The Portable MFA gives you all of the essential information you would learn in the MFA program in one book. Covering fiction, memoirs, personal essays, magazine articles, poetry, and playwriting, this book provides you with:Inspiration and tips on revision, stamina, and productivityClear instruction on the craft behind the artDetailed reading lists to expand your literary horizonsExercises to improve your writing endeavorsBy heeding the advice in The Portable MFA, you will gain the wisdom and experience of some of today's greatest teachers, all for just the price of a book.

    Richard C. Harris, Certified World Class Speaking Coach "An insightful read" ~Dennis Waller, Top 500 Reviewer "Superb communication advice" ~ Larry Nocella MASTER THE ONE THING ALL GREAT TED TALKS HAVE IN COMMON What is the secret to delivering a great TED talk? What is the magic ingredient that makes a TED talk captivating? And more importantly, how can you use those secrets to make your presentations more powerful, dynamic and engaging? To try to answer these questions, I studied over 200 of the best TED talks. I broke each TED talk down in terms of structure, message and delivery. Here’s what I discovered. After studying over 200 TED talks, the one commonality among all the great TED talks is that they contain stories. UTILIZE ADVANCED STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES TO INJECT LIFE INTO YOUR PRESENTATIONS Essentially, the best speakers on the TED stage were the ones who had mastered the art of storytelling. They had mastered how to craft and present their stories in a way that allowed them to share their message with the world without seeming like they were lecturing their audience. DISCOVER THE 23 STORYTELLING SECRETS OF THE BEST TED TALKS In this short but powerful guide, you’re going to learn how to use stories to make your presentations engaging and entertaining. Using case studies drawn from TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Susan Cain, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Mike Rowe and Malcolm Gladwell, you’ll learn how to craft stories that keep your audience mesmerized. By the time you’ve finished reading this storytelling manifesto, you will have picked up twenty-three principles on how to create stories that keep your audiences mesmerized. Whether you are giving a TED talk or a corporate presentation, you will be able to apply the principles you pick up in this guide to make your next talk a roaring success! RAVE REVIEWS FROM READERS "No more boring speeches and presentations" ~ Douglas L. Coppock "A crisp and no fluff book" ~ Kam Syed "A great book on storytelling" ~ David Bishop "Excellent book for any speaker" ~ Dean Krosecz Ready? Then let’s get started...

     The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."

    Whether you've already got a business or you're itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction.Think about it: what if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? What if you could create such powerful positioning in your market that you all but eliminated your competition? And you could do all that no matter how humble your business or budget?Since 1996 Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success.But the success-train was just getting started; once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches.Launch is the treasure map into that world; an almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches.Whether you have an existing business, or you have a service-based business and want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or you're still in the planning phase, this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.Now the question is this : are you going to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?

     24 successful authors. 24 stories to help you turn books into a six-figure calling. Have you tried all the entrepreneurial tricks only to end up back where you started? Are you passionate about an idea that you want to share with the world? Do you wish you could turn a single book into something more? Bestselling author Alinka Rutkowska started with one book and transformed it into a successful six-figure business. But she isn't the only one. Join her and 23 other powerful author entrepreneurs as they share "how they did it" in this once-in-a-lifetime collection of true stories. In Write and Grow Rich, you'll discover how this incredible group of authors, marketers, teachers, and trainers turned the corner with the power of writing behind them. By sharing their best practices, authors Adam Houge, Daniel Hall, Caitlyn Pyle, Marc Guberti, Bryan Cohen, Kristen Joy, and many more provide a roadmap to the steps you need to take to join their ranks. Inside, you'll learn which so-called expert advice to avoid and their little-known tools for faster, more resilient success. In Write and Grow Rich, you'll discover: What these authors would've done differently if they were starting their businesses today How they cope with overwhelm and how you can use this overload as an advantage Key factors for book-based success in a variety of industries How quickly you can expect to start profiting off your writing The skills you should start cultivating to take your business to the next level, and much, much more! Write and Grow Rich is a jam-packed handbook for making your words worth more than you ever dreamed possible. If you like expert guidance, multiple points of view, and down-to-earth education from entrepreneurs who've made it, then you'll love Alinka Rutkowska's authorpreneurial anthology. Buy Write and Grow Rich to start applying time-tested wisdom to your business today! Full contributing authors list: Alinka Rutkowska, Adam Houge, Alexa Bigwarfe, Amy Collins, Bryan Cohen, Caitlin Pyle, Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Christine Kloser, Daniel Hall, Donna Kozik, Debbie Drum, Derek Doepker, Derek Murphy, Jason Ladd, Jyotsna Ramachandran, Kirsten Oliphant, Kristen Joy, Lise Cartwright, Marc Guberti, Matt Stone, Sally Miller, Steve Alcorn, Summer Tannhauser, Susan Friedmann.

