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John Lemke

How I Make a Living as a Writer (and You Can, Too) - 0 views

lifehacker.com/ter-and-you-can-too-1525380428

2014 writing WriteLink copywriting freelance tips writer author Altucher advice living guide

shared by John Lemke on 19 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • If you sit down at a blank screen every day and simply do nothing then you are a writer. If you write one word, even better. Some people will disagree. Maybe you will disagree. That's fine. We also can all disagree. Meanwhile, our DNA is telling us we are pretty much exactly the same.
  • I try to read pieces or chapters in 3-4 books a day or more. I read at least from one non-fiction, one or two quality fiction, and one inspirational. I try to read at the level I want to write. I do this in the morning before I start writing.
  • Destroy every gatekeeper.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Do what you want. Self-publishing simply means you write a book and you figure out how to get it into the hands of other people. It might just be you sell it on your email list. Congrats! You're then a published author. In my post "How to Self Publish a Bestseller" I write about the details and the numbers.
  • This seems opposite of what I said above. But blogging is not such a bad idea. How come? Because it makes you write every day. And it also is fun to build friends and community around your blog. But if you want to blog, don't just register a domain name and start blogging. You won't get any traffic.
  • There's a thousand ways to build community and practice writing on the Internet. Blog is one of them but there are many others. My #1 suggestion: first practice on Quora (cc Marc Bodnick) If you go there, follow me and say "Hi!".
  • If you don't write every day, you won't know what your potential skill level is. You will be producing sub-par work. And in a world where 15 million books will be published this year, your book will have little chance to shine.
  • Do the math: if you just write 1,000 words a day that are publishable then you have a book every two months. 1,000 words a day is not easy. But it's not hard either.
  • No. You used to be able to make a living writing articles. Just a few years ago. In 2005 I made a good living writing about 3-4 articles a day for different publications while I was running my fund and before I started and sold Stockpickr. But those days are over. People just don't pay for content. And there are too many writers. It's a supply and demand thing.
  • ou have to write more than one book. And for most people, you have to write dozens of books.
  • John Lemke on 19 Feb 14
     
    A great article of advice from a published author.
John Lemke

EFF's Reading List: Books of 2013 | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 0 views

www.eff.org/...effs-reading-list-books-2013

2013 LL-Pub list books reading list eff

shared by John Lemke on 18 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 18 Dec 13
     
    Here is a list of books from the EFF. They will mostly be about what I always call the "New Media Order", online privacy and technology. Based on my experience if it is recommended by the EFF, it is going to be worth the read.
John Lemke

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/writerasimov.html - 0 views

sprott.physics.wisc.edu/...writerasimov.html

2014 WriteLink writer freelance authors tips essay advice

shared by John Lemke on 28 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 28 Jan 14
     
    If you aspire to write, you should read this essay. Asimov is one of the most prolific writers ever, read this and know that, even he, gets rejections.
John Lemke

Writer Unboxed » Imagining Beyond One's Own Experience, or What the Fiction W... - 0 views

writerunboxed.com/...ion-writer-calls-going-to-work

2014 writer experience fiction writing WriteLink freelance tips

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Imagining is the job of the fiction writer. This is what we do, every time we sit down in front of a blank page. It seems as if we’re working with no more than a keyboard or pen and paper, but that’s not true. We have at our disposal every person we’ve ever known, every experience we’ve ever had, seen, heard and felt. Our ingredients are the people who have ignored us and caused us to search our brains for reasons why, people whom we’ve admired, both intimately and from a distance, and people whom we’ve tried to emulate. People who love us despite our faults; people we can’t stand despite our efforts to be better people ourselves.
  • John Lemke on 27 Jul 14
     
    A great read on putting the writer in another's shoes. If you desire to do fiction, it is certainly worth the time to read.
John Lemke

Attention: You're Now a Storyteller - Get Used to It » SEO Copywriting - 0 views

www.seocopywriting.com/...youre-now-storyteller-get-used

2014 seo copywriting attention tips tricks howto writing content freelance

shared by John Lemke on 28 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • You have to go above and beyond your keyword list to get a reaction. There has to be a general theme – or story – that runs through the entirety of your marketing. People are getting the story in pieces from different platforms so it has to be consistent.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 28 Jan 14
       
