Tag Archives: mike o’mary

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The Revolution in Publishing

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by Mike O’Mary

How many of you have tried to publish a book and been rejected? As an author, I was rejected many times. It’s not fun.

As a small (three books last year), indie publisher of other authors, I can also tell you that it’s not fun to reject book proposals — especially proposals for good ideas by some very good writers. But I have to reject books anyway. Part of it is due to limited resources (mainly my time). But part of it is also a matter of knowing my limitations when it comes to marketing and selling books. It’s hard enough to sell books that are in my area of expertise (short creative nonfiction and memoir). It would be really hard — and ultimately disappointing for the author — for me to try to sell books that target other audiences. So I don’t do it. Even if it’s a really good book.

Sometimes I will direct the author to another publisher that might be a good fit. But more and more, I am tempted to give this advice (and you are hearing it here on Freelance-Zone first!): Do it yourself. Continue reading The Revolution in Publishing →

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Use Social Media Apps to Retire Early (and Time Travel)

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by Mke O’Mary

mjo1 0305 cropI’ve been playing around with Twaitter and Ping.fm, and I think I’ve figured out a way to retire in two years.

You’re probably familiar with Twaitter and Ping.fm or similar apps. Twaitter allows you to schedule tweets in the future. You can schedule one tweet to be broadcast one time, or you can schedule multiple tweets to be broadcast into perpetuity.

Twaitter can be integrated with Ping.fm, and then your messages can automatically be sent not only to Twitter, but also to Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and about 60 other social networks.

My plan is to use Twaitter and Ping.fm to cut my workload in half in the near term, and then to retire early, all while watching my income increase exponentially.

First, I need to find a really repetitive, redundant and repetitive  job. Then I’m going to do half of next week’s work this week. After that, I’ll use Twaitter and Ping.fm to schedule and broadcast half of my work next week while I’m sitting on the beach relaxing. (I’ll have to continue to work the other half of the time.) I’ll keep doing that every week for a year, and then I’ll repeat the same steps in year two, eliminating the need to work the other half of next week. By the end of year two, I’ll no longer need to work at all.

I’ll continue to work though, partly because I am still trying to prove my third-grade teacher wrong for giving me a “check-minus” in “industriousness,” but also because I’m pretty sure that if I can figure out a way to get Twaitter and Ping.fm to feed each other, I can probably figure out a way to do multiple jobs and increase my pay exponentially, even as I slip into retirement.

And then there’s the Holy Grail of social media apps: time travel. I’ve been thinking about time travel ever since I met a man who was able to travel through time. It was 2006, and the man told me he had traveled to the present from 1970. I was skeptical at first, but then he proved it by telling me in great detail about everything that happened in 1970. It was amazing.

Ever since then, I’ve had my heart set on time travel. My thinking is that if scheduling and broadcasting messages can take you forward into perpetuity, then sending messages back from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media networks  toward the Twaitter-Ping-Google-Yahoo-Amazon-Ebay center of the universe (aka “Source”) will probably not only make time travel possible, it may actually reverse the flow of time.

That’s my thinking. Then again, I think I got a “check-minus” in “Thinks logically,” too.

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things, a book publisher and online retailer  

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Hey, Tweet Thang

by Mike O’Mary

iStock_000005848850XSmallOkay, I never thought I’d say this, but there’s some fascinating stuff on Twitter for writers. I see lots of job postings and writing advice. Have you gotten a freelance job via a Twitter contact? I haven’t gotten that far, but I’m finding decent advice and interesting revelations in 140 characters or less. Here are some of the results from a recent #writing search (followed by selected parenthetical comments from Yours Truly):

“Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.” Richard Ford @AdviceToWriters (Do you think Richard Ford really abbreviates writer + is = writer’s?)

I have a Leadership Devel (sic) Freelance Writing Jobs (sic). @writingjobs_in (As they say, the devel is in the details)

Article Writer Needed for 20 Articles on Health. @TWeelanceWriter (Writing the articles is cheaper than actually going to the doctor.)

To (sic) Good Online Writing Websites. @williamswafford (Because to is better than won?)

I have an online class. I want you to take it and do it for me. @Elance_Writing (That was my post from 30 years ago. Except classes weren’t online back then, so I had to pay somebody to actually go to class for me too.)

A brief rundown of novels and historical fiction set in Vancouver. @vancouver_rt  (I think that was the full text.)

Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.” Elmore Leonard (He said knowingly.)

Writer wanted for occasional work. @writingjobs_in (Is there any other kind of work for writers?)

FlashFiction vs Short Stories: What’s the difference? @iwritepoetry (That’s what I keep saying!)

Have a new idea for a story. Gotta start writing it down. @AntMan0623 (Doh! Too late. I forgot it!)

The Impotance of Edditting @OnUrge (Very clevver.)

I just cried writing a scene. So either it was really good, or I’m totally delirious from being locked in this room all day! @capetownbrown (I cry when I read my own writing, too. Good writing? Delirium? I attribute it to writing with an onion.)

Possibly the best book I’ve read about writing and living the creative life. @DreamofThings (Hey! I said that!)

Bottom line: Don’t waste a lot of time there. But if you have a few minutes, get your Tweet self on over to Twitter and find some occasional work!

Mike O’Mary tweets as @DreamofThings and @TheNoteProject

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The Note Project

by Mike O’Mary

For much of the past year, I’ve been prepping for something called the Note Project. It’s finally going to launch on March 20, 2011 (the first day of spring!).

The Note Project is about sharing appreciation with others. There is no cost to participate. We ask participants to send at least one note of appreciation to another person. The goal is to collectively send 1 million thank you notes (thus the tagline “making the world a million times better”).

