What If . . . essential writing prompts

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if . . .

1. your partner became your life coach?

2. you were brilliant at one thing but useless at everything else?

3. your weaknesses became your strengths?

4. you had to share a bed with a stranger?

5. everyone was waiting to hear you speak?

6. people paid a fortune to hear you speak?

7. you went for an intelligence test but couldn’t find the building?

8. you were superstitious?

9. you applied to appear on a reality TV show?

10. someone you don’t like offered you a lift?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love our new book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.
Instant inspiration for your short stories, novels, characters, plots, settings and more! E-book (PDF) available now – just £7.95.
Click here for full details

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Forthcoming historic anniversaries, Dec 2009

You may wish to write about the following historical events. Dates are given 6 months in advance to allow you time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research – just in case! Please let us know of any errors you find.

A greatly expanded list of anniversaries (over 100 per month) is available in The Date-A-Base Book 2009, which covers the whole year from January to December 2009, and The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010. More details below.

200 years ago (24 Dec 1809)
Birth of Kit Carson, American frontiersman, trapper, soldier and folk hero

200 years ago (29 Dec 1809)
Birth of William Gladstone, British Prime Minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94)

150 years ago (2 Dec 1859)
Death of John Brown, American militant abolitionist leader, hanged for his raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in October 1859

150 years ago (2 Dec 1859)
Birth of Georges Seurat, French artist, founder of the French school of Neo-Impressionism (Pointillism)

150 years ago (8 Dec 1859)
Death of Thomas de Quincey, British writer, intellectual and critic (’Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’)

150 years ago (16 Dec 1859)
Death of Wilhelm Grimm, German folklorist, philologist and writer of folk songs and fairy tales with his brother Jacob (’Grimm’s Fairy Tales’)

100 years ago (9 Dec 1909)
Birth of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., American film and television actor, and WWII naval officer who was an expert in military deception. (His films include ‘Catherine the Great’, ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’, ‘Gunga Din’)

100 years ago (17 Dec 1909)
Death of King Léopold II of Belgium, succeeded by his nephew Albert I

100 years ago (22 Dec 1909)
Birth of Patricia Hayes, British actress, especially in film and television comedies, particularly noted for her role as ‘Edna, the Inebriate Woman’

100 years ago (26 Dec 1909)
Death of Frederic Remington, American artist, illustrator and sculptor, noted for his realistic scenes of life in the American West

100 years ago (31 Dec 1909)
Manhattan Bridge in New York City opened to traffic

80 years ago (11 Dec 1929)
Architects unveiled the design for the Empire State Building

75 years ago (30 Dec 1934)
Birth of Del Shannon, American rock and roll singer, songwriter & guitarist

70 years ago (13 Dec 1939)
World War II: Battle of the River Plate – a naval battle in the South Atlantic. The British defeated the Germans by using misinformation, tricking them into scuttling their battleship ‘Admiral Graf Spee’

60 years ago (8 Dec 1949)
Chinese Civil War: with the Communists now in control of China, the Chinese Nationalist government evacuated to Taipei, Taiwan

60 years ago (13 Dec 1949)
Jerusalem became the capital of Israel

60 years ago (27 Dec 1949)
Indonesia became independent from the Netherlands

50 years ago (1 Dec 1959)
12 countries, including the UK and the USA, signed the Antarctic Treaty, setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve free from military activity

50 years ago (21 Dec 1959)
Birth of Florence Griffith-Joyner (’Flo-Jo’), American sprinter who broke the world record for the 100m and 200m and won 3 Olympic gold medals

40 years ago (1 Dec 1969)
The US Government held its first draft lottery since WWII to determine the order in which men were selected for war service in Vietnam

40 years ago (18 Dec 1969)
The British Government abolished the death penalty for murder

30 years ago (11 Dec 1979)
The Zimbabwe-Rhodesian Parliament dismissed itself and handed power back to Britain until democratic elections could be held. (The country became fully independent as Zimbabwe in April 1980)

