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    How to Make Money Selling Facts: To Non-Traditional Markets
    How to Make Money Selling Facts: To Non-Traditional Markets
    How to Make Money Selling Facts: To Non-Traditional Markets
    Ebook770 pages9 hours

    How to Make Money Selling Facts: To Non-Traditional Markets

    By Anne Hart

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    About this ebook

    Here's how to make money or a career out of selling facts to hidden and famous markets, nontraditional markets, and individuals in search of novelty, cutting edge facts, or historical facts come full circle. How to Make Money Selling Facts is about offering facts as a front-loading ancillary and a resource for gathering and offering information and resources.

    Facts you can sell can be uncommon news, results of research, indexing publications, finding trivia details, research and findings on recruiting people for medical trials done by pharmaceutical companies to facts on ancient military strategies for historians and fiction authors or facts on success stories and corporate histories, biographies, and news on inside information, interviews, and trends. You can find facts that are important to a few niche markets or to think tanks seeking trends in behavior or technology, and you can sell the facts to trade journals, professional associations, corporations, or institutes.

    You don't have to be an expert to find facts, just gather and glean the newest or oldest facts from experts from different sides. Separate the facts from the opinions and sell the facts.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateMay 18, 2003
    ISBN9781532000591
    How to Make Money Selling Facts: To Non-Traditional Markets
    Author

    Anne Hart

    Popular author, writing educator, creativity enhancement specialist, and journalist, Anne Hart has written 82 published books (22 of them novels) including short stories, plays, and lyrics. She holds a graduate degree and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Mensa.

    Read more from Anne Hart

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      Book preview

      How to Make Money Selling Facts - Anne Hart

      Reserved © 2003 by Anne Hart

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

      iUniverse, Inc.

      For information address:

      iUniverse

      2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

      Lincoln, NE 68512

      www.iuniverse.com

      ISBN: 978-1-5320-0059-1 (ebook)

      ISBN: 978-0-5952-7842-8 (sc)

      Table of Contents

      Part One

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Part Two

      Sell Facts to Fiction Authors as Well as Researchers in Nonfiction Niche Markets or Mass Media

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      About the Author

      Appendix

      Appendices A Through I

      Appendix A

      Appendix B

      Appendix C

      Appendix D

      Appendix E

      Appendix F

      Appendix G

      Appendix H

      Appendix I

      Bibliography

      Part One

      Chapter One

      Ever wonder how and where so many columnists find facts for writing news from outfield or weird news? Or how and where the facts are found and sold to book publishers for reference and resource books? Search through all the publishers of books that contain resources and details of facts on a wide variety of subjects. Pick what you’re interested in and compare that to what the market demands in the way of current and historical facts from around the world. You can make money or a whole career out of finding facts for other industries, think tanks, and research organizations, professional associations, newsletter publishers, magazines and newspapers, and corporations, educational institutions, libraries, and the professions. And you don’t have to be an expert in anything, although it won’t hurt if you are.

      Fact finding and selling means flexible hours. That’s why it’s a great profession for retirees and students, for moms at home, or for anyone who wants to work when and at what location they prefer—indoors or outside. You don’t need special skills or abilities. You need the curiosity to find, package, and sell facts to buyers of information. Fact finding is part of the intelligence industry. As you research your markets, you’ll find out who buys those facts and what is acceptable to charge for your facts. Facts are also called content in the computer industry, fillers in publishing, and intelligence in government and the military.

      Fact finding also is part of the intelligence broker industry and part of marketing communications for the public relations departments of corporations. Facts are wanted in marketing reports, success stories, case histories, and in research and development departments. Consider yourself concerned with facts so new the media has not turned it into a cliché and facts so ancient that historical novelists and medical researchers want to know how whether it works where modern methods stop.

      A good way to find facts is to collect audio or video tapes of conventions or go to them. Conventions, meetings, seminars, expos, and trade shows also are excellent ways of finding buyers for the facts you find and package. Facts can cover a wide range of fields from cooking and antiques to medical and pharmaceutical research trials. Talk to vendors or email them to find out what they need in the way of facts, also called intelligence. Is it marketing reports or case histories and success stories? Cutting edge technology facts? Results of medical trials of new pharmaceuticals? A better way to recruit people to participate in medical trials? Archaeology information? What do the vendors at trade shows and expos or conventions and other events need? Talk to members of national associations and experts. What kind of facts do they want? You’re their finder. Find the facts and sell it to them. Talk to the marketing communications directors and the public relations directors. Do they need to promote their DNA testing for genealogy? Find out what they want and need, and you can research and sell them the facts that will make their wheels run. In other words, the facts you find for them will help them serve their clients and customers and produce better and safer products. This is true whether the facts you dig out are of help to those seeking ancient recipes for vegetarian dishes, finding hostage rescue service companies, senior tour guides, artists using holography in the public schools, marketing reports, or new facts for food retailers.

