If you’re still shopping for people on your holiday gift list, I have a great idea. Buy your friends and/or worst enemies one of our new titles, fresh off the press. At $9.99 a pop, you can buy a copy for yourself too.

101 Basketball Tips

The last time I played basketball I was 12 years old. While all I knew how to play was HORSE, today after reading Coach Ray Lokar’s book I feel ready for the pros. This book will help you polish your skills and drills and give you the tips, tools and techniques to take your game to the next level. Now if only reading a book could get me in shape.

101 Puppy-Buying Tips

Dog lover and puppy-buying professional Roseann Benson answers all your questions about choosing that puppy in the window. She brings her experience raising her Newfoundland, Cleo, to these bite-size tips any puppy person can chew on, from the Norfolk terrier neophyte to the Greyhound guru. Nice tiara, Cleo!

101 Tips on Creating a Successful PR Campaign

Have a story to tell? Get it out into the public eye with Mary White’s PR campaign tips. Her practical advice will teach you how to make any story newsworthy, how to write an effective press release and where to send it. After all, if a press release falls in a forest…

So, you wrote a 101-tip book with LifeTips and now you want to get paid. Here’s how our payment process works:

·         Once your book is on Amazon.com and LifeTips.com and available for purchase at Barnes & Noble and Borders, every time someone orders your book you make $2 on the $9.99 retail sale. Royalty checks are sent out quarterly.

·         When authors order books through their editor, they get a $3 discount per book. When you sell these books for their $9.99 retail value, you make your $3 per-book profit.

·         If you are an aggressive marketer—our favorite kind of author—and you get a group or corporation to order a large quantity of books, you have the opportunity to earn even more money per book. The specific amount would depend on the size of the order. Ask your editor if this occasion arises.

If you haven’t published a book with LifeTips yet, here’s some advice. Gurus should not only offer us a detailed outline of their book, they should also give us a detailed outline of their book marketing plan. LifeTips does not have a marketing or PR department for the book division, thus we ask our authors to take the initiative and submit their book to local retailers and literary competitions, as well as coordinate author readings and book signings at local libraries and cafes. We have had several extremely successful books, and the common thread was the authors’ knack to get their book out in the public eye.

To all of our great writers who were able to phone in for our Monthly Writer's Call-In, I'm very happy that you were able to join us.

And to anyone who was not able to join us, no worries! You can still listen in to the call to get all of the updates from LifeTips. President and Founder of LifeTips, Byron White, and myself, Amanda Smyth, hosted the Call-In and we were so happy to have the chance to meet so many of you via the phone. We here at LifeTips are working hard for you. We are always looking for new ways to promote better job opportunities for our writers and to get everyone involved in the writer's community. Whether you are an expert freelancer or a newbie to the writing world, we can help you. 

So, I encourage everyone to log in to your account at LifeTips and to listen to the MP3 recording of the Call-In. The link to the MP3's can be found on the left hand side of your screen after you log in.

Next month's call will be hosted by the LifeTips Editorial Team which consists of Amanda Smyth and Carolyn McKibbin. After all, shouldn't you know who is editing your work? We will be hosting a call in June during which time we will go over some of the FAQ's that we get, such as: how payment works, how our sliding scale of payment works, how we judge your work, how you can get better jobs through LifeTips, and what the heck do we mean when we say "GIVE US MORE C.O.W.B.E.L.L.?" As well as any other questions that need answering.  

So stay tuned for more info and if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us! 

Aside from moving into our superfly new office in the North End of Boston (and the fact that we have all gained 5lbs from the cannolis and cappuccinos), LifeTips is knee deep in new technology and great changes. All for the better! We currently have the best pool of writers that we've ever had and our writers community is coming together like never before. Keep up the good work, Writers! Keep updating your profiles, keep checking the job board every day and look for a new job board to be posted within the next few days. Our second job board will feature job listings that we expect will be coming through within the next month (this will give you a chance to jump on a project early. It's ok to call "DIBS!")

We will also be hosting a conference call with our Writer's Community on May 1st at 5pm. All of our writers have received an invitation to this, and if you happen to miss it, don't feel too bad. We will repost the call on our site later. The phone-in will feature Byron White, President and Founder of LifeTips. He will guide our writers through our new changes and he will offer great tips on how to get more involved and make yourself more marketable through LifeTips.  

So my tip to you Writers is to get active, get involved and get noticed on LifeTips via our Writers community! We look forward to working with each and every one of you.