After writing a book, many people want to know how one goes about publishing a book. A well-known author once said recently that “it’s no great feat to get one’s book published—it’s no great mountain to climb.” He is right, but his opinion is subjective. To you, reading this blog, it is a huge mountain to climb to get your book published. There are many paths you can take up that mountain, but it is still a huge feat.
This week we are going to look at some pointers about cover design. Covers are a selling tool like no other. They are usually the first thing people see, and they are usually the thing that makes someone buy or not buy. Covers capture interest—so it’s important for you to have the right one.
The wrong cover can be devastating to your sales. A poor cover can turn off readers and can even cause your book to be returned by customers. Bad covers can also lead to poor reviews. But what do I mean by a bad cover? Let’s look at the four biggest problems we see on covers. You can see covers that have these problems all over Amazon.
• Spelling errors on the cover
• Poor punctuation
• Pixelated images
• Poor name and title placement
But these are not the only things you have to think about when putting your cover together. You also have to become an ad-man and create a cover that looks good as a thumbnail. I bet you didn’t think about that! Yes, your cover has to stand out as a thumbnail on Amazon. So keep that in mind and test your covers. Shrink your cover in size and spend some time looking at it. Can you still make out the image on the front? Does it still look as attractive? Would you buy that book?
Give it a try—and see for yourself!
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
“Do more, see more, feel more, achieve more… make Wednesday YOUR day for achievement!”
Have you ever wondered about the people who seem to zoom through their day and achieve everything they started out wanting to achieve? Have you ever wondered how they do it? I’m sure each of us knows someone who can get much more done in a day than we believe possible. The super filer, the busy typist, the amazing salesman. What gives those people such drive?
It really comes down to the need to meet goals. Some people have an inbuilt need to achieve everything straight away. But there are ways for you to also help yourself make more from your days. This week, we will be talking about increasing productivity during our days, so our evenings can be less stressful.
Make Notes
The most successful people in the world always carry a notepad in their pockets to make notes. Many of us use our computers or phones and make notes on the diaries we have there. But this doesn’t seem to cut it for many people—it’s better to write it down and refer to something that is real—a piece of paper.
Time Management
Those who are super achievers know that time is a finite thing. On a daily basis, we only have so much time to do things. That’s why it’s important for us to make the most from our time. Try timing your activities, multi-tasking or combining tasks. This will help you cut down on the time you are spending on an activity and will cut the number of things you have to do.
Relax…
Even during the most stressful day, successful people find the time to wind down. Even in the office, you can spare a few moments every day to take your mind off work, meditate for a few minutes or read the news. Relaxation is part of what makes us successful. We have to know when to turn on the standby button.
Colleagues Can Be Fun
Try to be as social as possible. The more social you are at work, the more you feel like part of the team. Try interacting with as many people as you possibly can—and make friends. Working with friends is much better than working with people you hardly know.
Wake Up, Gotta Get Out of Bed
What can really set back our days is being late for work. Once you are late for work, you can expect your day to become sluggish. Try heading to bed earlier, waking up earlier, watching the news, having a relaxing breakfast and then heading to work. There’s no reason to rush anything in your life—take it at its own pace!
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. They suffer from terrible fears when they try to better their lives. Inner fears like frustration, failure and lack of confidence allow some to be talked out of success by their own demons. These fears control the lives of many people but can be conquered.
This new series of blog articles is all about fears that will hold you back—and how to conquer them. This week we are going to take a look at sociophobia, a crippling fear that can stop you reaching your full potential, and can even stop you from living a normal, everyday life.
Sociophobia is the fear of society or people. People with this phobia find it hard to even have or maintain friendships.
The origin of the word socio is Latin (meaning interpersonal relationships) and phobia is Greek (meaning fear). Sociophobia is considered to be a social phobia, which is discussed on the home page. Sociophobia is also known as anthropophobia and related to phobanthropy, which is a morbid dread of being around other people and of human society in general.
Recognizing Your Phobia
The symptoms of sociophobia can vary greatly by person depending on their level of fear. The symptoms typically include extreme anxiety, dread and anything associated with panic such as shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, nausea, inability to articulate words or sentences, dry mouth and shaking. If you are finding you’re sweating with an increased heartbeat when in the presence of people, you may well be suffering from sociophobia.
