Is your pseudonym an infringement on someone’s right to write?

As names go, mine is fairly common. There are more Jan Verhoeff’s in the world than I can count on my toes, fingers and match sticks. Some of them are even writer/artists, like myself. There’s a lawyer, a cardiologist and a few other professionals who share my name, and I suppose it could be said that it doesn’t belong to me… I married it. My given name is Irish, so to be perfectly honest, this one doesn’t truly fit me. However, it is the name I’ve used throughout most of my professional writing life. Changing it would be a bit difficult at this point in time, and might damage my professional brand. Thus, it won’t be changed.

So, where does it say in the annals of trademark and copyrighting that one person can use a given name, trademark or copyright it and prevent others from using the name? Doesn’t this in some way fall under the auspiciousness of audacity? You’d think a name is not copyrightable, therefore it can’t be trademarked to prevent another given the same name, presumably at about the same time in history, from using their given name.

I would understand if the name Elvis Presley were to be used as a pseudonym, but I’m thinking Presley Jordan or Elvis Rider would either one be hard pressed to change their names, even as “unknown” as either of them is, if required by some heir to the Presley estate. The concept of disallowing a given name, because it’s been trademarked, to a person roughly the same age as the owner of the trademark seems illogical and rather redundantly remorseful.

Check your name, folks. If you’re using your own name, I say go with it and fight the battle if it comes. If you’re selecting a nom de plume to use in place of your name, trademark that hummer fast, so it doesn’t become YOUR problem to change it.

So what is a girl to do?

This message caught my attention, from a guy who is more intensely interested in marketing online that anything to do with writing. In fact, his writing is a big turn off to an editor, because his sentence structure sucks – as you’ll probably notice in this message.

 How many of these things can you make before the audience turns off?

And the answer is…

… as many as you like.

Because as long as we’re still human we’re gonna like this kind of nonsense. Sure, a given franchise might run its course (but who knows — Batman is still alive and kicking), but the genre rolls on.

In other words, the film MAKERS will get fed up making this kind of thing long before the audience does.

So, what genre do you want to write? Are  you going to write that genre until the end of time? Maybe. If it’s selling and you’re good enough to find buyers for your books, write it. Whatever genre it is that warps your speed, put the words in order, line up some sentences and write those puppies into the outline that SELLS.

Quite literally, if you can start your story, every time, with the same phrase and it sells, don’t stop. “It was a dark and stormy night…” has been grabbing attention since I was a little girl, people like dark stormy nights and you can literally take that story anywhere in the world. So, what are you going to do with your stormy night? Do you think you can get a book out of it? Why not give it a whirl on the old keyboard and see where it goes? See where it ends up?

Let the writer in you go crazy for a little while and see what genre you can fill!

How about you? What is your tempest? What about your life could be a book that might inspire others? Perhaps drive them to the brink of existence? Scare them back into hiding?

During a recent book writing frenzy, I read a few short chapters written by a young single mother, whose experience at the hands of an abusive partner took her down the road to self destruction. Almost. She realized in the nick of time that this road she was on had and exit. She simply had to choose the exit ramp over the stormy path she’d been traveling. She escaped a life of misery and abuse, bringing with her a daughter and teaching her daughter that there were other options.

Not only did the writing of those chapters give her courage, motivation and strength to carry on with a life of better choices, but the story, her book, would soon give her income and profit to help support her daughter. Inside the pages of her book she found courage. Motivation. Strength. And dedication to overcome the abuse she’d experienced.

What about  you?

What will you find in the pages of your book? What will your story provide for your future?

Are you seeking motivation, perhaps you need to increase your skill set? Or maybe you just need a friend to come alongside you and keep you accountable to write your book?

Join our Writer’s Group online and let’s see what you can do. Visit http://acewriters.com and sign in for more information and opportunities to drive your own story forward. 

During a recent discussion, another author and I debated the process of designing a cover that would STAND OUT and lead the reader into his book. He writes a genre that isn’t popular, but is very readable and highly sought by those who love history and folklore. In fact, his book may be best described as “memories you can feel” by most readers.

His book hasn’t hit the mainstream in some areas of interest and some don’t recognize it because they can’t find it.

While there’s plenty of romance in the pages of this treasured book of memories and yester-yore, it isn’t a romance book, and doesn’t fit that genre, but the cover was designed in that general “mode of style” and we’ve talked about how similar the cover design replicates those “romance novels”. So, how is it one finds just the right cover to fit a book that doesn’t fall into the “normal” category?

This article at Ultimate Book Coach talks about various template designs and how they relate to specific genre. The discussion of designers, insinuates that most book covers should be designed by a professional book cover designer because they know and understand the visual appeal of your book and how to attract the right customers.