      Here’s how to make money or a career out of selling facts to hidden and famous markets, nontraditional markets, and individuals in search of novelty, cutting edge facts, or historical facts come full circle. How to make money selling facts is about offering facts as a front-loading ancillary and a resource for gathering and offering information and resources. You look for facts so new the media hasn’t printed or broadcasted it yet, and facts so old, they have come full circle, and you sell the facts to people seeking information and resources.

      You can be any age to sell facts. You don’t even have to see. Screen readers allow you to hear or touch to find, gather, compile, organize, and sell facts to a variety of markets that make their living re-packaging facts to other ancillary markets. Facts can be anything from details and data, research and findings on recruiting people for medical trials done by pharmaceutical companies to facts on ancient military strategies for historians and fiction authors or facts on success stories and corporate histories, biographies, and news on inside information, interviews, and trends.

      Facts you can sell can be uncommon news, results of research, indexing publications, or finding trivia details. You can find facts that are important to a few niche markets or to think tanks seeking trends in behavior or technology, and you can sell the facts to trade journals, professional associations, corporations, or institutes. Facts can be on anything from genetics to why women marry men with personality types similar to their fathers or on any subject for which there is a waiting market for verifiable new or historic details and data. Facts can be about finding flaws in research or finding agreements, and you don’t have to be an expert to find facts, just gather and glean the newest or oldest facts from experts from different sides. Separate the facts from the opinions and sell the facts.

      I make money selling facts. I use a screen reader. My monitor is turned off. I don’t have to sit in front of a computer screen all day, but I make my full-time living selling facts, gathering facts, packaging facts, and offering facts without leaving my room. You can sell facts by extreme telecommuting from your laptop from inside your vehicle, while flying or riding anywhere, from on top of a mountain or in the rainforest or while hiking. It’s not necessary walk, drive, to see or hear to gather and sell facts.

      If you’re a student, you can sell facts from your dorm laptop. It’s a mobile career and you can do it without moving much either. The point is that a wide variety of markets from government to corporations need new facts daily. You can find facts, package facts, and sell the material for a current rate that you set based on what other fact-finders charge and what various corporations and media pay for news and other facts, such as facts and news of particular industries and institutions. Whereas think tanks sell trends along with facts and reports, you can sell facts starting with research to newsletters and trade journals and work your way up to corporations, such as selling facts and news of the medical and pharmaceutical recruiting for clinical trials on new medicines to cutting edge technology and accessibility software and hardware. You can even provide facts on books or any other subject for which there is a market for buying your facts.

      Here’s how you can start your career or business finding markets for facts and finding facts for a wide variety of hidden and well-known markets. Be a factfinder, a marketer of intelligence, news, research details, and data. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re trained or expert in any particular field. And it won’t matter if you’re over 62 as I am, or if you work at home or on the road.

      Sell Facts to Print On Demand Publishers and Authors

      There are several differences that set print-on-demand paperback book publishers on Web sites apart from vanity publishers. The most significant difference is that usually print-on-demand publishers distribute the books. Vanity publishers do not. Make sure that the print-on-demand publisher you choose, if you go this route, distributes your books. And check with the distributor to make sure you don’t have to sell a certain number of books before the distributor will stock your books. Find out what distributors your print-on-demand publisher uses, and ask the distributors whether they will stock your books before any copies actually are sold online. You don’t want to have people walk into a bookstore only to find that the distributor won’t stock your books because you haven’t sold any copies. Do this research before you submit a book.

      Your next step is to convince the media that print-on-demand books are not a step above vanity publishing. Many are from seasoned writers, professionals who write books regularly, and from authors whose popular books have gone out of print. This book and course is helpful for fiction, drama, and imaginative writers as well as other creative people in the arts whose interests converge with cutting edge technology such as Internet desktop and other new media fiction writers, animators, publishers, producers, and designers.

      Print on Demand is new and organizations that are use to dealing with traditional publishers are quick to dismiss these books instead of taking the time to do the proper research to be informed about the authors and the quality books published by print-on-demand publishers, such as www.iuniverse.com or others for which the writer has checked-out several publishers’ standards and the satisfaction of most of the authors published by the various print-on-demand publishers. Check out how the books are selling and interview authors published as well as the publishers.

      Some best-selling paperback authors whose book have gone out of print can now make their books available again through print-on-demand, and new authors of high quality can see print. The $99 or $199 spent to bring a book out in paperback is little paid compared to the royalties from the books that could be earned from bookstore and online book sales. For example, iuniverse.com pays a 20 percent royalty to authors.

      According to a message by Suzanna on iUniverse.com’s message board for their authors, "When your book becomes available, it is available to order directly through iUniverse.com. Typically it takes 1-2 weeks before it will be available to order through Ingram-(the wholesaler we list the books with). As you know books are also listed in Books in Print (BIP). Booksellers use both sources to reference for order information.

      Now once your book is listed with Ingram, booksellers have access to it-meaning an order can be placed. Some booksellers set up their ordering systems (EDI) to automatically check to see if a book is in stock, and if the book is not in stock, a message will appear indicating to the bookseller that the book is not in stock.

