They say that, in age, 60 is the new 40. But that isn’t because the world has slowed down for us. In fact, it seems to be speeding up. It used to be said that a potential customer spends 10 seconds looking at your book before deciding whether to pick it up or whether to buy it. Now, it is said that people spend more like 4 seconds before making these decisions.
Yikes!! You’ve lost 6 seconds someplace. Where are you spending it? Catching up with Friends on Facebook? Playing Farmville? Caught in gridlock? Arguing with your computer? Waiting in line?
What would you do if you could relocate those 6 lost or wasted seconds? If you could reclaim them, how would you spend them? Here are some suggestions:
• Go through the archives for this blog and study up on the topics you need most: article-writing, authorship, book proposals, book promotion and so forth.
• Sit down and actually read that book you bought months (or years) ago on how to establish your own publishing company or freelance writing business, book promotion ideas, etc.
• Order the book you’ve been putting off buying and finally organize that book proposal or start that book promotion program.
• Send a few sample chapters of your novel or nonfiction book manuscript to an editor for a free editorial evaluation. If you don’t have one in mind, consider Patricia Fry at http://www.patriciafry.com
• Review the article topics at http://www.matilijapress.com and study some of the articles. (I will have an announcement with regard to these pages at my website SOON.)
• Sign up for one of my 6 online courses. http://www.matilijapress.com/courses.htm
• Send Patricia Fry a writing or publishing question that has you stymied. PLFry620@yahoo.com.
• Study the list of resources at http://www.matilijapress.com
• Visit the SPAWN website and consider finally joining. That’s Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network. http://www.spawn.org
• If you’ve been procrastinating, sit down today and write that article, work on that book, write a marketing plan for your book or start the revision you have been putting off.
Choose one or more of these 10 activities and start taking back all of those seconds, minutes and hours you have wasted or dwindled away doing something other than what matters—what you love… And let me know how it goes.