      Have things changed?  What happened to the not-so-old-but-old-as-the-Internet saying "Content is King"?  All Google did was bring it back to what great authors have been saying since the beginning of stories.
  • You’re a storyteller now – whether you like it or not.
  • The “just the facts” approach to your website may cover all of the bullet points you need covered, but it’s not engaging enough to keep people around.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 28 Jan 14
       
      This means finding your voice.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Your role is to sell your products or services – but in order to do that you have to engage and encourage your audience. Your content can’t read like you’re in it for the sale. Your job is to be an advocate for your audience. You’re there to help. Learn how to engage on each platform you’re using for marketing, and then be present as a helpful, encouraging voice to guide your audience to the right decision.
  • Unlike the early days of SEO copywriting, you can’t keyword stuff and get great results. You can’t even rely on customers to visit your website before they make a decision about company.  They are connecting with you on Facebook, following you on Twitter or reading a landing page.
John Lemke

Writer Unboxed » The Lessons I Should Have Learned from Stephen King's On Wri... - 0 views

writerunboxed.com/...-from-stephen-kings-on-writing

WriteLink writing freelance writer 2014 copywriting stephen king

shared by John Lemke on 26 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • It’s easy to get caught up in the fact that we want others to love what we write. We make one tiny, harmless alteration after another, and eventually our work becomes something else entirely.
  • John Lemke on 26 Jan 14
     
    I too love this book.  If you struggle with the rewrite, read this post and then get King's book.
John Lemke

Why You Should Care About Google+, SEO and Semantic Search - 0 views

www.steamfeed.com/are-google-seo-semantic-search

2014 google seo semantic search Google+ writing copywriting WriteLink tips

shared by John Lemke on 03 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Everything Google is doing, from Google+ to semantic search serves its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
  • In order for Google to provide the most relevant search results, it looks beyond the keywords to find context of your query based on your connections and social signals, +1’s, shares, likes etc..
  • Google Authorship ties you to your content no matter where you publish on the web where “rel=authorship” is installed.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Links send signals to Google that people like and trust your content.
  • John Lemke on 03 Feb 14
     
    A brief explanation of how Google+ factors into search in this day and age. Not only worth the read but the sources it cites are as well.
John Lemke

What happens with digital rights management in the real world? | Technology | theguardi... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...digital-rights-management

rights 2014 DRM yourrights copyright DMCA copywrong security law legal litigation

shared by John Lemke on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In 1997's Bernstein v United States, another US appeals court found that code was protected expression. Bernstein was a turning point in the history of computers and the law: it concerned itself with a UC Berkeley mathematician named Daniel Bernstein who challenged the American prohibition on producing cryptographic tools that could scramble messages with such efficiency that the police could not unscramble them. The US National Security Agency (NSA) called such programs "munitions" and severely restricted their use and publication. Bernstein published his encryption programs on the internet, and successfully defended his right to do so by citing the First Amendment. When the appellate court agreed, the NSA's ability to control civilian use of strong cryptography was destroyed. Ever since, our computers have had the power to keep secrets that none may extract except with our permission – that's why the NSA and GCHQ's secret anti-security initiatives, Bullrun and Edgehill, targetted vulnerabilities in operating systems, programs, and hardware. They couldn't defeat the maths (they also tried to subvert the maths, getting the US National Institute for Standards in Technology to adopt a weak algorithm for producing random numbers).
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 10 Feb 14
       
      This is also why they have a hard on for developing a quantum computer.
  • An increase in the security of the companies you buy your media from means a decrease in your own security. When your computer is designed to treat you as an untrusted party, you are at serious risk: anyone who can put malicious software on your computer has only to take advantage of your computer's intentional capacity to disguise its operation from you in order to make it much harder for you to know when and how you've been compromised.
  • The DMCA's injunction against publishing weaknesses in DRM means that its vulnerabilities remain unpatched for longer than in comparable systems that are not covered by the DMCA. That means that any system with DRM will on average be more dangerous for its users than one without DRM.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For example, in 2005, Sony-BMG music shipped a DRM called the "Sony Rootkit" on 51m audio CDs. When one of these CDs was inserted into a PC, it automatically and undetectably changed the operating system so that it could no longer see files or programs that started with "$SYS$." The rootkit infected millions of computers, including over 200,000 US military and government networks, before its existence became public. However, various large and respected security organisations say they knew about the Sony Rootkit months before the disclosure, but did not publish because they feared punishment under the DMCA. Meanwhile, virus-writers immediately began renaming their programs to begin with $SYS$, because these files would be invisible to virus-checkers if they landed on a computer that had been compromised by Sony.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 10 Feb 14
       