30 years ago (20 Dec 1979)
The British Government announced that council tenants would be given the right to buy their homes under a new Housing Act (effective Oct 1980)

30 years ago (24 Dec 1979)
The first European rocket ‘Ariane 1′ was successfully launched

30 years ago (25 Dec 1979)
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in a bid to halt the civil war, support the Marxist government, and protect Soviet interests

25 years ago (3 Dec 1984)
A poisonous gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed thousands of people and left 120,000 with long-term health problems

25 years ago (15 Dec 1984)
Death of Lennard Pearce, British actor (played Grandad in ‘Only Fools and Horses’)

25 years ago (19 Dec 1984)
Ted Hughes was appointed Britain’s poet laureate

25 years ago (19 Dec 1984)
Britain and China signed an accord that would return Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on 1st July 1997

25 years ago (20 Dec 1984)
The largest underground fire ever recorded occurred when a freight train carrying 1.1 million litres of petrol derailed in the Summit tunnel in the Pennines, near Todmorden, UK

25 years ago (28 Dec 1984)
Rajiv Gandhi won a massive victory in the Indian general election after being persuaded to stand for his assassinated mother’s Congress Party

25 years ago (28 Dec 1984)
Death of Sam Peckinpah, American film director and screenwriter, noted for explicit action and violence, particularly Westerns. (Films include ‘The Wild Bunch’, ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’, ‘Straw Dogs’)

25 years ago (31 Dec 1984)
The halfpenny coin was withdrawn from circulation and ceased to be legal tender in Britain

20 years ago (1 Dec 1989)
Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit the Vatican and meet the Pope

20 years ago (3 Dec 1989)
US President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced the end of the Cold War at a meeting in Malta

20 years ago (17 Dec 1989)
‘The Simpsons’ premiered on the Fox network in the USA

20 years ago (22 Dec 1989)
The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was reopened, effectively reuniting East and West Germany

20 years ago (22 Dec 1989)
Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausçescu was overthrown in a revolutionary coup and executed (on 25th December) for crimes against the state

15 years ago (2 Dec 1994)
The Australian Government agreed to pay A$13,500,000 in reparations to Aborigines who were displaced by nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s

15 years ago (11 Dec 1994)
Russian troops invaded Chechnya

10 years ago (1 Dec 1999)
An international team of scientists announced that they had mapped an entire human chromosome. (All chromosomes were mapped by April 2003)

10 years ago (2 Dec 1999)
The UK devolved political power in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive Committee

10 years ago (3 Dec 1999)
Death of Madeline Kahn, award-winning American stage and film actress (’Blazing saddles’, ‘Paper Moon’, and other roles)

10 years ago (12 Dec 1999)
Death of Joseph Heller, American novelist and playwright (’Catch-22′)

10 years ago (17 Dec 1999)
Death of Grover Washington, Jr., American jazz-funk saxophonist

10 years ago (19 Dec 1999)
Death of Desmond Llewelyn, British actor (played Q in James Bond films)

10 years ago (26 Dec 1999)
Death of Curtis Mayfield, American soul, funk and R&B singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

10 years ago (28 Dec 1999)
Death of Clayton Moore, American TV actor (’The Lone Ranger’)

10 years ago (31 Dec 1999)
Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation as Russian President, and said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would take over with immediate effect

For more historic anniversaries see The Date-A-Base Book 2009, which covers the whole of 2009 and contains over 1,200 forthcoming anniversaries – twice as many entries per month than our standard lists featured above. For example, there are 49 anniversaries listed above for December 2009, but 100 anniversaries for the same month in the Date-A-Base Book 2009. Over the course of the year you’ll get to hear about hundreds of significant forthcoming anniversaries that other writers just won’t know about – giving you a huge advantage!

The Date-A-Base Book 2009 is an excellent source of ideas for all writers, journalists, film-makers, editors, researchers, producers, teachers, students, speakers and event planners. Just one article sale will pay for your copy many (many!) times over.

