I’m delighted to be taking part in this year’s global Tarothon – a live, 24-hour, worldwide, online event designed to support and inspire tarotists and seekers old and new.

In fact, it’s just two days away, on Sunday 2nd June, beginning at 10am UK time! You can follow along on YouTube using the hashtag #Tarothon2019

Hosted by The Hermit’s Cave, the Tarothon will involve 23 different YouTube channels talking tarot (and a whole bunch of other stuff) for an hour at a time (The Hermit’s Cave will cover the first and last hours).

As you can see from the schedule, we have some real goodies for you! (Please note, there may be some minor changes to the schedule and participants before the day itself).

I’m on at 4pm, and will be talking about Tarot, Nonduality & Enlightenment, and I’ll be popping up in chat in a number of the other sessions too. I’d love to see you there, and I’m sure you’ll find something to enjoy.

JUST LOOK AT THESE CHANNELS! LOOK AT THESE TOPICS! Can you tell I’m excited? I may get no sleep whatsoever…

You can find all the participating channels here:

• Simon at the Hermit’s Cave
• Kelly Bear
• Christine & Celeste
• Modern Metaphysic Man
• Tarot Map
• Becca Tarot Night Owl
• Brian Cormack Carr
• The Truth in Story
• Pappa Squirrel
• Tangerine Layla* The Sleepy Oracle
• Dani Mystic
• Jen’s Balanced Tarot
• Supportive Tarot
• Jennifer Ball’s Witch House
• Tattoo’d Spirit
• WyllowWynd the Thrifty Witch
• Kittens, Weights & Tarot
• Raw Spirit
• Little Zen Crone
• Stellar Rain Dancer
• Jenn the Taxidermy Witch ifer
• Wayward Sun
• Avalon Cameron

The post #TAROTHON2019 IS HERE! appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

– William Blake

A quick post from me, just to say that I’m conscious this site has been a bit dormant lately. As is the way of things, other demands have been pulling on my time … not least, the day job! I’ve also been taking some time out to think about what I want to do with this site, and with my writing and coaching practices. Various ideas are a-brewing, and I’ll be back soon to expand on these.

In the meantime, you might like to know that I’ve bitten the bullet – and after some cajoling and many requests – have reactivated my YouTube channel. Here’s my most recent video:

My thinking is that the channel – and this blog – will be a place where I share my thoughts on a range of  interests including writing, coaching, metaphysics, paganism, tarot, literature, mythology, healthy eating, functional fitness, herbalism, social activism, conscious leadership, non-duality, the world’s wisdom traditions, and more. So far, I seem to have been pretty focused on the tarot, since I consider that to be a very creditable repository for many of the areas listed above. More of that, and more of various other things, to come!

I’m looking forward to these forthcoming explorations. Why not take a look at some of my videos, and join the conversation? I’d love to hear your thoughts too!

Back soon…

Brian

x

The post New Year, New Directions… appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

You – like me – have probably seen countless articles online and in magazines appealing to us to “detoxify” our bodies by foregoing solid food and juicing instead. Or perhaps you’ve seen advice that you should be drinking green smoothies, or guzzling gallons of filtered water, or maybe even slurping strange concoctions made from olive oil, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

In 2007, Americans alone spent over $28 MILLION on detox products. That figure is undoubtedly a lot higher now.

I’m here to tell you it’s all a load of nonsense. The only things you need in order to ensure your body gets rid of toxins are things most of don’t have to make any effort to possess: a healthy liver, kidneys, and skin.

I’m not the only one who thinks this. Minh-Hai Tran, MS, RD, CSSD, a registered dietitian and owner of Mindful Nutrition in Seattle points out:

“Keeping our bodies healthy is not like a plumbing job where you can just flush out what you don’t want. There’s no scientific evidence that ‘cleansing’ supplements and juices effectively help the body detoxify.”

Here are some more reasons why the “detox” craze needs to be debunked, sooner rather than later:

1. Detox diets don’t “rid your body of toxins”.

Healthy organs – including the liver, kidneys and skin – are our most reliable detoxification apparatus, and they do a great job of eliminating everyday toxins. Keep them healthy by feeding them good, whole, real, nutritious foods. Be aware too that some “all-natural” ingredients in detox supplements – such as psyllium husk, fennel seeds and senna pods – can have a strongly laxative or diuretic effect on the body. Whilst useful in some circumstances and in sensible proportions, misuse of these supplements can flush out valuable nutrients, cause dehydration, and even over-stretch and damage the colon. Yum.

2. Detox diets don’t stimulate healthy weight loss.

If you’re juice-fasting and then jumping for joy that you’ve lost a few pounds, you shouldn’t be surprised (and you also shouldn’t be too happy). Any calorie-restricted diet will induce weight loss, but it doesn’t mean it’s healthy weight loss. Juice fasts are undoubtedly low in calories. Following one for a day – maybe two – is probably fine, but if you under-eat for an extended period, your body goes into starvation mode and your metabolism will start to slow down to conserve energy. This paves the way for weight gain over time, because a reduced metabolism causes calories to be burned less efficiently. If you want to juice, fine – but drink your juices as part of a calorie-managed, nutrient-rich, full-of-fibre, real food diet. Juices aren’t food. Food is food. As registered dieticia Melissa Miller says:

“Juicing isn’t necessarily an unhealthy option, but when compared to the whole food, it is nutritionally inferior. In fact, similar to choosing refined grains over whole grains, choosing juices over the whole fruit or vegetable means you’re missing out.”

