Your life will pass before your eyes. You’ll re-experience its pleasures and pains, longings and achievements, loves and hates. This is not a journey for the squeamish, but those with the courage to walk this road will be wonderfully rewarded. These rewards will radiate out, from you, to your family, to your entire society.

“How can that be,” you ask? “I’ve led such an ordinary life.” Well, that’s what you think! In reality, your life is unique. It is a bridge to the past. Your life story is your finest legacy and an invaluable gift for your family.

Members of your family want to know more about your life than you realize. They’ll treasure every word you write. To them, you are the connection, the bridge, between the remarkable past and the present. You are history, and history disappears if you don’t record it.

You’ve been living through one of the most event-packed periods of human history. From splitting logs to splitting atoms, the 20th Century has brought immense change. You’ve seen it first hand and have thoughts and feelings about it. Now’s your chance to tell about them.

There’s little opportunity today for kids to hear the stories of their family’s past. Not only don’t they experience the lifestyles their parents and grandparents lived, too often they don’t even know about them. Most of today’s kids exist in isolation from their own pasts.

When we’re marooned from our ancestors and traditions that have evolved — within the family, the tribe, the nation, the culture from which we sprang — we’re separated from a meaningful sense of SELF. Kids need the connectedness that comes from knowing their grandparents as people; from understanding their heritage and the basis of their family’s values.

So that brings us to the first reason for writing your life story: to create a legacy for your family Writing your life story is the perfect way to link generations. It’s a voyage of self-exploration – a way to discover more about yourself and how you came to be the person you are today.. It’s equally important for society, allowing others to experience another historical period. In offering younger people the chance to participate in life as you’ve known it, you make it easier for them to understand the forces and values that shaped your life. It can give kids courage. The message they receive is:

Some things in life never change. Some things are scarey, but you can get through them. Look at me! I was just as scared as you are, and I made it. You can, too.

Or: Okay, so you goofed. It isn’t the end of the world. Let me tell you about a goof I made at your age…”

Writing your life story also offers you the possibility of PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION.

As you journey backward through your life you’ll gain new insights. With the passions of earlier moments now behind you, you can review them more calmly. You can begin to look back on your life with more understanding and sympathy — to understand not only your place within your family but your place in history. Not only can you begin to forgive others, you can also begin to forgive yourself. You’ll see your life-so-far in new ways. You’ll begin to see patterns and threads of continuity you hadn’t been aware of. You’ll recognize themes, life-long desires and preferences. Through these recognitions, you may discover hidden meanings and even missions in your life.

You may discover that your personal mission is as family historian. Or this may be only the first stepping stone toward a life of greater awareness, fulfillment and satisfaction in a work which you are yet to discover.

In either case, prepare yourself for this journey’s personal adventure of self discovery!

Excerpt from the audio book, How to Write Your Own Life Story, which explains how to write it, how to get it published and how to gain a wider audience for it.

PatrikaVaughn is the world’s foremost Author’s Advocate, helping writer’s write better and get published. Find this audiobook and others, plus online classes and consulting services, on her website: http:www.ACappela.com. She is listed in The International Authors and Writer’s Who’s Who, Outstanding People of the 21st Century, and has been awarded the Order of Excellence in Who’s Who in the 21st Century

Let me explain:
www.acappela.com is a site of resources and services for writers. As you know, there are probably thousands of such sites up, ranging from such biggies as iUniverse to small mom-and-pop operations. Competition is fierce and writers are rightly cynical of such offerings.

The problem such sites face is how to gain the trust of writers, who are as protective of their works as they are of their firstborn. Many writers have been burned by sites that promised things they didn’t deliver, often disguising their disclaimers in very tiny print. Gaining trust isn’t easy when all you have is your web site presence to convince potential clients.

We do offer hard product — books, audiobooks and online classes — and those have always sold well. The challenge we faced was to create a site that would convince writers to trust us with their works, and to convince them that what they got from us was significant and useful. The services involved are critiquing manuscripts, editing and/or book doctoring them, and, through our subsidiary, Advocate House, to actually turn those manuscripts (once in publishable form) into books. For most writers, this is equivalent to handing their precious newborn child to a total stranger.

Our increase in clients indicates that we succeeded. Here’s how we did it:

UNDERSTAND YOUR OBJECTIVE
Once we were clear on what effect we wanted to produce with our site (instilling trust and confidence in us), the rest was easy. We simply had to understand the following elements, then restructure our site to include them.

TRUST
How do you establish trust with someone who knows nothing about you except what you present on your web site? How do you structure a web site in such a way that it assures people that you are legitimate, competent and trustworthy?

First, by giving them information they can use, whether or not they buy your services. Our site contains loads of information about publishing today, from how to write what sells to knowing today’s publishing options and how to choose the one that is best for your work. People are grateful for this, which leaves them kindly disposed toward us. We have clients who chose us over some of our biggest competitors.

We also offer free samples on the site, through excerpts of all our products. No one is asked to buy a pig in a poke.And to assure them of our qualifications, we list our history of work positions held, publications and awards. When we sum up with “twenty five years of experience in every aspect of writing and publishing,” they have the facts to back up that claim.