      How the Sony DRM created serious security issues.  It should also be considered a violation of our civil rights.  Who the hell gave Sony permission to modify my OS!  Furthermore why didn't the OS companies sue Sony?  Likely because they are in bed together.
  • If I was a canny entrepreneur with a high appetite for risk -- and a reasonable war-chest for litigation – I would be thinking very seriously about how to build a technology that adds legal features to a DRM-enfeebled system (say, Itunes/Netflix/Amazon video), features that all my competitors are too cowardly to contemplate. The potential market for devices that do legal things that people want to do is titanic, and a judgment that went the right way on this would eliminate a serious existential threat to computer security, which, these days, is a synonym for security itself.And once anti-circumvention is a dead letter in America, it can't survive long in the rest of the world. For one thing, a product like a notional Itunes/Amazon/Netflix video unlocker would leak across national borders very easily, making non-US bans demonstrably pointless. For another, most countries that have anti-circumvention on the books got there due to pressure from the US Trade Representative; if the US drops anti-circumvention, the trading partners it armed-twisted into the same position won't be far behind.I've talked to some lawyers who are intimate with all the relevant cases and none of them told me it was a lost cause (on the other hand, none of them said it was a sure thing, either). It's a risky proposition, but something must be done. You see, contrary to what the judge in Reimerdes said in 2000, this has nothing to do with whether information is free or not – it's all about whether people are free.
  • The DMCA is a long and complex instrument, but what I'm talking about here is section 1201: the notorious "anti-circumvention" provisions. They make it illegal to circumvent an "effective means of access control" that restricts a copyrighted work. The companies that make DRM and the courts have interpreted this very broadly, enjoining people from publishing information about vulnerabilities in DRM, from publishing the secret keys hidden in the DRM, from publishing instructions for getting around the DRM – basically, anything that could conceivably give aid and comfort to someone who wanted to do something that the manufacturer or the copyright holder forbade.
  • Significantly, in 2000, a US appeals court found (in Universal City Studios, Inc v Reimerdes) that breaking DRM was illegal, even if you were trying to do something that would otherwise be legal. In other words, if your ebook has a restriction that stops you reading it on Wednesdays, you can't break that restriction, even if it would be otherwise legal to read the book on Wednesdays.
John Lemke

7 Stellar Examples of Convincing Copywriting - 0 views

community.copypress.com/online-copy-examples

examples copywriting 2014 WriteLink writing list tips

shared by John Lemke on 11 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 11 Feb 14
     
    One of the reasons writers must read is to learn from example. The same applies to the specialty of copywriting. This post list seven great examples.
John Lemke

Self-Publishing Truism Bingo « terribleminds: chuck wendig - 0 views

terribleminds.com/...self-publishing-truism-bingo

2014 WriteLink writing freelance copywriting publishing writer

shared by John Lemke on 16 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 16 Feb 14
     
    A good read exploring the "publishing war" and self-publishing.
John Lemke

Storyville: Three Essential Books On Writing | LitReactor - 0 views

litreactor.com/...ree-essential-books-on-writing

2014 writing freelance WriteLink list tips writer books

shared by John Lemke on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 10 Feb 14
     
    The first one on the list is my number one pick. I can't wait to read the other two.
John Lemke

Is Software a Mass Noun? - 0 views

www.dailywritingtips.com/is-software-a-mass-noun

writing 2014 WriteLink grammar mass noun noun

shared by John Lemke on 05 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Abstract nouns such as courage, cowardice, intelligence, and happiness are mass nouns because they cannot be combined with an indefinite article. For example, one can’t speak of “a courage” or “a cowardice.” Mass nouns cannot be preceded by a numeral without specifying a unit of measurement: “a ton of coffee,” “a modicum of intelligence.”
  • John Lemke on 05 Mar 14
     