      In the case of traditional publishing it can meet waiting time for a book to be stocked. But in iU’s case, it is a couple of days for the book to printed. So what the bookseller needs to do is override their system and place the order. Doing this will trigger the on-demand process to begin. As booksellers become more familiar with ordering POD books, the process should become almost second nature to them."

      The only problem is that when some people that don’t buy books online go to regular bookstores, such as online publisher and many others book stores, bookstores may tell an author they can’t order the writer’s books because the usual brick and mortar bookstore’s wholesaler doesn’t have your print on demand book. Could it be possible that the wholesalers won’t stock POD books until there is a proven demand? Authors who go with print on demand publishers could find that the usual walk-in bookstores can’t order what the wholesalers don’t stock.

      Also, some, but not all, wholesalers won’t stock POD books until they’ve sold in sufficient numbers. Who can solve this puzzle so print-on-demand authors can let people know where their books can be bought other than online from the publisher? Many buyers of novels aren’t online.

      There is room for a business to enter the publishing scene and meet the need for a bridge here, a business specializing in letting the public know where print on demand books can be bought through bookstores for people who are not online and who enjoy traditional paperback books they can take with them on vacation or read in transit. Not everyone has the money to buy hand-held electronic reading devices for e-books.

      And libraries and schools, senior citizen residences, hospitals, learning centers, and community groups as well still enjoy light weight paperback books that can be held in the hand or easily slipped into a purse. Many mature women and men enjoy reading the old fashioned paperback novel or information book in the 6 by 9 or 5 by 8 size that can be easily carried anywhere.

      Here’s where print on demand paperback books fill niche markets and needs. There certainly is room for businesses to open that function as a middleman between the consumer and the bookstore. If large or smaller distributing houses don’t create that bridge and stock books that are new and haven’t yet sold copies, there is room for businesses to create that bridge at no cost to the author. Most writers have less income than a publishing house earning money from many writers. Publishers make money from writers that pay for print on demand services, and publishing houses may earn 70 or 80 percent of the royalties from the sale of the writers’ books. So there is good incentives for publishing houses to become distributors of books to bookstores or to work closely with the larger distributing houses. The goal is to make sure there is no requirement that writers sell books first before the distributor will stock the books. This is one way publishers can make money from authors based on sales of books rather than the fees the author pays for the publishing process and listing in various books in print series.

      What about readers that don’t have computers or aren’t online, and those readers who don’t like to shop online and give anyone online their credit card numbers? Also, when I tried to join a professional author’s association for published novelists, I was rejected because even though my publisher pays me 20 percent royalties on any sales of my books, my print on demand publisher was labeled a vanity publisher. So I can’t even join these associations as an active member and network with other published mystery writers. After forty years of trying to get my novels published, graduate degree, and teaching novel writing for many decades, now online, I feel, well, rejected. Yet my novels are just as good as any one else’s in print. Will anyone ever buy my novels? What about my nonfiction how-to books for writers as textbooks?

      How do you receive publicity in the general media, niche media? If book reviewers won’t look at your novels, and feature editors never call you back from local papers, after writing many books. Does anyone want you in the media as an author or to network with at a writer’s association for novelists in my suspense, mainstream, or other genre?

      According to a message by Suzanna at iuniverse.com on iuniverse.com’s message board, Many booksellers set up their ordering systems to ‘read’ Ingram for stock. Ingram’s iPage will typically show 1-2 books in stock for iU’s books. Once these books are sold, the amount shown will be zero. So if a bookseller’s EDI system sees this it will reject order placement-this is where the override is warranted.

      iPage does note that iU’s titles are printed-on-demand. If a bookseller is familiar with this notation, the order can be placed with little problems. The other option that a bookseller could use is to call Ingram directly. The reps at Ingram could address any order questions that a bookseller may have, and be able to place the order. The reps at Ingram are aware of how the POD process works.

      You have to really brainstorm methods of promoting your book, but it is possible. Let’s now look at a brainstorm of ways to find writing jobs in the digital media. The Fiction Writer’s Bible also is an E-Writer’s Career Bible as well as a guidebook and textbook for traditional publishing-oriented fiction writers. This book looks at content writing jobs, writing fiction online and for multimedia, digital journalism careers, technical writing for the Web, software manual and book writing for most of the genres online and in print, and writing for Internet theater.

      A Brainstorm of Ways to Sell Facts to the Multimedia Industry.

      Multimedia applications are spreading rapidly. Only about 1.8% of the fastest-growing companies are high-tech themselves, leaving 98.2% to the applications of high-tech. That’s why the instructional and info-tainment multimedia markets require so much how-to writing. There are opportunities in multimedia for writers of fiction too, as the medium requires original stories with multiple choices of branching narratives and a variety of endings for different age and interest groups. Here are some suggestions on how to break into this growing business.

      Find a new, small multimedia company and ask to be their writer. Put your writing on CD-ROM used for instructional purposes or info-tainment. Join all the multimedia societies and associations to find prospective employers, and advertise in the multimedia magazines that you’re in the market looking for writing work.