EASE OF USE
Though our site contains over 40 pages, it is user-friendly. From the home page, users can go directly to their area of interest. Each page links to related pages and/or other web sites, to help users pursue their specific topic of interest without them having to wade through unrelated matter.

INTIMACY
This is an important element for any site offering personal services. How often have you called a phone number only to be frustrated by a recorded message of options, or had a question about a web site and been unable to find a way to make direct contact? It is vitally important to make your site interactive. Be sure to include an email address (and list it frequently) and perhaps even a phone number and street address. This cuts down on user frustration and helps assure users that you are established and legitimate, rather than one of those here-today/gone-tomorrow sites.

Another important element of intimacy is, of course, trust. We make no extravagant claims.

PROMPT SERVICE
No email to us goes unanswered for more than 24 hours. In some cases a final reply requires some research on our part so we email back, stating that we’re looking into it and will get back to them as soon as we have all the information requested.

LACK OF DISTRACTIONS
We have no advertising on our site. We want the experience of surfing our site to be a one-on-one experience, with no distractions. The money we might earn through banners, affiliations, ads, etc., would counteract the effect we want our site to have on prospective clients.

Our clients range from housewives and retirees to CEOs, consultants and professional trainers. Our site objective is to gain their trust and establish confidence in us. While many will advise you to become an affiliate with other sites, to place banners and other ads on your site, if your service is as individual as ours, I think such things detract rather than add to a site’s credibility.

EASE OF ORDERING
One of the big problems for sites today is dealing with the widely varying computer skills of those who enter the site. How can you make ordering swift and easy for those with sophisticated skills, while not losing those with limited skills?

We chose to handle this by adding a shopping cart. With each service and product we offer, we provide for online credit card ordering as well as mail ordering. We also have a page devoted to explaining the use of the shopping cart.

This has allowed people to surf the entire site, clicking on products and services that interest them, then to look over their selections and totals before actually placing their order.Apparently our maverick approach works. We receive several emails each week telling us what a great site we have. Some of those kudos come from marketing professionals. Our clients are now global, from as far away as Finland and Turkey. Based solely on what we present in our site, these clients have contracted with us to help them turn their works into published books.

If your services aren’t selling at the rate you want them to, consider revamping your site. Become clear on your site’s objective, then list the elements that help produce that objective. From there, look at each page of your site, asking yourself if it accomplishes what you want it to. Your objective will guide you to create a site that sells.

Patrika Vaughn is the world’s foremost Author’s Advocate, helping writer’s write better and get published. Find this audio book and others, plus online classes and consulting services, on her website: http:www.ACappela.com. She is listed in The International Authors and Writer’s Who’s Who, Outstanding People of the 21st Century, and has been awarded the Order of Excellence in Who’s Who in the 21st Century

he was born, grew up, and died.

Such writing merely offers readers lists – of facts, of dates, places, relationships, experiences and accomplishments, what I call laundry lists. Writing like this is dull. It doesn’t involve readers in the character’s life, because it doesn’t give readers the kind of inside information that allows them to get involved with the character. Laundry list writing doesn’t reveal the character’s inner person or tell what that person’s life was about. It doesn’t engage readers because it doesn’t provide the intimate information that brings the character to life, right off the page.

Readers live through your story by experiencing the events and dilemmas you present to your character. You want readers to experience the people you write about. For this to happen, you have to characterize your characters, whether they’re real or imagined.

CHARACTERIZATION
There are three primary methods of characterization: description, action and dialogue.

DESCRIPTION is narrative that simply tells your reader something about your character:

Keith was a tall, unhappy man with short brown hair.

The words and actions of a character, particularly when enhanced by description, can tell your reader a lot about who that character is. Here is Keith in ACTION:

Keith shuffled into the kitchen, ducking instinctively as he came through the doorway. The dishes were piling up and the floor needed sweeping, but he couldn’t find a reason to care about that right now. He pulled a beer from the fridge and sat at the table without opening it.

From this passage we get an impression of Keith’s height from the fact that he needs to duck through the doorway. His unhappiness is hinted at by his shuffling and his apathetic reaction to his surroundings. In a similar way, DIALOGUE can characterize by letting the reader see the character relating to someone else:

Beth clicked on the light and jumped when she saw him slumped over the kitchen table. “Jeez, Keith, you scared me half to death. What the hell are you doing, sitting in here in the dark?” “I don’t know. Nothing.” He ran his hand over his head, spiking his short brown hair. “Did you go to work today?”
“No.”
“You sick?”
“No.” Beth laid her purse on the table and sat down. “Now you’re really scaring me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

All three methods of characterization can be effective. How you use them, and in what combination, is a matter of your personal style and the needs of your story.

Characterization depends on creating word pictures of your characters. This is best done through showing the character, through his/her actions and speech, or through imaginative descriptions that create pictures in readers’ minds.

To create word pictures about your characters, you have to know them thoroughly. Do you know, for instance, your character’s job description? Where (s)he lives, the decor and furnishings? Favorite foods? Treasured possessions? Tastes in clothes, movies, music? How the character sees him/herself?

If you’re writing non-fiction, about a real person or persons, you may already know the answers to many of the above questions. But if you’re writing fiction, you’ll have to create this information. You’ll have to give birth to characters that are consistent, believable people with specific qualities and faults, with specific feelings and histories and needs and desires.

Your characters must seem like real human beings. They must be feeling, caring, striving, failing, winning, hurting. Above all, they must earn your readers’ respect. Readers have seen every imaginable plot, yet they have not learned how your character will handle adversity.

CREATING CHARACTERS Only stress reveals true character. Characters react to stress because of motivation. To ensure they act as you wish under pressure, you must construct their past to set up the desired reaction in the future.

Give them a biography, including a history. The more important the character, the more complete the biography. Print out this personal resume for each character and place it nearby. Include the character’s name, date and place of birth, physical description, age, address, occupation or primary endeavor, immediate relatives, friends and relationships with each. List every facet of their physical and emotional makeup. Build them from the inside out, including traits that set them apart and differentiate them from other characters.

In the history, list the dates and circumstances of pivotal events which have imprinted the character. Think action/reaction. Impact characters with a past event that explains why they react in a certain way to a present event. Not all past events need be revealed. However, as the author, you must know their history. Otherwise, you won’t know how and why your characters react as they must under pressure. If you take the above steps, you will end up with the intimate information that allows you to bring your characters to life.

The above article has been excerpted from the online class, Bringing Your Characters to Life, one of 17 classes offered by Patrika Vaughn, your Author’s AdvocateTM, on www.acappela.com

So how are the other 85% of books sold? In a variety of ways, all of which depend on getting the word out. Here are some proven tactics for successful self-promoting. Remember, the key is to obtain as much FREE publicity as possible through interviews, news mentions and book reviews, Be sure to note the correct timing for each of these efforts.

Local publicity

Create a short, snappy press release along the lines of “Local Writer to Publish New Book.” Include basic data such as publisher, price, date of publication and a phone number for further information.

About two months before publication, mail the announcement to local stores, radio and TV stations, newspaper reviewers – to anyone who might order and/or want to read the book. Chain stores and book distributors (listed under “Independent Distributors” in the Yellow Pages) should be high on that list.

At publication time, follow up with actual copies of the book and an updated release. Make yourself available for interviews, book signings and calls for further information.

Pre-publication offer:
Make up a flier about your book, including a picture of the cover. The flier doesn’t have to be fancy; it can be in black and white (though you could dress it up by printing on colored paper). At the bottom of your flier, print a tear-off order coupon which offers a free reading or review copy and quantities at a discount. Mail this to potential buyers, including:

• Wholesalers;
• Bookstores, especially those specializing in your subject;
• Libraries (the second largest book buyers in the U.S., spending more than a billion dollars a year on books;
• Catalog companies (there are nearly 10,000 – choose the logical ones from a source such asCatalog of Catalogs at your public library).

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone bought a million copies of your book for use as a premium? Look at magazines such as Incentive Marketing, Potentials in Marketing and Premium Incentive. They’ll teach you how to pursue this market.
Special interest individuals, organizations, associations, corporations, museums, specialized stores, etc.

Review copies:
Reviews provide the greatest sales impetus of anything you can do. Reviews are worth your greatest efforts. More than 40,000 books are published every year in the U.S. Fewer than 10% of them are reviewed. You will have to be timely, persistent and willing to make an investment in this endeavor if you are to succeed.

As far in advance of publication as possible, mail copies of your new book (galley copies if possible ~ they’re less expensive) to trade magazines and large newspapers as well as to local newspapers and other reviewers. Send out as many as you can afford. Ideally, this should be done several months before your publication date because reviewers and columnists need reading time. Get these copies directly from your printer. Reviews often contain words of praise for your book which then can be included in your further publicizing efforts. Short quotes from several reviews look especially good on the back of your book’s dust jacket, serving as an endorsement.

Use the Web:
Be absolutely sure to spread the word electronically throughout the world. Most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) include a small amount of free web space in their user dial-up account agreements, however some have rules that restrict commercial advertising in non-commercial web space. Tell about your book and about you, the author, and create links to other sources (to amazon.com, for instance, if you are listed with this electronic bookstore where, with a mere click of the mouse, people can purchase your book). Once you have your home page up and running, be sure to register your page(s) with all of the major search engines so anyone searching the web will be able to find your site and learn about your book.

Conclusion:
The extent of free publicity available to you is limited only by your time and imagination. None of these steps is beyond your ability, and each of them is invaluable for generating publicity thatwill put your book before the public eye.

PatrikaVaughn is the world’s formost Author’s Advocate, helping writer’s write better and get published. Find this book and others, plus online classes and consulting services, on her website: http://www.ACappela.com/. She is listed in The International Authors and Writer’s Who’s Who, Outstanding People of the 21st Century, and has been awarded the Order of Excellence in Who’s Who in the 21st Century.

The above article is an excerpt from her book, Everything You Need to Know to WRITE PUBLISH & MARKET YOUR BOOK.