    A decent read on some types of nouns.
John Lemke

The New Year's Writing Resolution You Can Actually Keep - Copyblogger - 0 views

www.copyblogger.com/just-write

writing resolution 2013 freelance copywriting WriteLink

shared by John Lemke on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Every day in January, write for 20 minutes. By every day, I mean every day. Including weekends. Including the Martin Luther King holiday. Including the days that get crazy.
  • To become a better writer (whether it’s for text, podcast scripts, video scripts, or anything else that needs words to be strung together effectively), you need to write. And the best way to write more is to build the habit of writing every day. Give it a try for 31 days, and let us know how it’s going! And if you’ve ever tried a daily writing practice, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.
  • John Lemke on 30 Dec 13
     
    This is a pretty decent tip.  The reality is simple.  If you don't love to read, you have no business even considering being a writer.  Furthermore and more on the topic of the article, if you are not writing daily, you shall never be a writer.
John Lemke

The Evolution of Cyber Threat; Interview with IntelCrawler's Researchers - 0 views

thehackernews.com/...of-cyber-threat-interview.html

LL-PUB tech threat

shared by John Lemke on 16 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 16 Dec 13
     
    This interview on cyber-security is worth the few minutes it will take to read.
John Lemke

Most Popular Clever Uses and MacGyver Tips of 2013 - 0 views

lifehacker.com/cgyver-tips-of-2013-1484868813

2013 LL-Pub tips list lifehacks useful GTD

shared by John Lemke on 18 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 18 Dec 13
     
    It is time for all of those end of year lists. I did not get to check all of these out but lifehacker.com is a daily read for me in my feeder. Feel free to share your thoughts and tips in the comments here.
John Lemke

Present Participle as Adjective - 0 views

www.dailywritingtips.com/resent-participle-as-adjective

2014 writing WriteLink

shared by John Lemke on 19 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • the present participle always ends in -ing.
  • Used with helping verbs, the present participle forms the continuous tenses
  • Used without a helping verb, the present participle functions as an adjective.
  • John Lemke on 19 Jun 14
     
    Another article for Daily Writing Tips.  A great site to subscribe to and read daily if you are any type of writer.
John Lemke

3 Strategies to Stand Out From the Content Creation Crowd - 0 views

contentmarketinginstitute.com/...ut-strategies-content-creation

2014 strategies WriteLink writing freelance copywriting tips blogging content creation

shared by John Lemke on 24 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • It’s no longer enough to simply write content. Everybody’s doing that.
  • standing out from the crowd by finding a place that seems a bit less dangerous (finding your “content” niche). This would be a good call.
  • John Lemke on 24 Jun 14
     
    If you don't get at least one idea from this article, you have some type of reading disorder.
John Lemke

Theme Week: Publish Your Blog Post Without SEO, and 1000s of Visits Will Be Forever Los... - 0 views

www.problogger.net/...of-visits-will-be-forever-lost

seo blog writing WriteLink freelance copywriting tips 2014 post

shared by John Lemke on 04 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Search, and Google in particular (with 90% of worldwide share), still drive vastly greater quantities of traffic than all the social networks combined (some good research from DefineMG here). Given Google’s 3.5+ Billion searches performed each day, that shouldn’t be a surprise, but to many bloggers, thinking about search, Google, and all that “SEO stuff” has been put aside in favor of Facebook shares, likes, tweets, +1s, and the more visible feedback and applause that come from social sources.
  • Thankfully, you can resolve to make this a priority in the future. It may sound like a bad infomercial, but you can substantially upgrade your blog’s SEO potential with less than 5 minutes per post. Here’s how:
  • The other keyword research source I’d encourage you to pursue is Google’s autosuggest.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Once you’ve found a few keywords that might work, modify your blog post’s title to include it if you can.
  • John Lemke on 04 Jun 14
     
    Most people publish to be found and read.  If that is the case, how can you ignore SEO?
John Lemke

Forming Plurals with 's - 0 views

www.dailywritingtips.com/forming-plurals-with-s

WriteLink 2014 writer

shared by John Lemke on 26 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • I wish that I could state the rule that one must never ever use an apostrophe to form a plural. All I can say is that one must almost never ever do so.
  • John Lemke on 26 Jul 14
     
    I agree with the writer who requested this article.  Daily use, perhaps better stated misuse, of the apostrophe is becoming all too common.  The example of "Our kid's can read" shows that the parents can not.
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