      Attend multimedia conventions and volunteer to be on the panel of speakers on the subject of writing for the multimedia markets. Or help out on the panel of speakers on multimedia writing by selecting speakers. Best of all, teach a course in multimedia writing at the local extended studies program in any college, so people will recognize you as an expert. Call the college and ask for the course development programming director. Then submit a proposal on teaching a one or two day course on how to write for the new media markets.

      If there are no multimedia conferences or panels in your area, rent a room in a college and ask 4—8 speakers to volunteer to talk about multimedia in an all-day conference. Offer them a chance to present before a captive audience and to sell their products and services or at least demonstrate them. Invite executives, entrepreneurs, students, as well as the public at large to take a free or low-cost course on multimedia and the future, writing for the new media, etc. Don’t charge more than $20 a person on your first outing—if you have self-published writing guides to sell or are seeking a publisher yourself, hold a free presentation in a local bookstore.

      Watch the trends and follow the baby boomers as they pass through the python in locating markets for multimedia writing. Transport your skills because your skills or ability is your only job security in the electronic writing market. Contact online news publishers and offer a continuing column on what makes people tick at work, particularly in the new media industries.

      Many employers subscribe to online news and trade journal services for their employees. So articles on behavior and trends or new products pertaining to the workplace are consumed. To read up on the evolution of trends in multimedia, subscribe to research firms’ studies on hot industries within multimedia that are developing or will develop in the near future. And make sure to always look into the application of technology as well as the production of technology.

      How to Find an Online Journalism Job on the Web or Sell Facts to Publishers

      Online journalism is where all the video and electronic journalism graduates are heading. It’s the journalist’s place to be. So how do you get a job in video-making journalism on the Web? Head for the concept of publishing supported by advertising on the Web. It’s a key theme in online journalism career development. Recently, 13 new journals are being released on the subject of electronic journalism job development and online journalism (as trade journals).

      Commercial spin-offs of the Web and Commercial Web lists are growing dramatically. The trend in Digital Revolution journalism is headed toward the maturity in the software designed to make the WWW a news kiosk for computer-based and home-based writers with access providers.

      New products require new writers to repackage the product and write tutorials as well as the news about the tutorials and products. They’re coming from new companies designing for online publishing today what PageMaker and Ventura Publisher did for desktop publishing in the eighties.

      Programs such as NaviPress and SkiSoft allow the writer/designer/copyeditor/ photo editor/sound specialist integrate all parts of a publisher’s home pages on the WWW. Like a desktop publishing editor, the digital writer now creates a page by combining news stories, pictures, headlines, photos, and rules onto a single computer file. This creates new job opportunities for the journalist worried about finding work in a publishing world where daily newspapers are merging and contracting.

      On-line page format jobs require a creator of Web pages using formatting languages that are either hypertext HTML or some new higher octave now in design. This new journalist is a multimedia producer who combines words with hypertext links, formatting (rather than computer programming or coding) each page with links to many other documents, images, and Web sites.

      The jobs for online journalists require knowledge of software and programs that evolved from programs that sprung up in the nineties such as SuperWeb or WebSite. Jobs for home page managers or webmasters, web hosts, etc. are truly new roles that were not in existence last year. The task of this job is to track where individual pieces of home pages are on the local network server as well as throughout all of cyberspace, including many other Web pages that link one idea to another. Why stare at a computer screen all day if you can use an audio screen reader such as Jaws or Windows Eyes?

      Journalists must now train in the Big Five computer applications: telecommunications, word processing of an advanced nature, digital photography, spreadsheets, databases, and geographical information systems. Online publishing careers for journalists and trained writers: those who majored in communications, journalism, creative writing, English, professional writing, and scriptwrit-ing, or related subjects like writing in a foreign language or technical communication/writing or even technical illustration and digital photography or multimedia studies can find jobs in online advertising on the Web, photography, audio, and online reporting.

      Electronic journalism can be about being a news reporter in hypertext or creating photojournalism with digital photography online. The skill level for general assignment reports has been raised to a higher octave. Training must now be in computer-use of html as a writing tool for creating Web pages that give people information for decision making.

      Classes in writing hypertext fiction and poetry are even offered for credit by distance learning from the New School for Social Research in New York, and free hypertext writing classes are available at a variety of Web locations, just ask the Usenet newsgroup, alt. hypertext where to start your downloading search.

      Computer applications for journalists is a desperately-needed course that needs to be offered in colleges and writing schools or even on the Web. Start by contacting the Society for Professional journalists on the Web at: http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/ and choose the Way New Journalism page. To find contacts for job hunting attend Internet World’s conferences. See http://www.mecklerweb.com.

      Newspapers are going electronic and need online journalists to work either at home or as staff in the office. To find out more research the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, FL, (813) 821-9494. If you can’t travel in person, inquire about tapes of former conferences. Attend a variety of conferences from your home by the ‘Net. If not, a trip down to the many conferences on online journalism offered by a wide variety of organizations and institutes there might help you to start networking or job hunting for writing and editing or photojournalism jobs online. Digital journalism offers an electronic, online and often home-based career for writers with staff jobs in the various cities. The news is going online as well as features and columns, books and theater, in a variety of publications.

