big Money Online with Market Leverage

Back when I was writing our Money Blog series (parts one, two, and three), one of the subjects I covered was monetizing your blog. I have a bit more to say on the subject, as I’ve recently come across a really nice affiliate network: Market Leverage.
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