There is a natural fit between literacy and the whole idea of writing notes of appreciation. Accordingly, I plan to donate 10% of the proceeds from Note Project Starter Kits to promote literacy. I’ll announce details as soon as they are finalized.

I’m excited about the opportunity to help promote literacy because it’s been an issue throughout my life, starting with my own family. Dyslexia runs in my family, which makes school more challenging. And we were raised in a single parent home, which also makes things more challenging for kids (not to mention for the parent!). As a result, not all of my seven siblings finished high school, and only two of us went to college.

Later, as the instructor of a course in remedial writing at the University of Montana, I worked with freshmen who had failed the school’s writing entrance exam. I had students who didn’t know that you begin a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a period. I didn’t know how they had gotten through high school without being able to write, and I was genuinely worried about what the future held for them.

Why does that matter? Well, for one thing, literacy affects your standard of living. The unemployment rate is 5% for college graduates and 15% for everybody else. If you want to improve your standard of living, education is the key. And the key to an education is literacy. So I’m looking forward to donating a share of the proceeds from the Note Project to help promote literacy. I’m also looking forward to telling you about the projects of the organization we will be supporting, which reaches millions of people around the world. So plan on being twice rewarded for participating in the Note Project: writing a note will make you and the recipient feel good, and you can also feel good about helping to make the world a million times better. Literally.

Mike O’Mary is founder of the Note Project and of book publisher Dream of Things.

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No Resolutions

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17 ny resolutions copyby Mike O’Mary

I don’t make resolutions on New Year’s Eve anymore.

Now before you put me in the “Scrooge” category, allow me to add that it’s not because I think resolutions are a bad thing.  For the most part, I think they may be a good thing.  They give people goals, and goals help us live our lives in an orderly fashion.

But we also need hope, and my concern is that too many goals–especially goals in the form of New Year’s resolutions–can have a bad affect on hope.

All too often, we rush blindly from one goal to another or from one project to another without really examining what we’re doing.  I’ve been guilty of this on more than one occasion.  I love to take on household projects–paint the dining room, build some new shelves in the basement, refinish that old table–all of which give me some degree of pleasure and satisfaction, but all of which, if taken on in quick succession, ultimately serve as distractions and diversions from our real purpose here.

What is our real purpose here?  I won’t pretend to be able to answer that question.  But I suspect that our purpose–and whatever meaning there is to our lives–is something we have to discover for ourselves.  Some think meaning comes through the pursuit of knowledge.  Others feel art and self expression hold the meaning of life.  Still others feel that to leave behind a healthy, well-adjusted child is no small feat.

Whatever the meaning of life may be, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to do with a fresh coat of paint on the dining room wall.  Not, as I said, that there’s anything wrong with doing a little home improvement–I personally find it relaxing at times–but we have to guard against letting such projects take on lives of their own.

So I don’t make resolutions any more.  I’ve got enough things I’m trying to do in my life without putting more pressure on myself.  Instead, what I do is to sit down sometime before the end of the year??and hopefully, a few times during the year, too–and think about why I’m here and what I’m doing with my life.  I figure that if I keep working on home improvements, I’m eventually going to have a pretty nice house.  When that time comes, I want to make sure there’s a pretty nice human being to occupy that house.

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things and of the Note Project, a campaign to make the world a million times better by inspiring participants to write 1 million notes of appreciation. “No Resolutions” is taken from his books Wise Men and Other Stories.

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What’s Your Favorite Writing Instrument?

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IBM_5150_PCby Mike O’Mary

Joe Wallace’s FZ post on January 4 (and the Dave Allen post it linked to) offered some good, common sense advice about early adoption of new technology. The consensus was to wait for later versions of new devices like the iPad.

I’m doing my best to wait, but I get a little antsy when I see other people typing on cool little touchscreens while I’m still lugging around my 30-pound Kaypro portable sewing machine computer. (I keep thinking it was a portable sewing machine because that’s how big the case was.)

Actually, the Kaypro is long gone. (Remember the Simpsons episode where Marge recounts how they got their Kaypro after someone threw it off an expressway overpass? That was me up on the overpass.) But I do have a two-year-old laptop that by today’s standards is already considered clunky. I’ll wait to replace it though. In the meantime, I’ve taken to picking up a legal pad and a smooth-flowing pen more often. It brings back fond memories of the times I would sit up late into the night with paper and pen, writing things out in long hand before moving to the typewriter to type them up. Later, I bought one of the first IBM PCs. No hard drive…just two 5.25″ floppy drives. One to run Wordstar, the other to save my files. And one of those lovely green-on-black monochrome monitors. For a whopping $2,500! And that was in 1985 dollars. I used that thing for almost 10 years before finally moving to something with a hard drive. (If nothing else, the original IBM PCs were durable. I still use it to crush rocks.)

Twenty-six years and countless PCs and laptops down the line from that first PC, I now sit here with my wireless keyboard and trackball mouse, creating literary masterpieces (and the occasional blog post) while trying to maintain proper wrist position so I can ward off carpel tunnel syndrome. I also try to look away from my giant color monitor periodically so I can retain just enough eyesight to still see more than a blurry image of myself in the mirror in the morning. More reasons to stick to pen and paper.

So here’s my suggestion for today: Put aside your laptops and iPads for a little while. Try a non-electronic writing instrument for a change of pace. Personally, I’m digging the very economical Signo pen from Uniball and Second Nature recycled legal pads from Tops. Stop by sometime and I’ll give you a preview of next week’s blog post. In long hand.

Mike O’Mary is founder Dream of Things and of the Note Project, a campaign to make the world a million times better by inspiring participants to write 1 million notes of appreciation. Coming March 20, 2011.