      Look at the magazine, American Reporter, the online cooperative reporter’s newspaper. It’s on the WWW at http://www.compumedia.com/~albowh/. Digital screenwriters will find excellent job contacts in the multimedia journalism section of the annual ShowBiz Expo West, interactive media writing sections, Los Angeles, call (714) 513-8668 for more information on the Expo. Key: To find magazine jobs in online journalism, network with the trade journals these people read such as the following electronic and print magazines that use people in online journalism:

      Cyberspace Today

      http://www.cybertoday.com/cybertoday/

      Inter@active Week

      72002.156@compuserve.com

      WebWeek

      webweek@mecklermedia.com

      WEB management programs:

      SkiSoft, Inc.

      28 Fairlawn Lane

      Lexington, MA 02173

      617/863-1876

      NaviSoft

      http://www.manisoft.com

      phone 1-800-368-3204.

      ***

      Chapter Two

      Selling Facts to All the Different Spaces

      To Sell Facts, Use Pop-Up Cubes to Publishers or Authors

      The pop-up cube will appear as you create branching narratives. Picture a cube or a pop-up book that snaps into three dimensions by extending the lines along the corner. Three-dimensional writing is in circular time with branching narratives ending in leaf nodes like the curving tree of life. Think of your story as a stack of cards-a metaphor used by many authoring tools.

      Take a deck of blank cards and divide it into thirds-one for each part of your story. On each card, write a different beginnings, middle, or ending for each part of the story.

      Shuffle the each pile of cards so the reader can choose multiple pathways to interact within the story. Instead of linear time, you now have a three-dimensional parallel structure that goes back and forth like a time-travel novel.

      Let the reader choose a different path, or return to the beginning to start a different story.

      The most important rule to remember when designing an interactive story is that there are no rules. Start with a diagram and define the widest categories. Then, refine the story diagram, getting more specific as you go deeper into each story level.

      Interactive writing uses metaphorical thinking to stimulate creative response. The interactive writer becomes a master of flexibility and a weaver of ideas, pictures, and sounds. To adapt a two-dimensional story to a nonlinear script, all you need is the flat square-the linear time.

      Traditional storytelling (with a beginning, middle and end) will still be a necessary skill, but it will become equally important to develop and convey a plethora of variations of the middle and end. Very linear writers will have a difficult time of it. But writers who enjoy constantly asking themselves what if… and who don’t abhor the rewrite process will find themselves better off with the various new media. Scriptwriting is verbal art, whereas news writing is verbal mechanics.

      Humor teaches

      hindsight—

      the best framework is one’s peer group

      caricatured online.

      PROJECT:

      Write in returning cycles to give the audience more choices. Create a short interactive script:

      To write interactively means to write outside of structure and tradition. Write in returning cycles, in rebounding rhythms, like the seasons, the orbits, and the love handles of revolving galaxies. Don’t leave unused your vital components.

      Interactive writing and reading is about finding unexpected connections, to voyage freely over everything that’s new and to broadcast it in different channels. Find new routes and meanings, new uses for old stories, and fresh angles on the news. Work freely with preconscious metaphor, as Lawrence Kubie writes in his work, Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process.

      Writing In Two Dimensions And Adapting One Medium To Another Is Directed Originality.

      Project: Lead Your Avatars On Excursions. How To Do It:

      Make a list of ‘excursions’ to be followed by comments in their margins. The excursion may be a trip into the preconscious mind of metaphor.

      As a writer, you may find ideas by rotating an object in space, turning it upside down or inside out. Look at the inside out from a new angle, and come up with fresh ideas to make it real. The writer rotates all facets of human experience in time and space to find a fresh angle.

      Before you can learn to think and write in three dimensions, you must to learn to write in two dimensions. Picture a square drawn on a flat sheet of paper. That’s two-dimensional, linear writing. However, even when writing at the two-dimensional level, you can begin to experiment by giving choices to the reader or audience.

      Project:

      Move Into Nonlinear Writing As You Learn To Think In Three Dimensions: Nonlinear Writing

      All stories have a beginning, middle, and end that are tied to what came before and what comes after. Writing in flat, linear time-from beginning, to middle, to end-is only the beginning. In nonlinear writing, beginnings, middles, and endings are interchangeable like plug-and-play computer peripherals.

      Project:

      Write One Page In Three Dimensions

      Use a parallel story structure to adapt a news event from the print media to a non-linear story that’s interactive and lets the audience enter feedback for interactivity. Your topic is The bottom line is that writers wear many hats in the new media. You’re no longer strictly a journalist reporting the news-you’re a creative scriptwriter, too. Your one page could be a script or a voice-over narration on the subject of what a non-linear editor does in the new media. The term, non-linear editor, is a new job description for writers of branching narratives.

      A single script may incorporate several frameworks, including streaming audio narration, animation with voice-over, and montage. Other often-used frameworks-including comedy and drama-can be applied to new media presentations, as well.

      The frameworks may vary from one category of facts or segment of the story to the next. In a documentary-style biography, you might include simple animation, backlit negatives, artwork, photos, or a narration to bridge the transitions. The completed project should flow like one piece of cloth with no seams or hanging threads-like liquid, visual music. Using a varied selection of frameworks will help keep the attention of the audience and give the writer more options to set up a mighty conclusion. Be sure the frameworks don’t overpower the information with too vivid an impact. You want the audience to remember the benefits derived from listener.

      Project:

      Write In Caricature When You Move From News Clip To Non-Linear Story Requiring Audience Interactive Participation

      Writing in caricature is the essence of great dialogue writing. No one did it better than William Shakespeare, who was a master of writing dialogue in caricature.

      As your audience experiences the script during its performance, your writing will leap from two-dimensional text to the three-dimensional world of your audience’s imagination. As you write this way, fit your dialogue into imaginary dialogue bubbles above the heads of your characters. they begin to vibrate with charisma. The goal is to give each character the ability to influence, charm, inspire, motivate, and help the audience feel important.

      Using Humor

      The more important you make the audience feel, the better chance humor has of conveying a message of value. You may use carefully chosen humor with serious topics to hold the attention of the audience and to prevent the material from become too dry, abstract, or technical. Humor works well when it reveals pitfalls to be avoided. Your ability to make an audience laugh will increase the marketability of your script.

      Using Drama

      Drama is one of the best frameworks to use for non-fiction and instructional scripts-however difficult to do well. To incorporate drama into a non-fiction script, include a story with subplots framed like those in one of the fiction genres such as romantic comedy, adventure, mystery, or suspense. Ask how the inner mechanisms work. Are facts readily available?

      Does the script allow the leading character or narrator to share only one experience as an interlude of inserted drama in a training video? Educational scripts, sales demonstrations, documentaries, and children’s programming can all benefit from contrasts shown between the frameworks of dramatization, re-enactments, and demonstration.

      Project:

      Develop A Corporate Case History Into An Outline For A Script

      Choosing A Marketable Topic

      If you’re looking for a marketable topic, try writing a collection of case histories with a point that leads to a universal application that all businesses in that industry find valuable. Case histories sell to trade magazines. The trade magazine video and new media script is dramatically increasing, as videoconferencing grows more popular.

      Networking, really working a room of corporate case histories is excellent material to write and sell a first script in the case where nobody hires you as a beginner, to write a script before they see what you can do first.

      Of all the topics that could waste your time, the least likely to remain on your shelf are timely case histories applied to lessons of foresight, insight, hindsight, forecasting, and advice of pitfalls to avoid and strategies or tips to show how a group of entrepreneurs share lessons learned with those about to open their first business in a niche industry.

      Project: Empower Your Interactive Audience With Choices

      To Write A Premise, First Make A List Of Two Columns—One For Concrete Details And The Other To Show How To Arrive At The Universal Application.

      A good script will take the concrete detail and show how to arrive at the universal application. You may use this concept to write a premise in less than ten words. Write a springboard of two pages to outline your point with more detail-and finally, a formal outline that tells the beginning, middle, and end of your story.

      Whether the story is based on truth or imagination doesn’t change its purpose of empowering the audience to make better decisions from timely information. How can I give my story commercial appeal? Write for the ear.

      Project: Back To Linear Writing For Internet Radio Broadcast Scripts:

      Linear writing is required for both radio and streaming Internet audio because the ear hears from beginning to end in a straight line. If you write your script out of order, it still must be organized to be read in linear chunks. Audio writing is conversational writing. Make sure the average ten-year-old can understand it. Read everything out loud before you write your final draft. If it’s not written solely for the ear, with sound effects instead of visual shots, it won’t be clear.

      2. Say it, don’t read it.

      Write the way conversation is said, not the way a script is read. Use large type and spell out phrases like three-feet-by-two-inches. Never write 3’x2". Never make the script reader guess what you mean. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

      3. Write out numbers.

      Spell out numbers one through nine, but use numerals for 10 through 999. Spell out words such as ‘hundred’ or ‘million’. Use numbers above 10 combined with billion-dollar worlds such as 25 billion or 60 thousand. Write out ten thousand seashells instead of 10,000 seashells.

      4. Don’t use symbols.

      Spell out names for symbols-otherwise, they may be mispronounced. Write ‘dollars’ instead of ‘$’ when you want to say one hundred dollars or 100 dollars. Write the full name first if you’re talking about an acronym or an abbreviation, as in World Wide Web (WWW).

      5. Write in segments.

      Audio scripts are written in segments rather than pages. The audio can be played in sixty-second segments until action takes over. Don’t write audio by the page because the segment hears it.

      6. Write the action.

      Write about the action in your story. Back the speech by text and voice, music and visuals. We learn better that which we see and hear at the same time. When text and audio are played together, it becomes a closed-captioned sequence that may be read by those without audio capability.

      7. Write for the narrator’s personality.

      Keep the narrator’s personality in mind when writing an audio script. Let the narrator preview the script and offer suggestions that will make the presentation feel more natural.