And the 2010 edition is now available too. The 2010 edition covers whole of 2010 and is 30% bigger, featuring more than 1,600 anniversaries!

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

What If . . . essential writing prompts

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if . . .

1. someone got in the way?

2. there was proof of intelligent life on other planets?

3. Guy Fawkes had succeeded?

4. Adolf Hitler had been British or American?

5. time travellers came from the future to meet you because you were famous in their time?

6. you could buy and sell time?

7. you could borrow time?

8. you had too much self-control?

9. you always said no?

10. you always knew exactly when to stop?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love our new book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.
Instant inspiration for your short stories, novels, characters, plots, settings and more! E-book (PDF) available now – just £7.95.
Click here for full details

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Promoting your book online – the easy way

If you’ve done the book launch, press releases, newspaper interviews, library talks, book signings, school visits, etc, and you’re wondering what to do next, how about promoting your book online?

There will be hundreds (perhaps thousands) of websites and blogs that cater for each of the subjects and issues covered in your book. And there are thousands more that are aimed at book readers, writers, teachers, children, teenagers, and so on.

You can think of each of these websites and blogs as a “virtual venue” where you can promote your book.

There are two main ways of doing this:

1. Interview: the owner of the website or blog (or one of their staff) emails you a set of questions and you send back your responses. Their questions and your answers are then posted on their website in the form of an interview. They might also include it, or promote it, in their ezine or newsletter if they have one, or invite people to submit questions for you.

2. Articles: you arrange to write one or more short articles about your subject, or about writing and publishing your book. These are then published on their website, or in their newsletter or ezine.

You shouldn’t expect any payment for the interview or article – you’re doing it for the publicity not the money. But you can mention your book (and where to buy it) at the end. That’s your payback.

Start by making a list of all the things your book covers – the main subject, sub-topics, locations, issues, angles, and so on. Also list the things you researched while writing it, even if they didn’t make it into book. And there will be several other topics that you now have some inside knowledge of – writing books, finding an agent or publisher, perhaps self-publishing, finding and working with a cover artist, giving talks, book signings, and so on. You’ll probably be surprised at just how big your final list is.

There will be a staggering number of websites and blogs that cover each of these topics. And many of them are constantly looking for new material – even if they don’t say they are. So use your favorite search engine to search for each topic on your list.

You’ll probably end up with millions of results for each topic. Look at the first page or two of results and choose a few websites that seem the most relevant. Then approach the site owners by email to see if they’d like to interview you or have you write an article for them on a topic that’s relevant to their site.

Keep a record of each site you approach and their response (if any). If some of the bigger sites don’t respond, and you’d really like to be featured on them, try again a week or two later, and maybe again a week or two after that. You might even consider contacting them by phone or post. Don’t give up until they give you a definite “Yes” or “No”, because they probably get thousands of visitors. Imagine a book signing event in the real world where thousands of people turned up! You don’t want to lose out on an opportunity like that just because the site owner was too busy to answer an email, or didn’t receive it.

There are several big advantages to promoting your book online, rather than doing it in the real world:

1. There’s no travelling – this will save you huge amounts of time and money.

2. You’ll never run out of venues – just move on to the next page of search results or try the next topic on your list.

3. You can cover multiple venues in one day.

4. You can cover a much wider area – the whole world in fact.

5. Even the smallest online venue will usually have a much larger audience than a single book signing event in the real world.

6. Your article or interview will usually remain online for years afterwards.

7. You don’t have to have a great speaking voice or be able to come up with instant responses.

Just as no two talks or interviews in the real world are ever exactly the same, you should aim to make every online event slightly different too. You can save a lot of time by recycling the same material over and over again. But try to tailor what you say to suit each site’s individual style and readership. If you aren’t sure what makes one site different from another, ask the owner. It will take a little time to do each event properly – rather than just cutting and pasting – but think about how much time you’d spend on an event in the real world – preparing for it, travelling to it, and attending it. You’ll be able to do each online event in a fraction of the time – and probably achieve much better results – without even leaving your desk.

