Inventing Reality Editing Service

12 Tips for Better Presentations to Sell Books

• Boost book sales with public presentations
• Offer more than just a book reading or lecture 
• Weigh cons of a book presentation against pros  
• Steps in organizing a book presentation 
• Potential locations for book presentations 
• Promote your book at writing conferences
• How to offer workshops based on your books
• How to promote your book presentation
• Create visuals for your workshop presentation
• Setting up your book presentation  
• How to avoid stage fright when giving presentations 
• What to do after your book presentation
• BONUS: "We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle." 

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Authors can take home office deduction on taxes

The use of your home – regardless if you own or rent – usually can be deducted from your federal taxes. It is called the home office deduction.

Not all home offices qualify for the deduction, so you must be careful to ensure that you meet IRS requirements. First, the space for your home office must be regularly and exclusively used for your business. If you set your laptop on an ironing board in the laundry room, that’s not going to cut it. Secondly, the home office must be the principal place of your business. The room is where you meet clients and talk to them on the phone about projects; it is where you do the bulk of your work.

When taking the tax deduction, you have two options – the regular or the simplified method.

The regular method involves determining the actual cost of running your business out of your home and might include burglar alarms, insurance, mortgage interest, rent, repairs, utilities and depreciation (more on that later). Typically, the deduction is based on the percentage of your home devoted to business use. So if you have a 2000-square-foot house and a 200-square-foot-room in it is your office, 10 percent of your home is used for business purposes. That means 10 percent of the insurance, mortgage interest, rent, repairs and utilities may qualify for a deduction.

The simplified method is much easier to determine, reduces the amount of recordkeeping you must do, and actually may allow you to deduct more money than you could by using the regular method. All you do is multiply a prescribed rate by the allowable square footage of the office. So if the prescribed rate is $5 per square foot, and your office is 300 square feet, then you can deduct up to $1500.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Clash of the spellings: Armor vs. Armour

Knowing the difference between these two words can make you a stronger writer – at least in the grammar arena.

Armor is a protective covering worn by knights and other warriors. It also can refer to tanks in modern warfare. This is the preferred spelling in American English.

Armour means exactly the same things but is standard in British English. The split in spellings between the two sides of the Atlantic dates to the 1800s.

One easy way to remember which spelling is which is that in the United Kingdom – which begins with a U – a u appears in the word.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Every success story begins with a dream. If you dream of being a professional, published author, that success story requires believing in yourself and in knowing that your efforts will lead to triumph. Read the motivational blog entry this quotation came from by clicking on the quote card.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

7 Tips for Writing Better Dialogue

• How to pen engaging dialogue for your story
• How to make dialogue sound realistic
• Delete bookisms in your story’s dialogue
• Place dialogue attribution in right spots
• Avoid placing attribution before dialogue
• Mastering the fine art of dialogue punctuation
• Place commas inside quotation marks
• BONUS: “The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.” - Robert Frost

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

5 Great Quotations about Craft of Writing

“Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.” - Shel Silverstein

“Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.” - Lisa Cron

“The whole labor of writing is to make it look like it just came off the top of your head.” - Paddy Chayefsky

“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.” - William Howard Taft

“It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.” - Robert Southey

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Every success story begins with a dream. If you dream of being a professional, published author, that success story requires believing in yourself and in knowing that your efforts will lead to triumph. Read the motivational blog entry this quotation came from by clicking on the quote card.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

6 Tips for Authors Creating a Marketing Campaign

• Devise plan to market your self-published book 
• Think about concerns over marketing book
• Build an email list to sell your books 
• Start early on your book marketing campaign 
• Build audience for your book before its release 
• Create book sell sheet for pitching book
• BONUS: "When I want to read a novel, I write one." - Benjamin Disraeli 

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Challenges faced running a business from home

Running your business out of your home offers a number of great benefits. But there are some challenges. Before going online to order new furniture, before converting the storage room into your new work space, you should consider what some of the downsides are and if you can handle them.

What follows is a list of challenges frequently faced when running a business out of your home.

Not taken seriously
Businesses ran out of a home for some people lack the aura of a serious business, but that is easily overcome by your professional demeanor. Indeed, with most business now done online, your workplace location is increasingly unimportant for those seeking your services.

Lack of natural boundaries for family
Younger children won’t understand that you’re “working” and will make noise as well as interrupt you. You have to set up a work area away from distractions and be politely firm with those who intrude when you are working.

Personal life mixes with business life
One moment you receive a phone call from your mom, the next moment you’re working, then you’ve got to get up to move clothes from the washer to the dryer, then the next you’re working. You have to refrain from doing chores and personal business during your work hours.

Family/neighbors expect business favors
For some reason, if you work at home, family and neighbors feel that for them you’ll provide your services for free or receive a steep discount. Of course, you don’t want to alienate them, but if you give up your hours for free, you’ll soon be out of business. Simply set a policy that you don’t do work for family or neighbors.

Noisy neighbors
Never mind that your kids are noisy – what about the neighbors? If it isn’t the teen next door blaring his radio then it’s the dog across the street barking nonstop or the motorhead revving his car two driveways down. Learning how to tune out such distractions will be vital.

Temptation to take a personal day
When the weather is awesome, when you favorite band is in town for a concert, when you’re just tired of working and want to go shopping, you may be tempted to take a day off. That’s okay, even healthy – once in a while. But if you’re taking a couple of personal days a week in addition to enjoying the weekend off, you may fall behind on projects or greatly limit your income level.

Workaholicism
If you’re a workaholic, running your business out of your home can lead you to do nothing but work at the expense of your family and social life. You should set work hours for yourself, just as if you had a boss who set hours for you at a day job, and keep to them.

Isolation
When working at home, there are no talks with colleagues at the water coolers and invites to Saturday barbeques suddenly dry up. You must make a concerted effort to get out and stay active in your community. This can be done by joining and participating in professional groups, your local business community, or taking classes related to your occupation, as well as becoming active in your church or kids’ school and volunteering.

While the challenges you’ll face when working at home are plenty, they’re hardly insurmountable. Being aware of them can help you plan in advance for how you’ll cope with them, making the work from home experience all that more rewarding.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

A digital dilemma: Website vs. Web Site

Should website be one or two words and either way should it be capitalized? There’s no need to do an Internet search, as the answers follow...

A website is a location on the World Wide Web that one can access, as in Every major business today has its own website.

The term web site means exactly the same thing and is merely a variant spelling.

During the early 2000s, website as a compound/one word became the preferred spelling. Most stylebooks now recommend spelling it as a single word.

The same has occurred with capitalizing it. During the 1990s, the word generally was spelled as Web site. Just as the word has lost the space between its two syllables, so it also has dropped the capital letter. The AP Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, Garner’s Modern English Usage, and several dictionaries all go with website.

I advise sticking with that trend. About the only time you might use Web site is if letters or diary entries were written during the 1990s by a story’s characters.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.