3. Detox diets aren’t necessarily safe.

Detox diets present a host of potentially serious hazards, according to Roger Clemens, PhD, from the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy. “The biggest danger is nutrient insufficiency from protracted starvation”, he says. Nutrient deficiency can cause poor immune function, tiredness, weakness, skin problems, brittle hair and nails, brain fog and nausea.

4. Detox diet promoters make claims that are exaggerated and unsupported.

Most detox regimes are based on the premise that we have to “cleanse” something – our liver, or our bowels perhaps. But these organs are not pieces of machinery, or filters in an engine – they are part of a living, breathing body. Every drop of blood in our body passes through the liver every hour and this is where real detoxification happens, through a series of complex organic processes. The toxins in the blood are metabolised and transformed into other substances which are then able to leave the body in our excretions; they are not left behind, in need of clearing away by us! Don’t believe anyone who makes out that the average person has a “toxic liver” or a “colon compacted by pounds of putrefying waste”. If this were true, you’d certainly know about it, because you’d either be very ill, or very dead.

5. Detox diets put the body under undue stress.

Some subsstances used in detox products – so-called “liver-cleansing” herbs, for example – can cause the body and its organs to work harder. Often, they speed up the digestive process, which results in more than the normal amount of metabolic-break-down byproducts being released into the bloodstream. This is an additional load for the liver to cope with. We’re effectively asking it to work harder at the part of its job that’s already hardest. Does this sound like a recipe for a happy, healthy liver? No.

6. Detox diets are deprivation diets.

The bottom line is that if detox plans work (in the sense of making a person feel “better”) they probably do so because they encourage abstinence from low-nutrition foods and beverages. But they also tend to encourage abstinence from perfectly good foods and beverages, which can lead to a lower than necessary intake of calories and essential nutrients. Why not forego the low-nutrition foods and enjoy lots of high-nutrition foods? The simplest way to detox is to make better choices when eating and drinking – not to give up proper nutrition altogether!

What to do instead? Detox by nourishing your body!

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear me say this. EAT REAL FOOD. In other words – don’t detoxify, nourish! Real food provides your organs – including the all-important liver, kidneys and skin – with the nutrition they need to remain healthy enought to do their jobs well. Also, real food – complete with its attendant fibre and minerals – allows your digestive system to keep itself moving and in good shape.

Eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, fresh fish, lean meats and nuts – and fewer fried foods, refined grains, processed meats, red meats, and added sugars – is a great idea for a whole host of reasons, and will provide far more benefit to your health than any green smoothie or juice fast ever could.

(You can get more information on how to achieve such improvements in your diet in my free Real Food Reset guide, or – for even more in-depth info, including many real food recipes and a whole chapter of healthy exercise suggestions – in my book Real Food Revival Plan).

Happy eating!
Brian

GET STARTED NOW!

Want to bring more REAL FOODS into your life and onto your plate?
Download my FREE guide ‘Real Food Reset’ for top tips on adopting a real food lifestyle. Includes shopping lists and 14 days of tasty recipes!

The post Don’t Detox – Nourish! appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

You’ve almost certainly heard that it’s a good idea to “eat your greens” and we’re increasingly being made aware that eating other colours of fresh plant foods is a good idea too – “eat a rainbow” is today’s advice for those wanting as much benefit as possible from their daily fare.

But do you know why it’s a good idea to “eat a rainbow”?

An obvious initial reason is that to do so almost certainly means eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables which are filling and low in calories and fat, making them a good choice for those trying to manage their weight.

However, this isn’t the whole story. Fruit and vegetables also contain an array of naturally occuring plant-based substances – phytonutrients – which have been found to protect humans from a whole range of health issues including heart disease, cancer, eye defects, urinary tract infections, degenerative disorders, and musculoskeletal problems.

There are hundreds of plant chemicals – including many not yet widely studied by science – and while many contribute nutrition to our diet,  others act as antioxidants which neutralize free radicals, the potentially harmful molecules which can trigger disease and accelerate the aging process.

Yes, it’s important to “eat your greens” – but it’s also important to eat your reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, indigos, violets, whites and browns too!

Eat a rainbow, and enjoy the following foods and benefits:

Red Foods

To enjoy red foods in your diet, include tomatoes, red onions, radishes, red peppers, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries, cherries, red grapes, pomegranates, red plums, rhubarb, pink grapefruit, watermelon and many more.

Red foods can help build a healthy heart, lower the risk of several cancers and protect the skin from the sun’s ultra-violet radiation.

Tomatoes – as well as watermelon and pink grapefruit – contain a carotenoid called lycopene, which gives them their reddish colour. This powerful antioxidant has been shown to protect against cancers of the lung, colon, breast, skin, oesophagus and – in particular – the prostate.

Our bodies are better able to absorb lycopene from foods that have been cooked – so don’t neglect to enjoy that tomato sauce, or to throw some red onions into your casserole!

Other red food ideas:

• Berry smoothies including raspberries and strawberries
• Cranberry juice with breakfast
• Red peppers and radishes in salads
• A tablespoon or two of tomato puree to thicken soups and stews
• Snack on frozen cherries while watching a favourite movie
• Start your meal with half a pink grapefruit

Orange and Yellow Foods

To enjoy orange and yellow foods in your diet, include apricots, oranges, butternut squash, pineapples, orange and yellow peppers, sweetcorn, papayas, gala melons, sweet potatoes, yams, carrots and many more.

Orange and yellow foods are good for ensuring a healthy immune system, healthy skin, protecting against several cancers, and protecting the heart.

Yellow and orange foods tend to be full of carotenoids, the most common of which – alpha-carotene and beta-carotene – can be converted into vitamin A in the body. This vitamin helps ensure good vision in dim light, normal cell growth, and has strong antioxidant properties which protect against heart disease and certain cancers, including lung cancer. Be aware, however, that extracted supplements of beta-carotene do not demonstrate the same protective effect, and some studies indicate that they may even increase the risk of lung cancer among smokers. Get your nutrients from whole foods!