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About the author:

Dave Haslett is the founder of ideas4writers – the ideas and inspiration website for all writers. Stop staring at a blank screen and come to www.ideas4writers.co.uk for thousands of ready-made ideas, story-generating software, friendly forums, and a whole lot more.

Dave is also the author of The Fastest Way to Write Your Book and The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, and co-author of the Date-A-Base Book series which lists hundreds of forthcoming historic anniversaries for you to write about. For further details please visit www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Forthcoming historic anniversaries, Nov 2009

You may wish to write about the following historical events. Dates are given 6 months in advance to allow you time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research – just in case! Please let us know of any errors you find.

A greatly expanded list of anniversaries (over 100 per month) is available in The Date-A-Base Book 2009, which covers the whole year from January to December 2009, and The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010. More details below.

200 years ago (27 Nov 1809)
Birth of Fanny Kemble, British actress and author

150 years ago (9 Nov 1859)
The British Army abolished flogging as a punishment

150 years ago (12 Nov 1859)
Jules Léotard, ‘the daring young man on the flying trapeze’, made his debut at the Cirque Napoléon, Paris, in the world’s first trapeze performance

150 years ago (23 Nov 1859) Or 1860?
Birth of Billy the Kid, American Wild West outlaw, also known as Henry McCarty, William Harrison Bonney and Henry Antrim

150 years ago (24 Nov 1859)
British naturalist Charles Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’, which explained his theory of evolution

150 years ago (24 Nov 1859)
Birth of Cass Gilbert, American architect who designed the Woolworth Building in New York and the US Supreme Court in Washington DC

150 years ago (28 Nov 1859)
Death of Washington Irving, American writer of ‘the first American short stories’ (’The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, ‘Rip Van Winkle’, and others)

100 years ago (2 Nov 1909)
Death of William Powell Frith, British artist, famous for his precisely rendered crowded scenes of contemporary English life

100 years ago (3 Nov 1909)
Birth of James Reston, Pulitzer Prize-winning Scottish-American journalist

100 years ago (10 Nov 1909)
Death of Renée Vivien, British-born French poet

100 years ago (18 Nov 1909)
US Marines invaded Nicaragua after President José Santos Zelaya ordered the execution of 500 conservative revolutionaries. His regime threatened to destabilise the area and limit foreign access to resources

100 years ago (18 Nov 1909)
Birth of Johnny Mercer, American singer, songwriter and composer who contributed to many Broadway musicals and Hollywood films and co-founded Capitol Records

100 years ago (19 Nov 1909)
Birth of Peter Drucker, Austrian-born American writer and management consultant whose wrote extensively on business management topics

100 years ago (22 Nov 1909)
The Wright Brothers founded the Wright Company to manufacture their aircraft commercially

100 years ago (23 Nov 1909)
Birth of Nigel Tranter, Scottish historian and writer

100 years ago (26 Nov 1909)
Birth of Eugene Ionesco, Romanian-born French author and playwright, founded the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’

100 years ago (27 Nov 1909)
Birth of James Agee, Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, poet, screenwriter (’The African Queen’), and film critic

80 years ago (7 Nov 1929)
New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened to the public

80 years ago (21 Nov 1929)
Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dali held his first solo exhibition, in Paris

75 years ago (9 Nov 1934)
Birth of Carl Sagan, American astronomer, science writer and broadcaster

75 years ago (20 Nov 1934)
Death of Willem de Sitter, Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer, developed the theory of ‘dark matter’ with Albert Einstein and created theoretical models of the universe based on Einstein’s work

75 years ago (21 Nov 1934)
American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut in an amateur talent show at the Apollo Theater, Harlem, New York, aged 17

75 years ago (21 Nov 1934)
The musical ‘Anything Goes’ by Cole Porter had its first performance, at the Alvin Theatre, Broadway, New York

75 years ago (23 Nov 1934)
Death of Giovanni Brunero, one of the greatest Italian cyclists of all time