Overcoming Your Phobia
Recognizing Negative Thoughts
The first step is to identify the automatic negative thoughts that underlie your fear of social situations. For example, if you’re worried about an upcoming work presentation, the underlying negative thought might be: “I’m going to blow it. Everyone will think I’m completely incompetent.”
Challenge Everything!
It helps to ask yourself questions about the negative thoughts: “Do I know for sure that I’m going to blow the presentation?” or “Even if I’m nervous, will people necessarily think I’m incompetent?” Through this logical evaluation of your negative thoughts, you can gradually replace them with more realistic and positive ways of looking at social situations that trigger your anxiety.
Feel No Fear
It can be incredibly frightening to think about why you feel and think the way you do about social situations, but understanding the reasons for your anxieties will help lessen their negative impact on your life.
Look Around You!
In order to reduce self-focus, pay attention to what is happening around you, rather than monitoring yourself or focusing on symptoms of anxiety in your body. Try looking at those around you, the sky, trees, plants or anything else that is going on in your vicinity. Focus on the world at large.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
After writing a book, many people want to know how one goes about publishing a book. A well-known author once said recently that “it’s no great feat to get one’s book published—it’s no great mountain to climb.” He is right, but his opinion is subjective. To you, reading this blog, it is a huge mountain to climb to get your book published. There are many paths you can take up that mountain, but it is still a huge feat.
One of the basic things you can do to raise awareness of your book on Amazon is to set up a free giveaway through the KDP system. This is an opt-in system that you can choose to join. KDP allows you five days per enrolment period. You can use those five days together or separately; and during each day of free giveaway, your book will be available for people to download for free from Amazon. It’s pretty simple, eh? Well not entirely. There are still problems, the chief one being that you still need to drive traffic to the Amazon page and encourage people to download the book.
The upside to this is that if the promotion is done properly, you will get a huge dose of publicity and a run of strong paid sales. These paid sales will drive your rankings and will turn into more sales. It takes some time to set up a successful giveaway—but it can pay off in a big way.
Free Doesn’t Mean Desirable
There are thousands of books available for free download every single month. Just because you have your book available for free, it doesn’t mean that thousands of people will automatically download it. You have to ask yourself a few questions. The first is: Does my book have an audience? The second is: Where are the people who like my book spending their time online? The third is: How am I going to reach that audience? Don’t just rely on a book being free to drive interest—try to actually seek out your audience and present them with the opportunity to download your book.
Using Freebooksy and Other Free Book Mailing Lists
There are a lot of aids to help you drive your book to a bigger audience. One of the biggest is a mailing list called Freebooksy. This is a large mailing list that goes out to readers via email. You can get your book placed on the list, if you meet their criteria, and you will find that their subscribers will start downloading your book. There are other services like this—Bookbub, etc. that perform the same job.
Rankings
Being the number one free downloaded book doesn’t mean you will necessarily become the number one paid book. It’s easier to gain a number one when the book is free, but you may find it more of a struggle to reach the paid number one position. Don’t be concerned when your free giveaway ends and you go back into the paid rankings—you may be ranked far lower—but the chances are that your ranking will climb due to the publicity you’ve received from the free giveaway.
Banners
Some authors like to add a banner to the front of their book cover. The banner can draw attention to the fact the book is free, or will be free, and people who see the book on Amazon will see the banner. Little techniques like this can really help boost your free giveaway and draw attention to your book.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
“Knowing that you are thriving, achieving, loving and lasting is what keeps me going!
Have you ever wondered why some people prosper, and some just never seem to make their goals reality? I think everyone has, but the truth is that it really doesn’t matter. Some of us have an easy road to success—and others have to work at it. But all success should be celebrated and congratulated because the success of one human being means that our success is just as achievable.
Think for a second about the people you meet in your everyday life. Don’t you sometimes meet negative folk who just seem to tear others down? What do you think makes them so unhappy? Is their own lack of self-achievement really that painful? Then sometimes you meet people who are vibrant, happy, optimistic and open to achievement. How different can two groups of people be? Very different. But the question is: Who are you?