Other fantastic phytochemicals in yellow and orange foods include: beta-cryptoxanthin (found in papaya, mangoes, pumpkin and sweetcorn) which helps keep the respiratory tract healthy; hesperidin (found in citrus fruits) which may protect against heart disease; and tangeritin and limonene (also in citrus) which may prevent cancers of the head and neck.

Other red and yellow food ideas:

• Mix cooked carrots and butternut squash into your potatoes before you mash them
• Enjoy a baked sweet potato with your salad
• Mix chopped apricots into your morning porridge
• Add grated carrots and sliced yellow and orange peppers to sandwiches
• Include gala melon, pineapple, mango and tangerine segments in your fruit salad
• Make a soup out of all yellow and orange ingredients: carrots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, yellow peppers and a squeeze of lemon juice!

Green Foods

These are the ones we know are good for us – we’ve been hearing it for years! They include avocado, asparagus, rocket leaves, kale, spinach, cabbage, brussels sprouts, green beans, peas, green peppers, spring onions, leeks, green grapes, green apples, kiwi fruit, courgettes, pak choi, cucumbers and many herbs including parsley, basil, coriander, dill, rosemary and mint.

Green  foods are mineral rich and heart-protective, and help defend us against several cancers and the risk of macular degeneration.

Greens  include more carotenoids – including lutein and zeaxanthin, which can slow down or prevent the progression of cataracts in the eye. Cruciferous greens such as broccoli, kale, and watercress include indoles which are believed to protect against breast cancer. Research has also shown that a powerful phytochemical in greens called sulphorophane can protect against colon cancer.

So, your mother was right: eat your greens!

Other green food ideas:

• Salads, salads and more salads!
• Include mild-tasting greens like kale, pak choi, or spinach in your smoothies
• Dip sugar-snap peas in your hummus
• Enjoy a warming bowl of green split pea soup
• Add leeks and broccoli florets to your stir fries
• Include spring onion and courgettes in your casseroles

Blue and Purple Foods

We forget how many of these actually exist! They include blueberries, blackberries, beetroot, figs, prunes, raisins, red cabbage, aubergine, blackcurrants and black grapes.

Blue and purple foods are cancer-protective, help lower blood pressure, and may prevent age-related memory loss.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey reports that those who eat blue and purple food on a regular basis have a reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes and they also have smaller waists and lower blood pressure. True blue!

The star phytochemicals in these foods seem to be anthocyanins. These are linked to improved memory in old age, as well as a reduced risk of stomach ulcers and colon cancer. Many blue, purple (and red) foods contain ellagic acid, a cancer-fighting, cholesterol-lowering phytochemical.

Other blue and purple food ideas:

• Top your yoghurt with stewed plums
• Include blackberries in your morning smoothie
• Stir blueberries or raisins into your morning cereal
• Chose frozen black grapes as a great finger food
• Include aubergine and beetroot in a ratatouille-style veggie stew
• Eat beetroot raw in salads, or cooked in soups.

White and Brown Foods

I know, I know – these colours don’t feature in the rainbow – but it’s worth including them here, because plant foods in these categories bring with them many benefits.

White foods include onions, garlic, turnips, parsnips and bananas. These foods are rich in flavonoids including quercetin (found in abundance in shallots and onions) which is a powerful anti-inflammatory compound. Garlic features allicin, an antioxidant believed to help reduce blood pressure. Sulphur-containing vegetables like garlic and onions are also thought to be cancer-protective.

Eat more white foods by:

• Including garlic and shallots in your savoury dishes
• Slicing onions into your salad
• Ensuring you include parsnips and turnips in delicious autumnal stews

Brown foods include wholegrains and legumes which are rich in fibre as well as a range of useful compounds which may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. These foods also make a useful contribution in terms of protein and complex carbohydrates which provide sustained energy.

Include more brown foods in your diet by:

• Exploring different wholegrain options: rice, amaranth, quinoa, barley, polenta, kamut, wheatberries, teff, spelt…
• Exploring different legume options: black-eyed peas, chickpeas, borlotti beans, red kidney beans, red or green or puy lentils, butter beans…
• Using wholegrain flours in baking
• Swapping to wholegrain breads and crackers

The Rainbow of Phytonutrients

There’s a highly informative and very comprehensive review of the richest sources of polyphenol antioxidants over here, at the excellent Nutrition Advance site. Well worth checking out!

Finally, here’s a useful guide from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to keep you briefed on the reasons to eat a rainbow. Click the image, and you can download a handy printable PDF copy!

Image credit: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (click the image to download the high resolution PDF)

GET STARTED NOW!

Want to bring more REAL FOODS into your life and onto your plate?
Download my FREE guide ‘Real Food Reset’ for top tips on adopting a real food lifestyle. Includes shopping lists and 14 days of tasty recipes!

The post Phytonutrients: Why You Should Eat a Rainbow appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

Want to start writing?  Feeling stuck? I self-published my first book How To Find Your Vital Vocation in June of last year. The book focuses on helping readers to identify and then obtain (or create) the work of their dreams.

Of course, one of the biggest obstacles we face in achieving any goal – whether it’s finding a dream job, or writing a book – is procrastination. In fact, I devote a whole chapter in the book to overcoming internal obstacles like procrastination (as well as stress, demotivation, and erroneous assumptions).  If you want to start writing but find you’re not making progress, it may be that you need to deal with procrastination first.

Here’s an edited extract from that chapter, which includes some specific procrastination-busting tips for writers.