75 years ago (23 Nov 1934)
Death of Arthur Wing Pinero, British playwright

75 years ago (27 Nov 1934)
Death of Baby Face Nelson, American bank robber, shot by FBI agents

60 years ago (26 Nov 1949)
India adopted a new constitution and became a republic within the British Commonwealth

50 years ago (1 Nov 1959)
The first stretch of the M1 motorway was opened. Britain’s first motorway service station also opened that day, at Watford Gap

50 years ago (15 Nov 1959)
Death of C.T.R. Wilson, Scottish physicist who won the Nobel Prize for developing the Wilson cloud chamber used in the study of radioactivity

50 years ago (16 Nov 1959)
The musical ‘The Sound of Music’ by Rodgers and Hammerstein opened on Broadway, New York

50 years ago (17 Nov 1959)
The De Beers diamond company in South Africa announced that they had produced the world’s first synthetic industrial diamonds

50 years ago (17 Nov 1959)
Death of Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian composer

50 years ago (21 Nov 1959)
Death of Max Baer, American heavyweight boxing champion and actor

50 years ago (25 Nov 1959)
Death of Gérard Philipe, popular French actor, star of stage and screen

40 years ago (10 Nov 1969)
The children’s TV show ‘Sesame Street’ made its debut in the USA

40 years ago (13 Nov 1969)
Irene Hanson of Essex gave birth to the first set of quintuplets in the UK who all survived, at Queen Charlotte’s maternity hospital, London

40 years ago (14 Nov 1969)
NASA launched Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the Moon

40 years ago (15 Nov 1969)
American businessman Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s fast food restaurant in Columbus, Ohio

30 years ago (4 Nov 1979)
Militant Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Teheran, taking 90 staff and US marines hostage. Their actions were condoned by Ayatollah Khomeini, who denounced the USA as ‘the great Satan’

30 years ago (15 Nov 1979)
Respected British art historian Sir Anthony Blunt, retired Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was revealed to have been a Soviet spy – the mysterious ‘fourth man’ in the Cambridge spy ring (Burgess-Philby-Maclean)

30 years ago (23 Nov 1979)
IRA member Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Earl Mountbatten of Burma in August 1979

30 years ago (28 Nov 1979)
The Mount Erebus disaster: an Air New Zealand plane crashed into Mount Erebus during a sightseeing trip, killing all 257 people on board

30 years ago (30 Nov 1979)
The album ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd was released

25 years ago (2 Nov 1984)
American murderer Velma Barfield was the first woman to be executed in the USA since 1962, and the first ever to be executed by lethal injection

25 years ago (12 Nov 1984)
The British Government announced that English pound notes would no longer be printed from the end of 1984 and would cease to be legal tender from the end of 1985. (One pound coins had been in circulation since April)

25 years ago (15 Nov 1984)
Death of ‘Baby Fae’, the American baby who received a baboon’s heart to replace her own deformed one. She died 3 weeks after the transplant

25 years ago (20 Nov 1984)
The SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute was founded in Mountain View, California

25 years ago (25 Nov 1984)
36 musicians gathered in London to record Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia

20 years ago (9 Nov 1989)
The day the Berlin Wall fell. East Germany reopened it border with West Germany, allowing its citizens to pass freely through the checkpoints

20 years ago (16 Nov 1989)
South African President F.W. de Klerk announced that the Separate Amenities Act was to be scrapped. The country’s beaches were immediately opened to all races, with other facilities to follow

20 years ago (21 Nov 1989)
The proceedings of Britain’s House of Commons were televised live for the first time

15 years ago (19 Nov 1994)
The first National Lottery draw was held in Britain

10 years ago (3 Nov 1999)
Death of Ian Bannen, Scottish stage, film and television actor (’Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, ‘Dr Finlay’, ‘Waking Ned’)

10 years ago (21 Nov 1999)
Death of Quentin Crisp, British writer, model, actor, raconteur and gay icon

10 years ago (29 Nov 1999)
The Northern Ireland Assembly elected its power-sharing executive committee

For more historic anniversaries see The Date-A-Base Book 2009, which covers the whole of 2009 and contains over 1,200 forthcoming anniversaries – twice as many entries per month than our standard lists featured above. For example, there are 56 anniversaries listed above for November 2009, but 114 anniversaries for the same month in the Date-A-Base Book 2009. Over the course of the year you’ll get to hear about hundreds of significant forthcoming anniversaries that other writers just won’t know about – giving you a huge advantage!