Professional book designers know several things. They know how to make a striking title stand out from 15 feet away, and they understand why that’s a necessity. They know what colors will make your book in your genre stand out amongst the crowd of other books similar to yours. They know how to combine graphics, pictures and other images in a way that’s pleasing to the eye and directs the viewer to the most important element on the cover. And they know what that element is. They also know what looks good in thumbnail format, how to make long titles easy to read and how to keep short titles from looking like they’re taking over the cover.

An author generally recognizes the RIGHT cover for his book, if he has the opportunity to see it. But most authors are not artist enough to design the cover for their book.

Finding a designer for your book cover who will create a polished graphic using YOUR topic, genre and design concept to produce a graphic that appeals to your audience, attracts attention and drives buyers INSIDE your book.

Jan Verhoeff is a cover designer who specializes in personalized cover graphics that suit the contents of the book.

Cover by Jan Verhoeff

Cover by Jan Verhoeff

Cover by Jan Verhoeff

Cover by Jan Verhoeff

If you’re an author and you’d like to have a special cover designed for your book that will attract readers, drive traffic and bring shoppers inside the cover for a better look at what’s inside, contact Jan Verhoeff.

Nobody wants a book off the shelves that doesn’t speak to the reader. The significant importance of an attractive book cover is the ability to draw a readers eye and take them beyond the cover, inside the book. If you’re looking for that kind of design, you need to focus on what your reader is looking for, and use that kind of design for your book cover.

From social media blunders to web management disasters, Oris trodded through technology like a mule through the muddy pen, slip sliding sideways into the muck. He insisted on knowing how to accomplish technical tasks and deleted his webmaster. Oops, unintentional, but done. Gone were articles she’d posted on his behalf, information and photos she’d added when he zoned on technical details. Out the back door of cyberspace went the creative design of his website, with one slip of the finger on the delete button.

A midnight phone call, an email sent at the desperation hour, and she buzzed through the night, recreating his site, better, with greater designing power (and removing his administrative powers to delete her from the site).

Feisty, spirited and stubborn as a mule, the mule rider moved steadily forward, writing every day, posting consistently, chattering away about characters such as Elmer the Arkansas River Coyote, Buck the saw tooth speckled rooster, or Homer the egg headed goat. His sonnets and stories had purpose. He shared the tales of days when a boy and his mule traveled the back roads, yesterdays when times were good and boys knew when to say, “Yes Maam.” And more than anything, he shared the story of how he became a man full grown.

He could have been famous.

There was a time when Oris thought he wanted to be famous for loving mules. He took a team and a wagon to the Rose Bowl Parade and showed them off. He shared stories with papers across the nation, telling people about Henry the arrogant friend who got him into trouble more often than Oris could get them out. He told tales of Elmer’s bull hidden in the storage shed, and of Anna.

Anna was a neighbor who salvaged mule teams, believing there had to be a better place than the glue factory for teams of working horses to die. She worked hard to feed them, often going hungry herself, thinking she had to keep them alive.

These stories along with many others are wrapped in the magnificent cover of Oris George’s book “Along the Back Roads of Yesterday, which you can purchase through Amazon, or borrow, free of charge with Amazon’s lending agreement.

When Oris gathered up the energy to land his mule loving carcass on Facebook about a  year ago, the scratched at the door and balked at the walk until someone designed him a professional page at Christmas time. He continued to complain and eventually deleted himself off Facebook. (At least he couldn’t destroy everything for his webmaster this time. She’d limited his control powers.) Then, he came back.

Oris has recently been invited to share political views of Elmer the Coyote as he travels the dusty trails of the Arkansas River, avoiding prairie fires, rattlesnakes and the back roads, where mule riders travel. So, be on the look out for coyotes well on the trail. Look for Elmer and his brother Melvin (the good looking one) frequently at Oris George their home on the web.

From those days, back when Oris George was a technical blunder to his current popular status as web wonder-boy writer, you might say, this mule rider has come a long, long way, gathering up speed to arrive at his current status as Web Sensation.

Start out with a keyword effective header/title, such as:

Blog Post – Write Stellar Blog Posts – Really any keywords that effectively drive traffic to your blog work. But the most effective are the ones that bring people to see you because of what you DO.

Recently, a health writer mentioned in his title “Fat boys” as the first two words. People looking to get healthy, probably aren’t going to be searching for FAT BOYS. But they might search, Healthy Eating Habits, or Health Foods, or even Healthy Bodies.

Then create an introductory sentence, something with some attention grabbing language that your readers will want to read — this better be targeted to your reader. Be sure to include some of those keywords in this sentence too. You’ll want at least two keyword phrases in the first 140 characters. For instance, you don’t want an intro sentence that says, “Last night’s dinner made me sick!” if you’re writing about business principles and concepts. And “Profits came pouring in from our last venture capital investment.” isn’t going to impact the mommy crowd at all. So target this sentence to YOUR audience. On the health note, your sentence needs to include healthy food habits, or healthy bodies and good healthy food, or something of this sort.