Are you the negative hater of achievement, or are you the happy-go-lucky, lover of life? One of these paths will lead you to your goals. The other will destroy your dreams and make you a slave to misery. Maybe today is the day to choose which way you are going to go.
Love…
A super-successful person loves people. He/she can spend hours around people and can overlook the problems that people put in their way. Love is such a jaded word today—but a truly successful person loves everyone.
Desire
What do you truly want from life? That’s the biggest question you can ask yourself. What do you desire? How can you make that desire a reality? How can the way you treat others better your life? How can helping others reach their desired goal in life help yourself? These are questions to ponder on your way through life. Will helping others help you? A large percentage of successful people would say that it will.
Forget Everything You Know
Sometimes the pre-programming we all have makes us angry, disappointed, jaded. Sometimes we just need to forget all that we know and relearn how to live, love and work. Sometimes all it takes is a casual reminder to yourself to forget the old ways—learn the new ways. Embrace positivity.
Life Is Always Fun
Every single day, we all go through changes, problems and journeys that change the way we look at the world around us. Sometimes all we need to realize is that the world we live in is controlled by us. We control and experience every single kind of situation. Have you ever considered trying to just spend your day marvelling at the things that go on around you? Try it—you will be amazed.
Forget Worry
Worry is the root of all evil. Worrying about losing your job, losing your house, losing your wife, losing your husband. Worry is all the things that hold us back. Try to forget all of the things that make you upset, tired or that drain your energy. Try to focus on all of the good that happens every single day. Because every single day something good DOES happen to you! You can bet your life on it.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. They suffer from terrible fears when they try to better their lives. Inner fears like frustration, failure and lack of confidence allow some to be talked out of success by their own demons. These fears control the lives of many people but can be conquered. This new series of blog articles is all about fears that will hold you back—and how to conquer them. This week we are going to look at a fairly common fear that stops people from reaching their full potential—a fear called Acrophobia, which is a fear of heights that can stop many people from actually taking the first step toward their dreams.
Acrophobia may manifest itself in many ways, but is the extreme or irrational fear of heights. It’s not the same as vertigo, which is an inner ear problem that makes you think that you’re moving even when you’re not.
Recognizing Your Phobia
If you’re in a high place, do you feel like you will fall or jump off the edge? Do you suffer from panic attacks, dizzy spells and feeling faint? This condition can be triggered by a variety of every day activities such as travelling on a lift or escalator, parking in a multi-story car park or climbing a ladder. The thoughts and physical sensations are harmless but can be so distressing that it seriously limits the sufferer’s enjoyment of life, and can stop you from fulfilling your potential. Imagine if you had to make a business deal in a skyscraper—but couldn’t face going to the fifth floor? How about needing to meet that all important person for lunch—but not being able to reach the top of the building, where the restaurant is situated? If you suffer from acrophobia you may never be able to achieve the things you truly want to achieve.
Overcoming Your Phobia
Throw Yourself In
One of the most common ways of overcoming this phobia is just to “flood” it, in other words, just throw yourself right in and use your willpower to climb those stairs and stare out of the windows of a skyscraper. This could also mean skydiving, bungee jumping, or other extreme ways of getting to grips with your fear of heights. However, recent surveys have said that only a small percentage of people have overcome their phobia this way.
Small Steps
Another way to get to grips with your phobia would be to take small steps, until you feel comfortable to take some more. For example, you could try placing a ladder outside your home and climbing one step at a time. This would allow you to overcome your phobia at your own pace.
Thinking Is Doing
Sometimes the best way of combating a condition like acrophobia is just to change the way you think. Ask yourself why this condition scares you so much—what is it that bothers you so much about heights? Why are you scared to go on that elevator? Sometimes, it’s all down to defeating the demons in our minds.
Time
The most important thing is to realize that you have all the time in the world to overcome your phobia. There is no rush—take your own time and realize that only you can do it. Know that it could take a long time to get over your phobia—but it will be worth it in the end.
After writing a book, many people want to know how one goes about publishing a book. A well-known author once said recently that “it’s no great feat to get one’s book published—it’s no great mountain to climb.” He is right, but his opinion is subjective. To you, reading this blog, it is a huge mountain to climb to get your book published. There are many paths you can take up that mountain, but it is still a huge feat.