The Date-A-Base Book 2009 is an excellent source of ideas for all writers, journalists, film-makers, editors, researchers, producers, teachers, students, speakers and event planners. Just one article sale will pay for your copy many (many!) times over.

And the 2010 edition is now available too. The 2010 edition covers whole of 2010 and is 30% bigger, featuring more than 1,600 anniversaries!

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Members’ News – May 2009

Congratulations to the following ideas4writers members on their recent successes:

Eileen Frost has just published her second book. Called Woodsmoke, it’s a WW2 story told from the point of view of a twelve-year-old boy. After he and his sister are machine-gunned in the street, and another air raid ends with tragic results, his parents take him and his two sisters to live in the country just outside of Portsmouth, in a converted railway carriage. The story covers their adventures during the years 1943-1944 and although fiction, is based on many real events. Woodsmoke is available from Amazon or The Book Depository for £6.99.

Kaz Jordyn’s latest crime novel, A Warped Sense of Uma, was published in March as part of the YouWriteOn/ Legend Press initiative. For more details, check out her new website at www.kazjordyn.com

If you’re a member of ideas4writers and would like your news featured here, drop us a line at enquiries@ideas4writers.co.uk (Please put “Members News” in the subject line so we know it’s intended for sharing.)

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

What if . . . the ultimate story starters

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if …

1. someone gave you a love potion?

2. you forgot who you were supposed to be meeting?

3. you’d arranged to meet someone but couldn’t remember where?

4. you hadn’t seen your neighbour for months?

5. things couldn’t get any better?

6. your feeling of hope was restored?

7. you thought you had no weaknesses?

8. you met someone interesting at a party?

9. other people appreciated you much more than you appreciated them?

10. your interview in the press was dropped at the last minute because a bigger story had just come in?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love our new book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers. E-book available now. Paperback coming soon. Instant inspiration whenever you need it!

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Touchpad burn – update

About a month ago I mentioned that I’d got a sore finger from using the touchpad on my MSI Wind. And I still have. I thought it might be something electrical – it sort of feels as if my finger is being repeatedly microwaved, albeit at very low power. But over time it builds up and starts to really hurt.

I still haven’t had a chance to try touchpads on other laptops – I’ve been way too busy. But no one else has reported this kind of problem. Anyway it’s probably best if I don’t test other laptops until my finger has fully recovered.

I’ve just had a close-up look at my finger and it seems to have a sort of blister on the tip of it. Possibly from friction – i.e. overuse or pressing too hard, or possibly from a burn. Either way, I’m going to have to stop using the touchpad.

But what to use instead? A mouse is no good, because I use the MSI Wind in bed, armchairs, sofa, car, etc and there’s nowhere flat to rest the mouse. So I’ve just ordered a trackball instead – a Logitech Trackman. In case you don’t know, it’s much like a mouse except that the ball is on the top instead of the bottom. The mouse part stays still and you push the ball around with your thumb. It’s perfect for me because you can use it anywhere. And I’ve heard that once you’ve got used to using a trackball you’ll never go back to a mouse. I’ll let you know how you get on.

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

The fastest way to get ideas – more info

Some of you are asking about our latest book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

Q. Can I get the e-book version now and upgrade to the paperback version when that comes out?

A. Yes. The upgrade price is 2 pounds + postage. In the UK, postage is 1 pound so the total upgrade cost will be 3 pounds. When the paperback is ready (late May) I’ll announce it here in the blog.