    Or at least learn how to fake it. Not at all. There is another way. This book shatters stereotypes about people who dislike networking. They're not shy or misanthropic. Rather, they tend to be reflective—they think before they talk. They focus intensely on a few things rather than broadly on a lot of things. And they need time alone to recharge. Because they've been told networking is all about small talk, big numbers and constant contact, they assume it's not for them. But it is! Zack politely examines and then smashes to tiny fragments the "dusty old rules" of standard networking advice. She shows how the very traits that ordinarily make people networking-averse can be harnessed to forge an approach that is just as effective as more traditional approaches, if not better. And she applies it to all kinds of situations, not just formal networking events. After all, as she says, life is just one big networking opportunity?a notion readers can now embrace.

    I bought this book just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but it blew me away."-- Scott Sigler, # 1 bestselling author"An amazingly rich collection of cutting-edge promotional tactics and strategies. Makes most other books about online publicity look sickly."-- Aaron Shepard, author: Aiming at Amazon"...The one book every author needs to read. I don't care if you're writing a computer book, a science fiction novel or the next great self-help guide, you need to get copy of Steve Weber's Plug Your Book!"- Joe Wikert, executive publisher, John Wiley & Sons "Practical, pragmatic, low-cost ideas for promoting the heck out of your own book, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, technical, business or anything else."-- Dave Taylor, author: 'Growing Your Business with Google'"I've worked with most of America's largest book publishers, helping many of them build online marketing departments. I've worked for authors too. Plug Your Book is the new training manual."-- Steve O'Keefe, author: 'Publicity on the Internet'"...Plug Your Book reveals the most effective and least expensive tools to promote your titles and to increase your exposure. It's the best book on online marketing I have ever read, and I read quite a few in the course of my consulting practice with small presses."-- Marion Gropen, president, Gropen AssociatesHere's what's inside the book:... Taking control of your book sales; Electric word of mouth; Amazon's `long tail;' Personalized bookstores; Book recommendation effectiveness... Amazon Bestseller Campaigns; How Bestseller Campaigns work; Haywired recommendations... Amateur book reviews; Credibility through peers; Amazon Top Reviewers; Negative reviews; Posting trade reviews on Amazon; Fee-based book reviews... Building your author Web site; A survey of author Web sites; Your online press kit; Multimedia for books; Podcasting for publicity; When to launch your site... Blogging for authors; Connecting with readers; Blog comments: pros and cons; Blogging categories; Over the long haul; Blog-to-e-mail service... Social networking; MySpace: Not just for kids; Facebook; Create your own group; Other places on MySpace; More social-networking sites... Tag - You're it!; Personal book tagging; Amazon tags; Amazon Media Library; LibraryThing; Tag-based marketing... Advanced Amazon tools; Buy X, Get Y; Free paired placement; Single New Product e-mails; Amazon Connect; Listmania; So You'd Like to . . .

    In The Multi-Hyphen Method Emma Gannon teaches that it doesn't matter if you're a part-time PA with a blog, or a physio who runs an online jewellery store in the evenings - whatever your ratio, whatever your mixture, we can all channel the entrepreneurial spirit. Today, the stigma of being a jack of all trades is being dispelled and having more strings to your bow is essential to getting ahead in the modern working world and Emma Gannon's book is the ultimate guide in helping us navigate our way towards success.

    Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.

    Despite this, little has been written to help authors hone their craft to truly connect with this audience. Writing Great Books for Young Adults gives writers the advice they need to tap this incredible market. Topics covered include: Listening to the voices of youthMeeting your young protagonist Developing a writing styleConstructing plotsTrying on points of view Agent Regina Brooks has developed award-winning authors across the YA genre, including a Coretta Scott King winner. She attends more than 20 conferences each year, meeting with authors and teaching.

    The story begins in 1973, in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him. From that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a heady moment, but for Kidder and Todd it was only the beginning of an education in the art of nonfiction.Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience—their mistakes as well as accomplishments—to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. They also turn to the works of a wide range of writers, novelists as well as nonfiction writers, for models and instruction. They talk about narrative strategies (and about how to find a story, sometimes in surprising places), about the ethical challenges of nonfiction, and about the realities of making a living as a writer. They offer some tart and emphatic opinions on the current state of language. And they take a clear stand against playing loose with the facts. Their advice is always grounded in the practical world of writing and publishing.Good Prose—like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style—is a succinct, authoritative, and entertaining arbiter of standards in contemporary writing, offering guidance for the professional writer and the beginner alike. This wise and useful book is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one.

    You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a new business model or analyze and renovate an old one.2) Co-created by 470 strategy practitionersBusiness Model Generation practices what it preaches. Co-authored by 470 Business Model Canvas practitioners from 45 countries, the book was financed and produced independently of the traditional publishing industry. It features a tightly-integrated, visual, lie-flat design that enables immediate hands-on use.3) Designed for doersBusiness Model Generation is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new, innovative models of value creation: executives, consultants, entrepreneurs and leaders of all organizations.