A new book entitled, Indianapolis: A Young Professional’s Guide (available at authorhouse.com) has been released in order to help young professionals better connect to central Indiana. “Indiana has a problem with brain drain,” according to author Erin Albert. “This guide is one of many ways to begin plugging it. What young professionals either moving to Indy from out of state or already here in their college bubbles may not know is that there are a lot of fabulous opportunities for young people to connect in meaningful ways to central Indiana. This book begins to explore some of the important issues relevant to young people and to the city itself, in hopes to retain young, bright talent in central Indiana.”

The 200-plus-page book includes nearly 50 categories of information relevant to the young and/or single professional, including: social networking organizations, farmers’ markets, organizations that promote diversity, and going green. Also, the book features a life science category, entrepreneurship training, leadership training, business networking organizations, and where to receive training on how to work on a not-for-profit board. Finally, lifestyle categories include: writers and writing, organic living, coffee & cake, dining, wine, singles organizations, and even basic media and utility information. Advertisers also contributed to the book who are committed to retaining Hoosier professionals.

“This book grew out of a publication we provided to members of our social networking organization, and we thought it was time to broaden the audience and let the world know that central Indiana is a great place for young professionals to live, work and play,” according to Albert, herself a native Hoosier. “I didn’t publish this book to make a million dollars. I published it because Indianapolis is a great city and it had to be published in order to help get our young professionals connected. If one reader can connect to Indy in a meaningful way through one idea in this book, I will have achieved my goal in writing it.”

Title: “Indianapolis: A Young Professional’s Guide” Author: Erin Albert
ISBN: 9781434361615
Publisher: AuthorHouse
About Yuspie: Yuspie, LLC (Young, urban single professionals of Indiana) is a social networking organization currently in central Indiana. For more information, go to: www.yuspie.com.

…they will help market the book by putting it in their store, as well as selling through Amazon and Barnes and Nobel bookstores.

Read more about Jake at his blog.

“We are making this offer available to motivate authors to start 2008 off on the right foot and get to work on their book,” said Keith Ogorek, AuthorHouse marketing director. “Authors whose manuscripts are at all stages of completion can take advantage of this promotion.”

The free author Web site includes tools for providing real-time news and events about the featured book, content control features like active blog posting, and a portal where readers can purchase and review the book. Additionally, AuthorHouse hosts the site for free.

“A Web site dedicated to your book is an invaluable tool for promoting and marketing your book, and is a key part of our comprehensive approach to helping our authors publish, promote, and sell,” said Ogorek.

In addition, AuthorHouse is providing authors who choose the Standard Paperback Publishing option 20 free paperback copies of their completed book. Special offers are also available to authors choosing to self-publish children’s books and poetry books.

“Authors who take advantage of these offers give themselves valuable tools for promoting their books to the marketplace,” Ogorek said.

“I ought to write a book.” If you are a wannabe author, there perhaps is no better time than the present to put your thoughts into words and those words onto paper.

Print-on-demand publishers such as AuthorHouse (formerly 1stBooks) are making it increasingly easy for authors who are not named Stephen King or John Grisham to get their fictional and works and memoirs into print.

“Our tagline is ‘Get your voice in print,” said Keith Ogorek, director of marketing for AuthorHouse, which claims on its Web site to have “helped more authors publish more titles than any other company.”

Indeed several local authors have taken their manuscripts to AuthorHouse, which provides editing and proofreading services, help with marketing and sales, and distribution and royalty payment assistance — while allowing authors to have creative control over the finished product.

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AuthorHouse announced it will help three deserving organizations this year. The Denver School Museum, SKIP, Inc., and the Rainbow Repertory Theatre will each realize their dream of publishing a book through a standard paperback publishing package grant through AuthorHouse’s Authors Across America initiative.

Authors Across America, designed to inspire literacy and encourage authors to get published, is in its inaugural year of granting publishing services to educational and service-based organizations.

“Through this grant, we are giving a diverse group of writers who wouldn’t normally have access to book-publishing resources the opportunity to have their voices heard,” said Terry Dwyer, AuthorHouse’s vice president of sales. “We’re pleased to help these organizations achieve their goals through book publishing.”