Q. Are these new What Ifs or are you recycling your old ones?

A. Both. About 3,000 of the What Ifs have previously appeared (but in random order) in the members-only section of the ideas4writers website, and in our old ezine. (The ezine was discontinued in 2007 and replaced with this blog.)

Another few hundred originally appeared as bonuses in our old newsletter (also now discontinued and replaced by this blog). And, more recently, they’ve been appearing here in the blog. But, again, in random order.

The book includes all of those, plus the 480 that will appear here in the blog over the next 4 years. And then there are a few hundred more that are exclusive to the book and won’t appear anywhere else.

This is the first time that the whole collection has been brought together in one place and organised into proper categories for easy reference. (And if you get the ebook edition, they’re also fully searchable.)

What’s not included in the book: A few duplicates, and some that were quite similar to each other – which I hadn’t realised until they were sorted into categories and I could see them all clearly for the first time. I also left out the 200 that were included as bonuses in the appendix of The Fastest Way to Write Your Book.

Q. Will there be a printed version, when will it be published, and will it be available on Amazon?

A. Yes, there will be a paperback version. We don’t have a definite publication date yet, but it will be towards the end of May.

Yes, it will be available on Amazon.co.uk or by special order from any UK bookshop. However it will cost more to buy it from those places than direct from us.

The ebook edition is available right now from the ideas4writers website.

Q. You mentioned previously that you were considering using Lulu.com for the printed editon. Is that still the case?

A. No. After careful consideration we decided to use our regular printing company. Lulu’s formatting requirements were too restrictive for us – it would have meant doing the entire 256-page layout all over again and using a smaller font that we weren’t happy with. Also the amount of money we would make per book (if we sold it to you at a reasonable price) was far too low. We have to try and stay in business, after all!

Lulu is fine if you’re planning on selling a small number of books or publishing books as a hobby and don’t expect to make a living from it. But it’s not for us. If we get them printed by a litho printer in a large batch we can get them for a fraction of the cost of what Lulu charges – and we can use whatever formatting and layout we like.

The disadvantage of using our regular printing company is that we need to order a large print run to get a decent cost per book. And that in turn means finding somewhere to store them, and being (reasonably) confident that we have the marketing skills (and enough potential buyers) to sell them. That’s a bit of a gamble in the present economic climate, but we like  a challenge and the book won’t go out of date – and of course it’s a great book too!

Q. Will there be any more books in The Fastest Way series?

A. Yes. We’re currently working on The Fastest Way to Publish Your Book and The Fastest Way to Sell Your Book. Hopefully at least one of these will be published before the end of 2009. After that we might extend the series to cover other subjects – but that will probably be in 2011 or beyond, as we have some other interesting projects planned for 2010.

Those were the main questions we were asked, but if there’s anything else you’d like to ask us, we’ll be happy to answer it.

You can find out more about The Fastest Way to Get Ideas here:
http://www.ideas4writers.co.uk/books/fastest-way-to-get-ideas.php

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Forthcoming changes at ideas4writers

We will soon be making significant changes to the members’ section of the ideas4writers website which will make it much more valuable.

We will also be reintroducing the membership fee (as a one-off lifetime membership payment) and removing the free lifetime membership voucher from future reprints of The Fastest Way to Write Your Book.

Existing members are not affected – you will not have to pay anything to remain a member, but you will benefit from the changes and new content when we add it. However, as from today, existing members cannot recommend new members for free membership.

For the next few weeks, new members can join very cheaply by buying one of the remaining copies of The Fastest Way to Write Your Book – but only while the current print run lasts. When we print the next batch, the lifetime membership voucher will be removed and the only way to join ideas4writers will be by paying a lifetime membership fee of approximately £100. (The exact amount will be determined at a later date.)

The new content – as you will see shortly – will more than justify the increased cost of becoming a member.

If you aren’t a member yet but have considered joining, now would be a very good time to do so, in order to avoid the membership fee. To join, simply buy a copy of The Fastest Way to Write Your Book – either the e-book or the paperback edition – and send back the lifetime membership voucher that comes with it.

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk