Maybe “publishing” is one of those words we take too lightly like the term “authority” simply because we use it so randomly and freely these days.

Even this post is reaching you because I hit the “publish” button in WordPress. And maybe it is publishing in a sense, because hitting that button made it available to the public.

But when it comes to book sellers, or companies like Amazon, the term “publishing” generally has a more profound meaning.

To them, when a document or manuscript is publishable it means its gone through a regimen of strict quality standards and is actually ready to be made public.

There are formatting guidelines, proofreading and editing procedures, readability and entertainment level checks, genre categorization, market projections, and several other quality control standards that are followed before a document is accepted and queued for publishing.

Legitimate publishing companies definitely earn their fees!

So does it make sense for you to self publish your eBooks with that quantity over quality mindset?

Perhaps Amazon didn’t anticipate what putting their KDP system under the nose of at-large content marketers would mean, but they’ve already had to put self publishers on notice they will not tolerate that quantity over quality thing for much longer.

Quantity over quality might have tricked the search engines and article directories into bringing traffic to your sites for years, but even they’re getting wise to it.

Amazon seems to have a much lower tolerance for it though.

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How To Publish A Kindle Book

We’ve all experienced that at one time or another.

Something is taking too long to complete, its just not quite right, or you go through all the work to get a product launched and it goes bust.

Recently I had an idea for a brand new product that at the time, no one had thought of yet. But as I got half way through creating it, several well known marketers had beaten me to the punch.

Knocked the wind out of my sails for sure!

So a lot can happen at any time that makes staying motivated difficult at best.

But you know, it’s just as easy to become complacent too.

Success is an exhilarating thing when it happens. Suddenly seeing your new product go flying off the shelves while your bank account floods with money can really curl your toes.

No doubt about it!

All the things you’ve ever wanted are now right at your fingertips, and you waste no time getting them.

And if it happens to you, you should revel in it. You’ve accomplished something and you deserve your rewards.

You’ve spent all that time working your tail off, staying motivated through the whole process, fretted and worried from start to finish, and you did it.

It’s done, and the success it brought you was worth all the trouble.

Yet now you’re tired, exhausted perhaps.

All the adrenaline leaves your body as your mind drifts off to vacationing somewhere in the tropics.

You picture yourself on a white sand beach, sipping on a pina colada and chewing on a piece of sushi, as your new video camera records your escapades for the folks back at home.

Nothing wrong with that!

There’s a lot of satisfaction in having the feeling of being set for life, even if you know down deep it won’t last your entire lifetime.

Somewhere along the line you’re going to have to come out with something new to keep the success going, but for that moment, all you can think is “woo hoo!”

And that’s the rub, and the point where complacency can set in.

Because the last thing you’re thinking about is staying motivated.

Yet Motivation is the Key to Everything

Regardless of why people gets lost along the way, motivation remains the most important part of starting and running a business.

You can have all the tools you’ll ever need, all the pieces of the puzzle, and all the connections for success. But if you’re not staying motivated through it all, it’s easy to get discouraged, distracted or complacent.

So do whatever it takes.

Keep monitoring your motivation level, find something inside yourself that stirs the passion, make it burn!

Whether you’re struggling with an uphill battle now, or you’ve already reached the top and need to get back into the thick of things again, getting and staying motivated is the only way to get yourself through it.

So constantly ask yourself, “Am I motivated right this very minute?”

The answer you receive will decide everything!

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Success Is All In Your Mind

And so is the possibility of human achievement.

I think we all inherently sense this, thus it’s in our human nature to be inquisitive and want to learn.

Learning what you don’t yet know, in fact, is the greatest way of challenging yourself to fully having the human experience, because every time you learn something new, you expand your reach toward infinite knowledge even if it’s just by a smidgen.

Yet at the same time, you come to understand how long a journey it really is because, for every new thing learned, a plethora of other unlearned things open up in front of you.

Which is where the challenge comes in, and why learning is so cool.

Unfortunately for a lot of people though, this same part of human nature has been programmed into believing the only way to learn is to be told.

However, being told how to do something isn’t the same as actually challenging yourself to learn it.

When you’re told, there’s no expansion of your thinking ability, and no real appreciation for the significance of the information. So in the end, you’re being redirected rather than letting the knowledge add itself to your own experience.

On the other hand, challenging yourself to learn solutions on your own, brings you to the limits of your thinking capacity, and whether you know it or not, expands it just a little.

OK, so I didn’t intend this to become a lesson in psychology.

But the point is, challenging yourself to learn by constantly coming face to face with your level of incompetency, or to put it nicely, your knowledge boundary, is how you grow and come to know what you’re truly capable of.

Waiting for someone to tell or show you, in contrast, keeps you at the same level, because you’re merely relying on some other person’s thinking ability to move you forward.

No growth means stagnation.

After all, one of the most popular books in the history of business is called, “Think and Grow Rich,” not “Let Someone Else Think and Follow Them to Riches.”

However, you are human after all, so it may happen while you’re actively striving to learn, you could reach a point where it’s not in your power to go further.

And that’s fine because, as long as you’re challenging yourself to learn first, you’ll come to know your limits, and so you’ll also know exactly what you need to seek help or advice with.

In this way, you’re in control and much less likely of being taken advantage of!

So if you really want to succeed, challenging yourself to learn by doing your own thinking is the way to get there. If you need help, seek it, but don’t wait for someone to tell you!

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Have You Reached Your Level Of Incompetency Yet?

But there’s a reason why it’s always the dumbest guy in the movie who asks that specific question.

Because the correct question should be “what could I do now?”, not “what do I do now?”

You see, the former is a thinking person’s question.

He or she is looking for options, not directives. It indicates this person already has a plan, but just needs a little advice to move it forward or fine tune it.

Unfortunately, there isn’t all that many coaching programs in the business and marketing environment to cater to this type of need.

Most are more of the instructional types where the “what do I do now coach?” takes precedence with step by step procedures, forcing the knowledgeable among us to sift through it all for the specific options we’re looking for.

OK, I admit it. This is a shameless plug for My Back Up Mentor Program.

But the point is, there are far more people looking for advice to further their own ideas than there are who need to be told what to do in a step by step fashion.

We’ve had more than a decade of “how-to, what do I do now coach” style instructions already. So much so it’s probably safe to say, the majority of anything coming out along these lines now could be gleaned for free somewhere on the Internet.

So maybe it’s time for a more “part time partner” approach to helping people move their businesses forward. Where marketers and other business people can bounce their ideas off someone who can objectively give “what could I do” options.

Or do you believe virtually everyone trying to build a business is just another big dumb jock?

I don’t!

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Are You Hesitant To Ask For Business Advice?

And wasn’t it just yesterday we were being told eBooks were a thing of the past?

Yet now people are claiming to make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling eBooks through Amazon’s Kindle technology.

It’s really amazing how a little technological innovation can make things change so fast in the online marketing world.

Of course we can’t all be the great innovators. Most of us don’t have the resources to put into the research and development, after all.

But do you sometime get the feeling you’re success is contingent on integration of all these new breakthroughs?

Do you really need to jump on every innovative bandwagon that comes along?

And do you need to do so immediately?

If you ask me, there are many great avenues opening up all the time that, if it suits your business model, could be integrated. Some of them could be useful now, while others might come in handy later on.

Keeping up with integration doesn’t mean you have to do it right away, or do all of it for that matter.

However, part of the reason why some marketers are able to capitalize on new technology is because they have a knack for getting you to believe if you’re not keeping up with integration of their ideas, you’re going to lose.

They get you to buy into their concepts, and thus have the money to sink into the next technological breakthrough before anyone else can.

You can’t really blame them. It’s how marketing works.

And you can’t blame yourself for being intrigued either.

Yet in reality, the best way of keeping up with integration is to focus on your business model first and foremost, and only if a new concept fits it should you consider integrating it.

After all, you’re much better off to risk missing out on something new, than sticking every new idea into your business model and befuddling the path you’re already on, right?

And you know, any new technology, as well as any way to capitalize on it needs time to percolate anyway. So give it time, and don’t worry half as much about keeping up with integration as you do building the business model you began with, and you’ll find reasonable integration won’t seem all that hard to do.

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Fads And Trends

However, from a marketing position, one is definitely better than the other.

Now you might think consistent marketing might have something to do with being “constant,” which would lead you to think consistent is the same as persistent, because persistent is definitely constant.

And you’d be correct. Consistent marketing does have something to do with being constant.

The difference between persistent and consistent marketing however, is what you’re constant about.

You see, consistency has more to do with form, while being persistent just means without let up.

So you could market persistently, as some do, sending out promotions for just about anything, day in and day out, regardless of what it is or how often.

But with consistent marketing, there has to be a method to your madness.

Meaning you’d want your customer base to come to expect a certain form, or type of promotion from you.

I guess the simplest example of not being consistent might be, if you’ve developed the reputation of promoting only high quality products, and then you suddenly start promoting some sneaky loophole tactic.

I might be tempting because you’re funds may be low and some people are making a lot of money from it, but it wouldn’t be consistent with what people expect from you.

In this regard, you’d be throwing consistency out the window, and the trust of your customer base along with it.

And this would also be true of the type of advice you give out, the level of intelligence you broach any topic with, and of course, the helpfulness of your message.

So yes, it’s fine to be persistent with your consistent marketing, providing good quality has something to do with it.

Keep plugging away, by all means.

But in this case, it’s not how often or how much you release to the public. Rather it’s what you share, and how true to your reputation and form, or what people have come to expect from you it is.

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Balancing Perseverance In Business

It’s the Japanese art of folding paper to create beautiful 3D models. “Ori” means folding, “gami” means paper.

But just about everyone knows that, right?

Just as most people are aware that Google is very much into advertising.

Yet even though Google makes a lot of money with it . . . that’s advertising, not origami . . . their primary function is content delivery through search.

And so, while they have no problem with you advertising and making money, especially when they can make money from you making money, they put content first above everything else.

Which is why the new Google algorithm is cracking down on sites that are built primary to advertise with.

So in a somewhat elementary problem solving way, Google decided that sites with a lot of advertising above the fold must be focused on selling stuff, and not content based.

After all, if you went to a site and were blasted with flashing advertisements across the top and all along both sides of the page, what would you think the site was for?

It does make sense.

Thus the latest new Google algorithm is designed to devalue sites with a lot of advertising above the fold to “encourage” you to put content first, just like they do.

Of course, this doesn’t really help the “ad blindness” problem most sites suffer with.

But is does make for more appreciative visitors who may be more inclined to buy something from a site that’s better designed to educate, enlighten, or entertain them.

So from a problematic standpoint, the new Google algorithm is kind of a wash if you ask me.

But what do you think?

Apart from those who use WordPress themes with a lot of ad space built in at the top, and who may not know how to tweak it, or those who aren’t too good in the content department, the new Google algorithm doesn’t seem all that troublesome.

It’s pretty much what sites like this one have been doing right along anyway.

Let me know how you feel about the new Google algorithm and what it’ll means to your site, profit margin, or whatever?

To me, it seems logical and not nearly as difficult as origami to work around.

1. Putting a policy in place like the OPEN Act to stop real piracy is one thing, but over all censorship of the web will only hurt honest businesses who can’t possibly control the flow of links coming into their websites.

All it’ll take is to have one unscrupulous site linking to yours somewhere in the background, and you could be subject to investigation, site blocking, and legal prosecution resulting in fines.

2. Implementing what would amount to government censorship through SOPA, will only place the bill in the lap of the taxpayer, and tie everything up for years in red tape as this sort of thing usually does.

3. SOPA and PIPA simply won’t work. Real pirate sites will merely change their address and carry on, while those of us who’ve worked hard to build legitimate sites will live in constant fear of being linked to by bad sites.

In fact, government watchdogs have about as much chance of shutting down pirate sites for good as they’ve had success preventing knock off Gucci handbags and phoney Rolex watches from being sold on any given street corner.

Which leaves you and I to be the sitting ducks, being monitored and scrutinized for running honest businesses.

The Sobering Part

Yet there’s also that nagging statement, “if you’re not part of the cure, you’re part of the problem.”

Let’s face it, there are definitely real crooks on the Internet, and you may have even been subject to product theft yourself through warez, bit torrent sites, or even someone creating a cheap knock off of one of your best products.

But while this sort of unscrupulous activity is surely the worst of the worst, and no doubt the main reason for SOPA and PIPA and their drastic wording, could we also be partly responsible for creating an atmosphere of dishonesty that compounds this?

Now I’m not saying those who’ve proposed these bills have any idea what they’re doing, but it does appear Internet marketing has been lumped into the “ne’er do well” group who they feel need to be monitored.

So while it’s good SOPA and PIPA are now losing some support in Congress, we should ask ourselves what sort of appearance online marketers may be presenting that would attract the attention of those wanting to crack down on bad behavior.

Naturally there will always be shady marketers and snake oil salesman amongst us. Yet if we want to remain free to conduct business as we’re accustomed to in a self monitoring way, perhaps we need to start speaking out more against those who give us a bad reputation.

It’s, no doubt, just a matter of time before some version of SOPA and PIPA passes through Congress. And all we may be able to do about it is lend our voices in protest.

Yet if we want to conduct business in a way that remains open to innovation and productivity, then we should take responsibility for maintaining the integrity of our profession.

No matter what SOPA and PIPA winds up being in the end, if we speak out against bad practices within as much as we decry government intervention, then we’ll at least be doing our part to help keep online business on the up and up.

Nobody likes being regulated from an outside authority, so it’s important we show some authoritative initiative on the inside if we want to stay free.

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Are You Respecting Your Own Authority?

First of all, it’s important to note, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple don’t need you half as much as you need them.

They have plenty of real publishing companies submitting eBook versions from notable authors. So at best, opening their doors to self publishing should be seen as an honor system experiment.

However, judging by the number of people, telling other people like you that it’s possible and even advantageous to publish as many documents as you can, regardless of quality or value, it seems the experiment could be in jeopardy.

Already we’re hearing warnings from Amazon that they won’t tolerate junk for much longer. Apparently they have the means to remove any eBooks they deem insufficient and cancel author accounts for those abusing their system.

And you thought Google Slaps were bad, eh?

So here’s the scoop . . .

The only difference between having your books published by a reputable publishing company and self publishing is where the responsibility lies.

When you decide to go the self publishing route, you’re basically agreeing to do everything any major publishing company would do to assure quality and content validity, which includes editing, proofreading, formatting and the like.

You’re also responsible to insure your document is free of any copyright infringement and has valid permissions for any reference text and/or images taken from others.

Self publishing does not give you the freedom to submit inferior products just to make a buck. It doesn’t just give you a cheap loophole to bypass the expense of legitimate publishing, or a way to cut corners to get your name out there.

In fact, self publishing doesn’t even guarantee you author status, because in reality, to truly be an author means others see you as one. You can be a writer, certainly, but only once your work is appreciated can you claim authorship in the truest sense.

So if you’re not taking publishing your own work seriously, and Amazon or the rest don’t get you first, don’t expect to get very far with that fame and fortune idea.

Do good work, self publish responsibly like you work in a high rise New York publishing office, and you’ll reap the rewards deserving of a legitimate author of note.

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How To Publish A Kindle Book

It’s what turns you, an ordinary person into a thought leader, your visitors into followers, and readers into students.

Your message tells the world what sort of force you are in your market, and whether or not they should take heed of what you’re saying.

So it all sound rather important, doesn’t it?

Actually, your message is THE most important part of running an online business.

But message relevancy isn’t so much about telling people what you know, you know?

Because when you think about it, knowledge comes from the past.

Knowledge is something you’ve learned either from someone else or from your own experiences. It’s based on things that have gone by you already.

And while it may be true, what you know from past experience or training might not be in your reader’s arsenal of knowledge yet. Should your messaging rely solely on the remote chance you’ll come across people who don’t know what you know?

How many people would that be?

The power behind message relevancy comes from the application of knowledge into real time usability. It’s about connecting the past to the immediate now.

So for example, if you’re writing about getting traffic to a web site, or how to use Twitter for the best results, you’d want to present fresh, new ideas based on how things are trending at the moment, rather than spouting off the same old knowledge about it.

Can you really consider new content of old concepts fresh or relevant, after all?

Your message relevancy then, requires you to have your finger on the pulse of your market at all times, so you can conceptualize new approaches as things change.

Now it’s understood this might seem problematic for those who see content freshness purely from a search engine perspective. Yet in reality, the endgame of keyword relevancy is to get your message in front of readers, isn’t it?

And if that’s the goal, wouldn’t it be important that your message relevancy take precedence over the frequency of your posting?

Your power comes from your message, not from your wordiness or your ability to write reams of content.

So focus more on your message relevancy and its thought provoking capacity, and watch how you’ll transform yourself and your business into a market leader.

Knowledge is past, current application is now. Conceptualization is harder than regurgitating old news, but if you want to maintain your message relevancy so your search engine placements reap rewards, it’s definite worth the extra effort!

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Writing Thought Stimulating Content