Amazon is a huge online seller, who have recently moved into brick and mortar stores. Sales take place on Amazon every single second of every single day. For an author, it’s almost essential for you to have your book placed on Amazon, and those authors who ignore Amazon are making things much harder for themselves. In this article, I’d like to go over some of the details of working with Amazon. We will begin with rankings.
Rankings
As soon as you make your first sale on Amazon, your book will gain a ranking. The ranking shows how well your book is selling. The slower your sales, the further your ranking will fall. There are many millions of books on Amazon, so your ranking can, quite easily, be in the millions. As you sell more books, your ranking will climb. Several sales an hour will see your book inch slowly up the bestseller charts. When your book reaches a high enough position with its ranking, it will start to figure in the category’s top 100s. These are the 100 bestselling books in your chosen categories. Featuring in those top 100s will give you more exposure and more sales.
Searching for Books
The keywords you choose when you upload your book to Amazon will feature heavily when it comes to having your book found by readers. So think carefully about the way people search for books in your genre. Do they search for “action-thrillers,” or do they search for “books like Ben Hur?” How do people find the books? Get out your pen and paper and list how you personally find the books you read, but be aware you can’t use the names of famous people in your keywords—so don’t get caught with “books with John Wayne” as you are highly likely to get a warning from Amazon about using such terms.
Pricing
Pricing is key to selling books. Look at the other books in your genre and see how they are priced. Also make sure to note the length of your book. If you have a short, 30-page book, it may be best to price it at 99 cents. If your book is a huge bonanza—try $3.99, and don’t be afraid to try price promotions, either.
Cover
Be sure to look at the cover you’ve put together for your book, and remember that people will only see it as a little thumbnail. Does your cover stand out when it’s a third of its size as a thumbnail? Some authors put together exceptional covers without ever realizing that browsing readers will only ever see a small image of their cover. If it doesn’t stand out, people aren’t going to buy the book.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
“The rhythm of life beats every single day… can’t you just feel it?”
Have you ever had a day where things just seem to work so well you can’t believe your luck? That’s the rhythm of life, and that rhythm is beating every single day—it’s just that on certain days it beats louder—and clearer—than on others. When it’s at its loudest, it will propel you through your day and allow you to meet objectives with ease.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could feed off the rhythm of life every single day? Can you imagine how unstoppable you would be? You would be like a human cannonball shooting through your days, making achievement after achievement count, and having the world hanging from your every word. The way many people tap into this rhythm is through meditation. So this week, I am going to share a meditation with you that may very well help you tap into that magic rhythm.
Choose your mantra
A mantra is a word or phrase that you silently repeat to yourself during meditation. The purpose of the mantra is to give you something to put your attention on other than your thoughts. You may use any phrase you like.
Find a comfortable place to sit
It’s best to find a quiet location where you won’t be disturbed. There is no need to sit cross-legged on the floor unless that is comfortable for you. You can sit on a chair or sofa or on the floor with your back against a wall. You may support yourself with cushions, pillows or blankets. The goal is to sit as upright as possible while still remaining comfortable.
Close your eyes
Once your eyes are closed, you can begin your meditation. Simply start by taking some deep breaths. Try taking a few “cleansing breaths” by inhaling slowly through your nose and then exhaling out your mouth. After a few cleansing breaths, continue to breathe at a normal, relaxed pace through your nose with your lips closed.
Slipping into your meditation
Allow yourself to slip into your meditation by repeating your mantra silently to yourself without moving your tongue or lips. The repetition of your mantra is always relaxed. The mantra does not need to correlate with the breath, though some people prefer to do so. As your meditation continues, allow the breath to fall away into its own rhythm. The repetition of your mantra should be next to effortless. Sometimes it is helpful to imagine that rather than repeating the mantra to yourself, you are actually listening to it being whispered in your ear.
No need to clear your mind
You will inevitably find that you drift away from the mantra. It is human nature for the mind to wander. Just allow your mind to go wherever it wishes, and find the rhythm of life. The further you get into your meditation, the more ideas will spring out at you; and as the ideas flow, you will hopefully start to feel rejuvenated and excited about the future.