Great Strategies for Tackling Procrastination:

1. Don’t Go Cold Turkey.

Don’t fall into the trap of telling yourself you’ll never procrastinate again. You will. This is because there is an upside to procrastination. It can carve out some much-needed downtime for you, especially when you haven’t done so for yourself.

You may find yourself procrastinating even more if you’ve decided to start writing – because you’ve just added extra pressure and effectively awakened your own inner resistance. Minimize the likelihood of this happening by scheduling your downtime, rather than letting it schedule you.  Which leads to…

2. Create a Goofing-off Timetable.

This one is all about planning your avoidance patterns into your daily life. The simplest way is to block out some relaxation time in your diary – a bit like free periods in school – and mark these out as being distinct from the times when you’re working on a specific personal or work-related project (like writing). Then make sure when the free periods come round, you actually do goof off and do the fun stuff that you love doing!

This works because structured downtime is far more energising than accidental downtime that comes laden with guilt and frustration. Think of how differently you feel after you’ve consciously decided to put your feet up to watch a great show, compared to how you feel after mindlessly slumping in front of the TV for hours, watching nothing in particular.

3. The “First Action” Approach.

This technique allows you to fool the primitive part of your mind into thinking you aren’t actually going to do the task at all – just some tiny part of it – and so the resistance to the task gets switched off.

If  you want to start writing a chapter of your book, for example, you might be daunted about the task of “writing a chapter”. However, you might find the idea of “opening a Word document and typing the chapter title” entirely achievable. So that’s what you do; you say to yourself, “I’m not going to write the chapter just now. I’m just going to open a Word document and type the chapter title.” That’s it. You’ve taken the first action, and you might find that that first action is enough to propel you into further action. When I was at university, many an essay I was fretting about got written this way.

4. Leave Yourself Wanting More.

Many people find it hard to pick a task up again after they’ve had a break from it. This is because we have a tendency to stop working at a natural breaking-off point. Consequently, starting again feels like starting something new.  Breaking off mid-task (rather than at a natural break point) creates a sense of “incompleteness” that we’ll want to resolve. You can apply this principle to lots of things: mowing the lawn (take a break after mowing half the lawn), reading a book (stop reading in the middle of a chapter), or writing a book (stop writing mid-sentence).

Leave yourself wanting more so that the sense of completion only really comes when you have completed the entire task. Some people may not like this approach because it delays the gratification of finishing discrete parts of the work. Remember, however, this is about outsmarting procrastination, and believe me – it works.

– from How To Find Your Vital Vocation, Chapter 8: Overcoming Your Internal Obstacles

What procrastination-busting techniques have you discovered to help you get that book written?

Images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post Stop Procrastinating – Start Writing! appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

How To Find Your Vital Vocation: A Practical Guide To Discovering Your Career Purpose And Getting A Job You Love, which I published last month, is my first self-help book and won’t be my last.  If you want to write a self-help book, it’s probably because you have some experience you’d like to share with the world, or a service you’d like to showcase in book form. Writing a self-help book is a fun and rewarding way of getting your expert knowledge out there, and the process has never been easier. Here’s how to get started:

1. Pick your niche and your book topic.

To make sure your audience can find your book, you have to target it to the people who really need it – your niche market. Are you writing for men or women, younger or older people, folks who are employed or unemployed? Perhaps your niche is very specific and you’re going to write a self-help book to help female police officers to develop their management skills so that they can move up the career ladder – if so, your niche is women police officers who want to develop their management skills so that they can move up the career ladder.

A niche can be broad or narrow, but it must be defined up front – writing a book for “everybody” is likely to create a rambling, untargetted book that generates few sales. The key to finding your niche is that it’s not “out there” it’s “in here” – you are your niche. If you’ve walked the path, you’re writing for others who are on the path behind you, or who haven’t even started onto it yet. So – who were you before you learned about what you’re going to write about? There’s your niche!

2. Solve your ideal reader’s problem.

Don’t be daunted by the thought of writing to a large audience. Write a self-help book for one single person – the person who most needs it. Following on from the example above, imagine one female police officer who loves her work but wants more; who knows she needs to get some management experience so she can move on, but just doesn’t know where to start. See her in your mind’s eye? Good. Write for her.

3. Choose your keyword-rich title and subtitle.

Increasingly, new self-help books are first found online – so it’s important to make your title easy to find. Make sure the title and subtitle include plenty of keywords that are important to your niche market – the kind of keywords they’ll be searching for.

How To Find Your Vital Vocation: A Practical Guide To Discovering Your Career Purpose And Getting A Job You Love may not be the snappiest title in the world – but it’s keyword-rich, instead. Hidden in that title are the keywords and phrases “purpose”, “career”, “job”, “vocation”, “job you love”, “career you love”, “finding a job”, “getting a job”, “discovering your purpose”, “find your purpose”, “how to find a job” – and quite a few more.

4. Include some interactive elements.

Readers of self-help books are looking for practical solutions to their problems, and many of them will want to feel that they’re able to make progress soon after starting the book. Don’t make them wade through lots of reading being passive recipients; involve them in the book as soon as you can.

In How To Find Your Vital Vocation, I introduce interactive written exercises in the book’s introduction, and clusters of self-coaching questions starting in chapter one.

5. Don’t wait for permission to get published!

I chose the self-publishing route because I wanted to get my work out into the world as soon as possible. I got professional help with editing and cover design and have published the eBook through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, and the paperback courtesy of Amazon’s Createspace).

As an indie author, I didn’t have to wait for an agent or publisher to “approve of” my book or to give me permission to become published. I took that leap myself, and now my book is available worldwide. The tools available to prospective authors today are amazing, and the self-publishing opportunities endless. Make the most of them.

So – what will you write a self-help book about?

BONUS MATERIAL: Be sure to check out my series of articles on self-publishing, starting with How to Self-Publish Your First Book (Part 1): Planning, Platform…and a Promise Fulfilled

Images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post How to Write a Self-Help Book appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

I self-published my first book How To Find Your Vital Vocation: A Practical Guide To Discovering Your Career Purpose And Getting A Job You Love last month.  In the first week after its launch, it made the Amazon UK Kindle careers bestseller chart. The process of getting my book written and out in the world has been a lot of fun, and a great part of my education as an indie author.  Here’s some of what I learned along the way.

1. You don’t have to wait for someone else’s permission.

Today’s self-publishing options – like Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing (for ebooks) and Createspace (for paperback books) – mean that it’s easier than ever to get your writing out into the world.  You don’t have to wait until an agent of publishing house decides you’re worthy of publication. If you’re willing to put some real effort into writing, self-publishing and marketing your book, you really can ‘do it yourself’.

2. Self-publishing isn’t the ‘soft’ option.

To some, self-publishing might still have a degree of stigma attached to it – but that’s fading.  Today, indie authors have as much of a potential platform as authors using traditional publishing houses, since they are able to distribute their work through Amazon (arguably the single most important book distirbution channel in the world today).  The quality of indie books is high – many are almost indistinguishable from their traditionally-published counterparts, especially if they’ve been professionally edited and designed.

“It’s easier than ever to get your writing out into the world.”

3. You need to get professional help if you want to be a professional author.

Assuming your writing is of a high standard, you will still need to work hard to ensure your book comes across as professional.  To do that, I strongly recommend having it professionally edited (an editor will pick up glitches even the most talented writer will miss) and the cover professionally designed (self-published books with Photoshop covers generally look awful).

Professional help really will give your book the best start in the world, and it’s possible to enlist this help without too much expense.

4. You should set a target and make a plan.

Once you’ve made the decision to write and self-publish your book, it’s a great idea to set yourself a deadline.  Ten months before my 40^th birthday, I set myself the target of writing and publishing my first book by my birthday itself. I hit my goal with four days to spare.  I worked back from the target date to establish and calendarize milestones like “get book back from editor” and “source cover designer”, and I also set myself weekly wordcount targets.

5. Print-on-demand means you won’t end up with a stockpile of books in your garage.

Remember the old days when one of the results of self-publishing was piles and piles of unsold books?  With print-on-demand facilities like Createspace, that’s no longer necessary.  You upload your book file, and when someone wants to buy the paperback copy, one copy is printed and shipped to them from Amazon.  Easy, inexpensive – and no storage issues!

“It’s a great idea to set yourself a deadline.”

6. Ebooks give you real flexibility.

They’re cheap and easily distributed (to those with e-readers, anyway), thus ebooks are also very flexible. Decide you want to change something in the book? You just upload a new file online through Kindle Direct Publishing or Smashwords and your ‘new edition’ is ready for purchase almost immediately.

7. You must start marketing your book before you start writing it.

Don’t wait until your book is out there to start building an audience.  Start as soon as you start working on your book (if not before). At the very least, you’ll need your own author website (easily and cheaply set up through WordPress or Blogger) and a mailing list (using a facility like Aweber or Mailchimp). If you start building a readership through blogging, and start capturing email addresses to your list, you’ll be very glad of this audience when your book is released, because they will be your first customers.

8. Social media is a self-published author’s best friend.

Another great way to build an audience is through social media.  Pick one or two tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Goodreads and Google+ and start building your presence and interacting.  You’ll make useful contacts and add an important dimension to your author platform, which will help with sales when your book is released.

“Don’t wait until your book is out there to start building an audience.”

9. Digital distribution means your launch can be long-term.

Because I built an audience through my website and social media platforms, I was able to generate a spike of initial sales when I released my book in June of this year.  But I don’t see my launch as being finished yet.  I’m going to focus  on promoting my book for several months before starting work on my next project.  Because the book is available worldwide through digital and print-on-demand channels like Amazon and Smashwords, I don’t have to worry about it disappearing from bookstores!

10. Once the book is published, now the hard work really begins!

Don’t let yourself think that once your book is published, you can relax. Get out there and promote it.  Write blog articles for your site.  Send a bulletin to your mailing list. Post quotes from your book to Facebook and Twitter. Consider going on a blog tour. Let the world know it’s there.  You worked hard on it – now you need to shout about it.

Good luck!

Images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post 10 Lessons From An Indie Author appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

To celebrate the launch of my new book How To Find Your Vital Vocation, I’m heading out on a worldwide blog tour!

Stops on the tour will include guest posts, author interviews, and book reviews.  I’ll update this post with each new stop on the blog tour as it happens.

Many thanks to all the bloggers who are so graciously hosting me during my first blog tour!  I consider it a real honour to feature on your sites.  Thanks also to the good folks at Orangeberry Book Tours for helping me to source blog tour hosts.

‘How To Find Your Vital Vocation’ Book Blog Tour 2013 Schedule

8th June – Guest Post at Careershifters
9th June – Author Profile at Grace Owen Solutions
13th June – Author Profile at Blog Tech Guy
13th June – Book Review at A Girl and Her Kindle
21st June – Author interview at Chuck Gallagher
29th June – Guest Post at Later Bloomer
1st July – Featured Book Buzz at World Literary Café
11th July – Guest Post at Grace Owen Solutions
10th July – Book Feature at Peace from Pieces
11th July – Twitter View with OB Book Tours
12th July – Hot New Release at The Kindle Book Review
12th July – Twitter Blast with OB Book Tours
13th July – Book Review & Guest Post at Mommy Adventures
14th July – Author Interview at The Bunny’s Review
15th July – Video Interview at The Zone Show
15th July – Twitter Blast with OB Book Tours
16th July – Book Review & Guest Post at Author’s Friend
17th July – Book Review & Author Interview at The Reading Cat
18th July – Guest Post at Blog-A-Licious Authors
19th July – Book Review at Kindle Nook Books
20th July – Book Review & Author Interview at Dreaming In The Pages
21st July – Book Review & Guest Post at Top ‘o Mornin’ To Ya
22nd July – Book Review at Me, You & Books
23rd July – Book Review & Guest Post at Everything 4 Books
24th July – Book Review at My Reading Problem
25th July – Guest Post at Grace Owen Solutions
25th July – Book Review & Author Interview at UnBiased Book Reviews
26th July – Guest Post & Book Review at Authors Going Places
27th July – Book Review at Nobody Important
28th July – Book Review & Author Interview at Gentleman Reads
29th July – Orangeberry Sidebar
30th July – Book Review at Book Professor
1st Aug – Guest Post at How To Blog A Book
29th Aug – Guest Post at The Creative Penn
TBC – Guest Post at Lateral Action

The post The ‘How To Find Your Vital Vocation’ Blog Tour Has Begun! appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

A week ago, I self-published my first book – How To Find Your Vital Vocation: A Practical Guide To Discovering Your Career Purpose And Getting A Job You Love – through Amazon and Smashwords. In this series of posts on how to self-publish, I look at the journey and the lessons learned along the way. In this final post, I focus on pricing and promotion.

(Continued from Part 2: Getting Professional Help and Part 1: Planning & Platform)

Step 9: Set your price

In terms of pricing your ebook, it’s important to do your research and consider your goals carefully.  Different price points on different platforms have different royalty levels associated with them, so if earning an income from your books is a specific goal, you must take this into account.  In the case of Amazon, for example, the level at which you price your ebook will determine whether you can claim a 35% or 70% royalty on sales.

Vital Vocation “memes” are one of the methods I’ve used to promote my first self-published book.

Readers, too, will respond differently to different prices.  Although some indie authors price their books at the lower end of the spectrum (as low as .99 cents) in order to compete with better-known writers whose work is being released through traditional publishers, some readers may be put off by prices which seem artificially low, because they won’t trust the quality of the book. “Buy cheap, buy twice” as they say.

For others, the opposite is true – they’ll see a low-priced book as a bargain, and snap it up.  Perhaps here, more than anywhere else, experimentation is required.  I’ve spoken to some indie authors who had to drop the price of their books before the sales really started rolling in; others didn’t see any action until they increased the price of their product substantially.

The Future of Ink blog has an excellent post on how to price your ebook, whether it be fiction or non fiction.  Another useful post on this subject can be found on Digital Book Word.  Ebooks are usually – and increasingly – priced significantly lower than the print version of the book, so if you’re publishing to both formats, you need to consider the differential you’re going to create between the formats.

“Meme” images are useful for social media presence, as they’re easy to retweet or share on Facebook.

Don’t forget you can also use pricing as a promotional tool for your ebook, through low-price special promotions and even periods where you offer your book for free.  Amazon’s KDP Select program has been used successfully by many indie authors to drive rankings (and consequently sales) through free promotion periods, although some believe it’s no longer quite as useful as it used to be.

Here are four articles – written at different stages during the past 12 months – giving the different sides of the KDP Select story:

• The Definitive Guide To KDP Select Free Giveaways by David McGowan (August 2012)
• KDP Select: Is It Still Worth It? Thoughts for 2013 by Ryan Casey (January 2013)
• Is KDP Select Worth It? (An Example From a Real Person) by Blaise Lucey (March 2013)
• KDP Select Still Works in 2013 by AuthorDiscovery.com (May 2013)

Step 10: Release and promote

Let me be perfectly honest – I’m not really qualified to advise on this part of the process, as I’m only just beginning to embark upon the promotion for How To Find Your Vital Vocation. (Psst – this blog post series is part of that promotion).  But I’m happy to share my thinking on the subject, and I’ll share details of how things pan out as my promotional efforts for the book progress.  The fact is, promotion is as essential a step in the “how to self-publish your first book” journey as the writing part.

I’m exploring several different options here:

• I’m in the process of constructing a “virtual blog tour” where I’ll be guest posting on other related blogs about the book and about the process of becoming a self-published author.
• In addition to arranging my own tour stops, I’ve engaged a blog tour company – Orangeberry Book Tours – to syndicate some of my articles to other blogs in my niche.  My hope is that this will not only help me gain SEO exposure, but also some positive reviews for my book.
• I’ve sourced some fairly basic advertising, mainly through Facebook and also through some specific indie publishing channels, such as World Literary Café, The Kindle Book Review, and Digital Book Today.  Again, this is as much about SEO as it is about sales, but I’ll be closely monitoring the outcomes of these adverts to see what effect they have.
• I’m continuing to utilise my own author platform through this blog, as well as through the specific Vital Vocation blog which relates directly to the book.  I’m tweeting from my author Twitter feed and from the book’s Vital Vocation Twitter feed. I also have a Vital Vocation page on Facebook which is getting increasingly active (1000+ fans and growing).
• I’ll be announcing the book’s publication to my own mailing list shortly.  Incidentally, if you want to join my mailing list so that I can update you on my future publications, you can do so here.  It’s worth it.  Not only do I not spam you (I don’t message the list very often) you’ll also get two spiffy free ebooks.
• I’ve constructed a set of Vital Vocation “memes” featuring a collage of the book’s cover with other photographs and some quotes from various parts of the book.  These are proving popular on Pinterest and are being shared on Facebook.  I’ve selected several quotes form the book which I think will work in these meme formats, and I’m working my way through them. They’re great for tweeting, too.  You can see some of these peppered throughout this post.