      Video On The Web

      Project: Create An Avatar Host For Web Channel Video Broadcasting For Interactive Writing, Move Back With The Avatars

      Create A Friendly Avatar Host.

      Avatars are the animated characters used in 3-D worlds to represent the participants and visitors to the site. On the Web, an avatar can easily become a news anchor or talk show host. Create an interesting personality and animate the avatar so it is perceived as you, your alter-ego, or any other person, real or imaginary. To make the listeners feel more at ease, your avatar may say ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. Your avatar will be the listener’s host, guide, and guardian angel, walking the listener through the talk and talking him through the walk.

      Coordinate the visual and audio effects.

      To make your presentation look and feel less like a Web site, combine your message with supporting sound effects, simple animation, and illustrations within your chosen framework.

      Be consistent. It’s better for the eyes and ears to work together.

      Project:

      Develop A Creative Concept

      Explain it in a sentence of ten words or less as if it were a sales pitch to a busy producer. Brief concepts, like brief premises pitched to producers, are labeled high concept or emotional arc because the high concept idea can be summarized in a short sentence that explains the premise as the storyline of your script. For example, Star Trek is Wagon Train in space.

      Use your journalism skills to write a concept as if it were a headline written by a copyeditor on a daily newspaper working rapidly to meet the time deadline.

      Practice writing high concepts as premises, revealing storylines in short sentences as if they were newspaper headlines.

      Project:

      Investigate how the computer industry is overtaking the media and entertainment industries and merging them.

      All media is show business. Media and entertainment are merging as investors from the computer industry pour billions into both media and entertainment and then move them closer.

      EXERCISE: Write a news article showing how the computer industry is moving into media and entertainment and using the same technology to stir up drama in media as it moves closer to entertainment in writing and production.

      Ideas To Work Into Your Exercise:

      What Do Concepts Show The Journalist Making A Transition From News To Docudrama Or Interactive Scripts?

      Concepts reveal a range of change or personal growth in the characters. Write dialogue in caricature to be visual. Then, separate the high concept from the broader, whole-story-based creative concept. The creative concept is like an all-encompassing net that catches the important events of the story. Think of your creative concept as a Native American Dream Catcher with feathers and beads woven into the memories and facets of your story.

      Projects For Moving Into Scriptwriting:

      What Concepts Do You Find In The Computer Trade Journals And The Business Or Computer Inserts Of Daily Newspapers That Reveal A Hidden, Investigative Story For A Script On What’s Happening As The Computer Industry Moves Into Media And Entertainment? Who’s Leading The Venture Capitalists? What’s Happening To Link The Internet To Satellites In Space?

      Use News Facts From The Computer Industry As Larger Investors Move Into Media And Entertainment To Develop Your Exercise.

      Projects For Developing Creativity In The New Media:

      Bridge the gap between news writing and scriptwriting. Develop interactive creativity and intuition by linking investigative reporting to seeing similar patterns in very different documents. Develop creativity by seeking the hidden technology prototypes passed over by the media because it doesn’t have shock value, adrenal up-drift, or startling statistics. Or seek the hidden creative market in online sports production. Tap avatar worlds and find out how their communities interact interactively. How do they get along?

      Project:

      Write A Piece About How Love Or Hate Is Organized Online At Websites Or Channels. How Are Movements Organized Online?

      Project:

      You’re writing the biography of an outgoing online sports producer or a reclusive online designer of avatar worlds and the relationships or emotions developing within their imaginary, virtual communities. What questions would you ask? You’re assigned to present a 10-20-minute docudrama for a Web broadcasting network.

      Develop a set of questions and locate someone to interview that fits the description of the producer or designer. Interview the person selected and develop a 10-20 minute biography showcasing the work.

      Chapter Three

      Cybersoaps Offer Markets For New Media Fiction Writers In Webcasting Writing Online Soap Operas

      The year 1997 spotlighted successful memoirs books and plays. In 1998, religious-oriented romance novels are in focus. Two years prior, angel books became the darlings of the publishing world. What theme will be in the center stage next year? Find out, and you can write that kind of book if your talents and skills are matched with the current demand for theme-based writing.

      Rivals are rushing in to push entertainment on the Internet. When America On Line (AOL) went into the entertainment business in March 1996, it helped create a new wave of enthusiast fiction and script writers who were eager to see Internet access providers boosting their production of fiction content for entertainment. A dozen new shows fell into the Internet within months. Businesses such as Greenhouse Networks in Vienna, Virginia-AOL’s original content division bought LightSpeed Media, a Los Angeles company that has its roots planted with the founders who created the first cybersoap, The Spot.

      Men such as the late Brandon Tartikoff, who used to head NBC Entertainment has entered Webcasting for the purpose of putting entertainment content onboard and on-bard. He later became chairman of the board of directors for the Greenhouse entertainment network. By the mid-nineties, Scott Zakarin, a LightSpeed Media founder, became president of programming for the network.