What have you done today? That’s a question many of us are asked on a daily basis. What did you do today? How did your day go? I’m asking you that right now. What did you do today? The answer may be that you did absolutely nothing, or perhaps you helped the homeless. Perhaps you just went to work and caught some dinner with your workmates. My next question, however, is… How did your life change today?
Now that sounds like a major deal—and it is—but not as major as you may think. It’s actually a case of looking at your day and seeing where you made a difference. Did you make a new friend? Did you help out a colleague? Did you achieve something that makes you proud? Did something happen that made you smile? Changing your life is a major thing, but if you look at the daily achievements, you will find that your life is changing all the time. Today is the day to make the most of your life—so is tomorrow, and so was yesterday. Every time you go to bed, ask yourself: “What made today my day?” Let’s look at a few steps that will help you find the life changing moments that happen to us, sometimes without us ever knowing, every single day.
Little by Little
So, today was a major disaster. You upset your boss, dropped coffee on your desk and had an awful dinner with a client. There was nothing to redeem your day at all, or was there? How about that lady who smiled at you in the cafe? How about the guy who said ‘hi’ in the grocery store? These are the highlights of your day—and the life changing moments you can look back on.
Love Is All You Need
In every single life, there has to be a certain amount of love. Sometimes it’s a neighbor mowing our lawn, a husband giving us moral support, a wife giving us a hug. Even during our worst moments, a human life is filled with love. Love is also a life changing event. Every single time love is shown to a human, we know that we have achieved the best feeling a human can achieve.
Negativity Sucks
You can’t find anything good about your day? You’re not looking deep enough. Surely, there was something that happened. Look back over your day, retrace your steps and find the life changing moments. I can assure that you that every single day, something good happened to you—you just need to search for it.
The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. They suffer from terrible fears when they try to better their lives. Inner fears like frustration, failure and lack of confidence allow some to be talked out of success by their own demons. These fears control the lives of many people but can be conquered.
This new series of blog articles is all about fears that will hold you back—and how to conquer them. This week we are going to look at a fairly common fear that stops people from reaching their full potential—a fear called Megalophobia by experts, but known as a fear of large objects.
Trauma, most often occurring during childhood, is usually the root of any phobia. Perhaps the person with megalophobia got lost in a large city as a child. Or maybe they were attacked by a large animal, or what would appear to them to be a large animal. Whatever causes this phobia—it will stop you from performing your best on a day-to-day basis.
Recognizing Your Phobia
Symptoms of megalophobia will vary from person to person depending on a variety of factors but especially their level of fear towards large objects. General symptoms, however, typically include anxiety or feeling uncomfortable, especially around large objects or city environments, avoidance of areas which have large objects, feeling small, feeling out of control, delusions, hallucinations, and more.
Furthermore, if a person with megalophobia is exposed to anything that is of a large size, they could possibly experience a panic attack. These are roughly defined as heightened states of anxiety or terror, which come along with other, personal symptoms manifested by the fear. Symptoms of a panic attack include rapid heart rate, breathing difficulties, feeling a loss of control, tingling or numbness, excessive sweating, chills, and chest pain.
Overcoming Your Phobia
Therapy
Therapy is a great place to start. Various types of therapy will work, both to treat the phobia and understand the cause of it. Although, with megalophobia, some types of therapy are more effective than others. For instance, shock or exposure therapy puts someone in an environment with large objects. This repeated exposure helps to desensitize the person and eventually gets rid of the fear of large things.
The World in Which We Live
Sometimes, it all comes down to realizing that the world we live in today is a big and, in many cases, dangerous place to live. Sometimes you just need to take a deep breath and leave your comfort zone. By making that decision, you will be taking an adventure—an adventure that could lead anywhere and to many places. Sometimes a hint of adventure is the one thing that can help you get over your phobias.
Calm
It takes a smart person to realize that all situations can be handled—but must be handled in different ways. If you are starting a new job, try taking your first few days steadily. Get to grips with the tasks at hand. It’s like dating. You take it slowly and build to a crescendo. Just take things one step at a time, and you’ll find that you will make few mistakes. Take the smallest steps to begin a big journey.
Meditation
Many people feel that it meditation helps them prepare and take on the problems they are facing. Meditation can be done on a daily basis, at any time, and can help calm your mind. Once your mind is calm, you can face any problem you have ahead with clear judgement.