Quotes from the book are designed to hook the attention and interest of potential readers.

I’ll blog soon about which of the above tactics are working – and which are not!– and will let you know the results.

~

So there you have it – a brief tour through the process I went through to write and publish How To Find Your Vital Vocation.  I’ll close with some “lessons learned” from the process.

The Lessons I’ve Learned on the Self-Publishing Journey (So Far!):

1. Don’t wait.

If you want to write and publish a book, don’t wait until you have it all figured out before you start – just start.  Start before you’re ready.  And don’t feel you have to wait until a “real publisher” shows an interest in your work.  You can be a real publisher.  In this day and age, easily accessible and inexpensive self-publishing facilities afford you many opportunities to get your work out there.  You don’t have to wait until someone else gives you permission to be a writer.

2. Plan ahead.

Start writing, and take some time out to explore what self-publishing and author platform options are available to you.  Use this blog series as a guide, and don’t forget the benefits of making yourself a plan and a writing schedule.

3. Don’t underestimate how long it takes.

I set myself the task of having two books out by the time I hit 40 this summer, and I managed to have one out (and one drafted).  I’m very happy with that, and I can smile at my youthful naïveté just ten months ago.  Writing a book takes time, if you want to do it right (although a lot depends – obviously – on how long the book’s going to be).  Two books in ten months??  These whippersnapper 39-year-olds – they know nothing!

Don’t forget a key feature of your promotional materials – details of how and where to buy the book!

4. Don’t be scared to experiment.

Do I know if my marketing tactics will work?  No.  Am I sure my ebook is priced at the right level to drive sales?  No.  Am I prepared to chop and change things until I get them right?  Hell, yes.  I’ll keep tweaking things, monitoring things, re-measuring things, and tweaking them again until I get them as right as I possibly can.

5. Write, write, write…and then write some more.

If you think the writing is over once you’re book is out there – fuhgeddaboudit.  If you want people to know the book exists, you’ll have to make some considerable online noise about it, and that means blogging, guest posting, tweeting, Facebooking and generally continuing to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for some time after you hit “publish”.

Bear this in mind: the best marketing tool for your current book is your next book.  From all the reading I’ve done on the subject of indie publishing, this little tidbit comes up again and again, although it isn’t given the prominence it deserves.  The fact is, each new book will help you to promote the previous, and vice versa, because you can easily amend the files of your self-published books to include details of new books as you add them to your roster.  Also, authors with more than one book tend to have more credibility.  Whether that’s fair or unfair, it just seems to be.

As Jeff Goins so brilliantly said – You Are A Writer: So Start Acting Like One.

Finally – don’t become obsessed with your current book.  Do the best job you can with it.  Give it the best start in the world you possibly can once it’s out there.  Possibly have a bit of a rest.  And then get on with writing the next one.  I know that that’s what I’ll be doing…

After all that writing and promoting – yes, you probably do deserve a rest!

Find this post useful? You can check out the beginning of this series on “How I Wrote And Self-Published My First Book here.

Thanks for reading!  Do you have experience of writing, self-publishing and marketing a book? I’d love to hear how you’ve been getting on. Please feel free to share your tips and tools in the comments below. Questions are welcome too, and if I can’t answer them directly perhaps others will be able to help.

Photos courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post How To Self-Publish Your First Book (Part 3): Pricing, Promotion…and Some Lessons Learned appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.

A week ago, I self-published my first book – How To Find Your Vital Vocation: A Practical Guide To Discovering Your Career Purpose And Getting A Job You Love – through Amazon and Smashwords.  In this series of posts on how to self-publish, I look at the journey and the lessons learned along the way.  In this post I’m focusing on editing, formatting, cover design and getting help from the professionals.

(Continued from Part 1: Planning, Platform & A Promise Fulfilled)

Step 5: Get help with beta reading, editing and proofreading.

I know these are different things, but I include them together here because they are related.  Not every writer needs, or needs to use, every one of these tools.  And some writers who do need to use them, don’t.  You’ll have to decide what works for your purposes.  But if you’re genuinely interested in learning how to self-publish, you need to seriously investigate the option of hiring some professionals to help you.

For How To Find Your Vital Vocation, I hired a professional editor – Hayley Sherman of Whoosh! Editing – to go over the near-final manuscript before I made the very final changes.  I think I have a pretty good grasp on the English language – I should really, considering I have a degree in the subject – but my editor still managed to pick up a whole raft of grammatical, stylistic and structural issues in the draft text.  It was immeasurably improved after these were addressed.  Even if you think your writing is close to perfect, hiring an editor is well worth it if you want to produce something that’s of a really high quality.

Beta readers provide a less formal function, and give observations on early drafts from a potential reader’s perspective.  Whereas editing is usually a paid task, you can ask for volunteer beta readers in exchange for a free copy of your manuscript.  This is something friends sometimes offer to do, but bear in mind friends have a conflict of interest (so do enemies).  A better bet is to find someone genuinely neutral (in other words, someone who neither loves nor hates you).  There are several Facebook, Goodreads and Amazon forums for indie writers, and potential beta readers can be found in these.  The independent KBoards forum (previously Kindleboards) is another useful place to look.

Finally, a proofreader’s job is to pick up glitches in the text, even when it has been edited and you’ve been over it with a fine tooth comb. You may think you’ve caught them all, but you almost certainly haven’t.  By the way, if anyone spots any typos in How To Find Your Vital Vocation, please let me know and I’ll fix ‘em!