Write an interesting and information filled blog post with several short, to the point, paragraphs that give your reader a good solid glimpse of what you’re teaching today. A few bullet points might be beneficial if your topic is broad enough. However, this post only needs to cover one concept.

If you’ve posted a blog post previously on a related topic, refer to that post with an active link. Click throughs to older posts are beneficial to YOU and your reader. Click throughs to older posts also network your blog for the spiders and web crawlers to identify any number of important pages on your blog.

Offer a call to action, give them something to do at the end of your post. Write a letter, call their sister, or fill out a comment and leave a quick note for you in the comments section.

Interactive blog posts add value to the reader experience.

We’ll be discussing guest bloggers in the next several days… Be sure to come back for another read!

Here are some quick tips to get you through smoothly.

*Wear comfortable clothes.
*Wear easy on your feet shoes. (Flipflops, ladies?)
*Get plenty of rest the night before.
*BREATHE.
*Take extra pens.
*Baby wipes are great for children with sticky fingers (they’re ALWAYS there).
*Take Lollipops for kids (how do you think they’ll get those sticky fingers).
*A tray of candy or cookies is a nice touch.
*Water? Please!
*Take a backup to take money and pass out books – 2 or 3 if possible.
*Bookmarks? Please do give some away!

If you need bookmarks, don’t have them? Have some printed up.

Jan Verhoeff - here at ACE Writers designs bookmarks you can print at your local print shop, a page at a time, with your picture, your website, your book and your quick bio on them, front and back, or one sided. You decide.

The bookmark on the left is a sample, printed on white paper, this bookmark shows well in a standard 7 – 9 inch book, with links back for those folks who don’t buy your book on site.

Cost per bookmark is minimal and everyone uses a bookmark. Give them away freely.

With your bookmark in their hand, they’ll visit your website, buy more books, or even send books to friends as gifts. Don’t let this easy, inexpensive marketing opportunity pass you by… In fact, give out a few extras. You never know who might give one to Aunt Maude who runs a bookstore across town where she might want to invite you to do another book signing.

Name recognition and brand are everything in this business. Bookmarks promote BRAND reasonably and fast.

Ginger Allen, a woman who spent years substitute teaching in my hometown said, “I wish I could motivate myself to write…”

Mart Smith responded to her, “Ginger, you were a substitute for years, you should write on experiences teachers have with kids.”

A book called The Joys of Substitute Teaching could be borne of this. If Ginger doesn’t write the book, someone else may. Or there may be many books written about this topic, simply because the thought was tossed out into the universe to ripple along in cyberspace until someone grabs on and rides the wave to success.

That’s how ideas are born…

I’d been meaning to get my ezine back up and running, but I was busy writing ezines for other people so I hadn’t done it until this morning. It took me all of twenty minutes. That’s it… Just twenty minutes to create the ezine. Create the sign in page. Create 7 inspirational write prompts, quotes and thoughts, to send out over 7 days, and begin this message.

It’s done. I’m excited. I’m inspired.

Please do visit our Facebook Page and Join ACE Writers on Facebook.

Inspiration is borne…

Jan Verhoeff

I also want to thank my dear friend Jan Verhoeff for her expertise as a web designer, writer, editor, creative graphic artist and best friend. This book was putty in her hands. She designed an awesome website for me and took her artistic talent to a level that I did not know was possible. She worked her magic and created the covers to this book from photographs. She edited this book and resized it so that it was ready for print. Without her help I would not have been able to publish this book in such a timely manner. She continually infuses me with her confidence while teaching me professional writing skills thru her online writing courses. This book is a team effort and I deeply appreciate all of you who had their role in my lifestyle change. 

When Vicki sent me her book, I was impressed by the level of readiness, even before I

Cover by Jan Verhoeff

started helping with final edits. When I went back to the start and was reading through the dedications, I found this paragraph.

Awwww! How sweet!

I love editing books, doing covers, and working my creative magic on websites and other places, but I particularly love when a book cover comes together. No matter how many times you play with a cover, the final toy is always the best. I’ve learned not to get too attached to anything, because there’s always something better. In fact, the last book cover I did — I sent off the final copy to the publisher and three days later, found the perfect cover picture for the book. A quick phone call to the publisher prevented the presses from running and a few hours later we’d changed the cover of a book under contract and AT the print shop. Amazing!

The book is a best seller. Is rocking the reader market and it’s all about the cover. Nobody would have noticed what was inside if the cover hadn’t been attractive and revealing of the contents. Is that about me, my skill, or anything at all to do with what I did on the cover… Of course it is. But in reality, the cover is more about the writer. Until the writer sees and recognizes the right cover, nothing a designer does works.

Designing a cover is really ALL about the contents of the book and how they can be applied in graphic design. Who creates your book covers?