The Denver Schoolhouse Museum of Grant City, Mo., was built in 1878 and is the only two-story schoolhouse remaining in Missouri. Carol L. Parman spent the last four years collecting 250 pages of poems, written locally over the last 150 years. The grant will allow the museum to publish a book of these poems that will be sold to fund the museum’s renovation.

The Ohio-based Rainbow Repertory Theater, an energetic, diverse group of artists and volunteers who participate in traveling theater, will use the grant to assist in publishing a history of African Americans in their hometown of Canton, Ohio.

SKIP, Inc., based in Montgomery, Ala., provides supportive services to children and families of incarcerated parents, and increases public awareness of the challenges these children face. The grant will assist founder and executive director Gloria Jean Canty in publishing her dissertation to help others start similar organizations.

2. Figure out the best time and place for you to write productively – Not everyone works best at the same time or place. Once you’ve figured out where and when you do your best writing everyday, commit to it. One author, for example, stated that he could write more, and better, between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., than he could in the afternoon between 2 and 5 p.m.

3. Form a schedule and stick to it – Now that you’ve figured out where and when you work best, make writing a part of your daily routine. This will help you progress steadily and finish your book much more quickly.

4. Make yourself accountable to someone for finishing your book – Choose someone who will check in periodically and make sure you’re staying focused. It can be a friend or family member; or someone familiar with the process. For example, Author Services Representatives at AuthorHouse have served in this role for thousands of authors. A firm but gentle hand can be all the encouragement you need to finish your book.

5. Create a plan for marketing your finished book – The retail success of a book is often directly tied to a successful marketing program. Put together a plan for how you’ll get the word out about your fantastic new book. Publishers like AuthorHouse provide marketing tools that will make marketing much easier

6. Plan an event to celebrate the book’s completion –Writing a book is one of the greatest accomplishments of your life. Celebrate this achievement by throwing a launch party at your home for friends and family. This is more than a book, its part of your legacy. Take a few moments to pat yourself on the back and enjoy your achievement.

To get more information, visit AuthorHouse.com.

One of the first in this space was Lulu.com who boasts over 10,000 new accounts per week. Unfortunately, the process was either deemed too hard or too confusing for most users with only a handfull of the 10,000 actually completing their book online. Beyond the printing, Lulu doesn’t offer too many other services beyond an ISBN and distribution at a cost.

Amazon even threw their hat in the ring with the debut of CreateSpace.com. Like Lulu.com, they provide an online process whereby a user can create their own book and sell it through Amazon.com. Again, the wheels fall off when an aspiring author realizes that designing their own cover or text pages is a little more difficult than what they thought. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, but it’s the devil in the details that cause many authors heartburn when it comes to this new self-publishing model.

In my opinion, AuthorSolutions‘ Wordclay.com has a leg up on both of these established brands. AuthorHouse and iUniverse are well-versed in helping people along the process to becoming published. Besides, AuthorHouse has more marketing services to offer than anyone in this space which is always the lynchpin in any successful book. Like CreateSpace.com, Wordclay.com can give you Amazon.com distribution as well as visibility to any of the 25,000 retailers in the United States that subscribe to Ingram’s feed.

If you are publishing a wedding book, a reunion scrapbook, or other book where distribution is not a factor AND you are pretty tech savvy, it will come down to ease of use and pricing. If you are doing this new self-publishing model for the first time and you are willing to admit that you are a better writer than you are marketer and layout artist, then Wordclay.com might just be for you.

At some point today you will say a prayer, not floss, take a shower for 10 minutes but not sing in it, drive an eight-year-old car to work, spend 95% of the day indoors and 2 1⁄2 hours online, consume 20 teaspoons of added sugar and not save any money. On weekends, people over 75 spend 1 1⁄2 hours reading, while those from 15 to 19 spend seven minutes.

True, kids are spending less time reading newspapers and books, but 1-1/2 hours vs. 15-19 minutes? I would have to imagine that these stats don’t include the time kids spend reading profiles and posts on myspace.com or facebook.com.

Another interesting parallel, people are spending on average 2-1/2 hours per day online, almost double the time that 75 year-olds spend reading on weekends.