Elle Carter Neal interviewed by Angela Sedran of Heads Over Heels, talking about how business coaches, public speakers, or small business owners can learn to write and publish a book on their topics of expertise - even if they don't consider themselves "writers". Elle shares tips for pulling together content quickly and (relatively) painlessly, and discusses the three main considerations to take into account when deciding between traditional- and self-publishing. Learn more at Fully Booked Author , and subscribe to the FBA Vault for access to a new free guidebook, checklist, or video tip each week.

Illustration by R. Crap Mariner , via Flickr Did you wake up? If yes - Your life could be either. Continue the quiz.       If your answer was no, please let me know how you’re reading this. Who made your breakfast? If the someone was human: NON FICTION. If the someone was a house elf or woodland creature: FICTION.       Note: If your situation is the latter; when was the last time you gave them a pay raise? Just a soupçon of non-fiction in your fictional life. You dragged yourself to the computer and are sitting there now with a large mug of coffee/tea, reading this post because you are procrastinating: NON FICTION.  You danced to your computer and are reading this post before noon because 5,000 words have already flowed onto your keyboard and you’re taking a wee break before you spew out another 5,000 before creating a gourmet meal with organic vegetables from your garden: FICTION. Your pet sits at your feet/on your lap/on your keyboard de...

I loved reading Dani Greer’s " Word " yesterday; it spoke to me on many levels. One thing I particularly liked is that she makes us aware of non-fiction writing we might tend to overlook because it might not be seen as the "real writing." As for my "real writing," like Dani, the number of words I’ve written for any fiction project can be counted on one hand. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, however. And the writing I have been doing has helped to keep my creativity thrumming while I’m on a fiction writing hiatus ("writer’s block" just sounds so harsh). How has non-fiction writing helped my creativity? I connect with people . Last year, I joined CLMOOC , Connected Learning MOOC - a massively open online collaboration. During one of its cycles, I participated in a postcard exchange where we all sent postcards to random people who signed up for the cycle. I received postcards from the US, Canada, and overseas, and the postcard writ...

Word counts. Fiction writers worry about them, sometimes incessantly. I know I do. Last week, I obsessed over the few words I'd written since NaNoWriMo . None. Not one more word on any of my novel projects. The question is why? When I got to thinking about it, I haven't had a lot of time to write because I've been... writing. But only non-fiction, and that doesn't count. Wait. What? All our words count for something. I'll bet every one of you have written a lot more than you realize. Here's a list of writing projects I've touched in the past year, starting with the Blood-Red Pencil: Blogging Amazon reviews Facebook posts Emails Twitter tweets Book blurbs Biographies Query letters Dedications Obituaries Author notes Lesson plans Reader guides How-tos Thank you notes  Lately, that writing load has increased to include postcards like this: Letters to the editor Letters to Congress Other rants And... I haven't a...

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A few years back, I wrote books for TSTC Publishing. The first one was called TechCareers: Biomedical Equipment Technicians and the Department Chair's name is on the book. The second book was called TechCareers: Automotive Technicians . Then came TechCareers: Avionics and TechCareers: Computer Gaming . Those last three books have my name on the cover. For the Biomedical Equipment Technicians book, I interviewed five people. For the remaining books, I upped the number of interviewees to at least 13. That meant a ton of transcribing, creating questions, typing and organizing. And it doesn't include the hours of researching schools in the U.S. that teach that career and what classes are required, etc. or travel time. For each interview, I created a profile for each subject. In this case, a profile is not a life story of the person. It’s a brief bit about his or her background in the field, then some of his thoughts on an aspect of the field. To determine where in the bo...

While it may seem that the author of a book would be best at preparing the index, since he or she knows the work most intimately, too often they lack the objectivity of the reader. The role of the indexer is to match the author’s content with the reader’s specific information needs. The indexer visualizes potential readers and anticipates their needs when searching the book. An index is successful only if it is usable. Usable indexes improve the written work and builds reader confidence in the author. The purpose of the index is to save the reader time and energy in their search for relevant information. Rapid information retrieval is critical to the success of a book, manual, database or website. That is not to say the author can never be the indexer. If the author can view their book from the perspective of the reader and understands how to use cross-references to guide the reader through their work, then they may be able to index their own book. An index is not a concordance. ...