Step 6: Don’t be afraid to ask for endorsements and testimonials.

I was fairly near the end of the writing process when I decided it would be a good idea if the front cover of my book featured an endorsing quote from a trusted expert in the book’s niche (self-help and careers).  I suddenly realised I had left this a bit late, since any such person would need time to read the book before commenting on it. Doh!

Undaunted (well – actually quite daunted, but I did it anyway) I approached two people: my friend and colleague Grace Owen, author of The Career Itch, and Barbara Winter, author of Making A Living Without A Job.  I politely asked them if they would be willing to read the near-final draft of the book and give me a quote. I felt very comfortable approaching Grace, having worked with her before and having already corresponded with her about the book.

I haven’t met Barbara in person yet, although we have been friends on Facebook for a while and I have been recommending her book to my clients for several years now (it features as a “recommended resource” in How To Find Your Vital Vocation). I thought twice about asking her, not because she’s not approachable – she is – but because I found myself thinking “She must gets loads of requests like this. She won’t have time to spend on a first-timer like me”.

But I’ve learned not to assume that my inner voices (I have several – don’t you?) are always right. So I asked anyway. “The worst she can say is no”, I reasoned. Well, she said yes and gave me a great quote for the book, part of which resides in pride of place at the top of the cover.

It just goes to show – if you don’t ask, you don’t get. I was honoured to have Barbara Winter provide a quote for the cover of my book. Her own book has been a great inspiration to me and to many others.

It really is worth asking.  Think carefully about who you might ask, and then do so politely and appropriately, and be prepared to accept their answer – whatever it is – graciously.  Don’t just ask “cold”; take the time to build a genuine relationship with them beforehand, if it’s not already in place.  In addition to Barbara and Grace’s very welcome quotes, I’ve been able to include testimonials inside the book from my coaching clients and from members of the online membership programme which was the fore-runner of How To Find Your Vital Vocation.

Step 7: Create a great cover for your book.

Again, this can be done yourself, but that isn’t really advisable unless you’re a professional designer in your own right. The fact is, covers count, and you need a good one.  Your cover needs to be able to hold its own amongst all the professionally-designed covers used in traditional publishing.  Particularly important for indie authors, it needs to look good online (which is arguably where most indie author marketing takes place).  Remember – you want the prospective reader to be drawn into the book, not propelled away from it.

I employed Jane Dixon Smith of JD Smith Design to put together the perfect cover for my book (she also handled my Kindle, Smashwords and Createspace interior formats).  I was impressed with her work after hearing her interviewed on The Creative Penn podcast, and I haven’t been disappointed.  Not only has she produced great work that I’ve been really happy with, she has also been a delight to work with and very professional and patient as I blundered my way through my first indie publishing experience.

Don’t fear that hiring a cover designer will remove you from the driving seat in terms of the “look” of your book. Far from it.  Jane and I both pooled cover ideas, then I narrowed things down to three or four I particularly liked, and Jane worked up some draft cover ideas for me to choose from.

In the case of How To Find Your Vital Vocation, I eventually came down to a choice between two covers and turned to my blog readers, mailing list subcsribers and social media followers for advice on which to pick. As you can see, the elephant (after some modifications to the title font) won the race.

My cover designer and I narrowed things down to these two options. If you prefer the people, it’s too late to tell me about it!

Step 8: Pick your publishing formats.

This step can come sooner, but if you haven’t dealt with it before this point, then the time has come. Are you going down the ebook or physical book route, or both?  In my case, How To Find Your Vital Vocation has been released first as an ebook – through Amazon and Smashwords – and will soon be out in paperback.

Each format has its benefits.  Ebooks are immediately accessible, but not everyone has – or even wants – an ebook reader.  They can be cheaper (both to produce and to buy) because there are no printing costs but nowadays, print-on-demand processes make even paperbacks easy to produce and fairly inexpensive (if you want them to be).  And despite the growth in digital media, at present paperback sales still outweigh sales of ebooks.

For me, the rationale for the formats I chose was pretty clear.  Amazon dominates the market for ebooks, so an Amazon Kindle release was a no-brainer.  Smashwords makes the book available to those with other ebook readers (such as Nook or Kobo) and also those who have none (you can download the book in .pdf form from the Smashwords site).

The paperback will be delivered via Amazon’s Createspace – a print-on-demand facility. This will ensure that a paperback version of the book is always “in stock” on Amazon’s site (other book printing facilities sometimes take longer to fulfil their orders).

By the way, if you’re a UK author publishing to Amazon and Smashwords, you’ll want to be aware of the tax implications. If you’re a non-US resident selling your self-published book in the US, Smashwords and Amazon must report your royalty payments to the Internal Revenue Service and must withhold 30% tax on your earnings.

The good news is that the US has a tax treaty with the UK, which means that as long as you provide the right documentation to Amazon & Smashwords, you can claim full exemption from this tax withholding and consequently pay no tax to the IRS.  Details on how to do this are included in this useful post from A.D. Starrling: How I Self-Published As A UK Author.

In the next post, we’ll take a look at how to make sure the world knows about your newly-published book.

To be continued…

Part 3: Pricing, Promotion & Lessons Learned So Far

Do you have experience of writing, self-publishing and marketing a book? I’d love to hear how you’ve been getting on. Please feel free to share your tips and tools in the comments below. Questions are welcome too, and if I can’t answer them directly perhaps others will be able to help.

Photos courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post How To Self-Publish Your First Book (Part 2): Getting Professional Help appeared first on Write towards meaning | BRIAN CORMACK CARR.