      If San Francisco is the heartland of new media for nonfiction writers, Los Angeles is the metropolis for fiction content writing for the online entertainment industry. Cybersoaps focus on using celebrities and newcomers alike and open up new horizons online for fiction writers, especially soap opera scriptwriters, interactive book authors, game scriptors, and related entertainment writers. Those who write docudramas and talk shows featuring celebrities will find new opportunities. New writers will see doors open for the creation of content for sports, romance, and travel shows.

      Entertainment (or intertainment) shows online usually have internal staffs of 40 people, plus freelance writers, when needed. Netfotainment refers to talk show formats and infotainment to cybersoaps and virtual drama (such as virtual 3-D theater online).

      Shows that go to AOL will be accessible on the Web. If you’re a writer who wants to start your own cybersoap entertainment content show and sell your own scripts instead of waiting for a knight on a white horse to come swooping down and grab your fiction, start out by offering online advertising to your sponsors. You will have to focus on negotiating a deal for your content for TV shows, syndicated columns of short stories or interactive fiction and drama, radio, and interactive books.

      Writers need to put themselves in the driver’s seat by giving advice. What you’re paid for is your insight, foresight, and hindsight. You sell information on cross-promotions in order to sell your fiction. You sell insight into promotions, programming, and spin-offs. This is the fastest way to get your writing into cyberspace. You go to companies like Paramount and New World Entertainment and sell them insight, not merely your fiction.

      The insight you’ll be selling the entertainment divisions of the giant corporations along with the new and smaller startups that affiliate with the successful, would be about how they can use new strategies for putting entertainment on the Web. Also target the non-fiction properties and ask if they could use a cybersoap column of continuing stories or drama. You don’t want to produce a show, you want to build giant brands of your work. If you go with the big brands with your entertainment writing, you’ll avoid being eliminated when the competition shake out occurs. Cybersoaps compete for the little time available people have to watch and listen to escape and entertainment fiction.

      With nonfiction writing, audiences are reading you to find information in order to make choices and important decisions. Entertainment writing and fiction as escape or culture competes for recreational time. It’s easier to reach the in-office market with nonfiction, work-related topics. To convince and employer that reading fiction online is a stress-buster during work hours, during break time, or just after closing, you need to sell reality and virtue in your fiction. True confessions and autobiographies online, docudramas, and cybersoaps need their reasons to exist-like bringing in advertising money for the sponsors or developing creativity in a worker by having him interact with the drama or story and finish the ending to improve writing skills, develop intuition and insight, or make people more imaginative at work is fine. You need a selling point beyond being great digital storytelling.

      One way cybersoap writers make money is by creating and buying shows for larger networks. For example, the M3P studio creates and buys shows for the Microsoft Network. A fiction writer could set up a studio that creates the show, writes it, and then buys shows for other networks to bring in the bacon. To fry it up in the pan, you would have to be a talent scout or have a partner who is one and work in the Los Angeles area or have your talent scout be there and keep contact by e-mail.

      You never know when your client decides to cut its work force and eliminate Web sites like Microsoft did in February 1996. Who you need to target as a fiction writer of cybersoaps are Web network owners. Ask the Web networks to build a fiction network around your scripts or shows. You can play out your shows until they peak. Then turn around and sell them like real estate for a six-figure income. Your show can run as long as there are advertising sponsors. After the money dries up, expect the show to be canceled. It’s going to mimic TV and last only as long as money is earned.

      Chapter Four

      Sell Your Fiction To Trade Show Producers

      Cybersoaps are like TV soaps. Only they are tailor-cut t fit Web format-interactive and serialized. Let the audience choose the outcome of the soap characters. It’s the act of participating in the soap drama that lets the viewers change the emotions and endings or the plot and clues, the romance, and the confessions of the characters. Let the audience create the personalities of the characters using avatars and/or video clips or streaming video/audio. Cybersoaps can be successful like radio soaps of the thirties and forties, or be romances in virtual reality theater. The point is the audience needs either to change the emotions and outcomes or clues, or be able to listen without having to stare at a screen and do other work while listening to the soaps.

      Before you try your fiction out on the Hollywood giants, first sell to the trade show producers. Fiction draws people in with cybersoaps online at trade shows and virtual online trade shows. Trade show producers are quick to buy advertising to support cybersoaps. Along with fiction at trade shows, as a writer, you can offer virtual conferences. Trade show producers such as Mecklermedia, Progressive Networks, and the computer companies bring in hundreds of vendors, show exhibits, and listen to speeches. All this audience capturing can create a spin-off for fiction writers.

      WRITE FOR EXTRANETS: THOSE LINKS BETWEEN INTERNAL COMPANY INTRANETS

      So you want to be a lynx. Writing the links is hot stuff. After the trade show producers, target the browser companies such as Netscape Communications and any other forthcoming, because the next wave for the Internet is EXTRANETS. Fiction writers can pounce on extranets and write the links, putting in links of their own as cybersoaps, to put a little stress-busting fantasy into the extranets, to add a touch of entertainment, escape, and elation.

      If most large corporations

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