Hotel Reservations

I've used Expedia and Travelocity before, but until recently had not heard about Hotel Reservations. The prices they offer are extremely competitive, and several of the destinations have special internet rates that are guaranteed to the the lowest rates available.

The site has more than just hotel reservations, however. There are also a number of vacation rentals available, which can be extremely difficult to otherwise find without going from site to site. They also offer deals on vacation packages, flights and car rentals.

The destinations that I've searched through hotelreservations.com, including New Orleans and London, brought up surprisingly low rates. The last time I went to London I paid a lot more than many of the rates available through the site. For the same price as my tiny room with a four-flight walk up, I can get a four-star hotel in the heart of London through hotelreservations.com. In addition to the range of hotels available, they also include hostels, giving travelers a wider variety of price ranges to choose from.

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The Book Market

It's amazing how hard it can be for an unpublished book writer to break into the market, especially considering what's out there. Literary rejections on display is right on the money with its commentary about the current publishing climate. So many agents and editors turn down works that they like and think are useful, but that would not be commercially popular enough.

Oddly, I think that the non-fiction work I've been querying is very marketable. The subject matter is popular on the shelves, and at least one large publisher is actively looking for titles on the subject. Not only that, but I actually found an angle that has never been covered by any of the current books on the subject. I found an agent that recently sold a book to the very publisher I've been eying, and he did ask for a book proposal. But, since he never got back with me, I'm assuming he's passing.

It strikes me as strange that it can be so hard to break into the market when there are titles like this book that are selling. Oh yeah- I went there. That's what publishers are buying right now, apparently. And, it's doing very well. Who knew?

No More Text Speak

Ok, so I'm old. Well, not super old, but I'm not a teenager anymore. I don't text message. I don't plan to text message. I don't want to get an email written in that cheesy text-speak language that teenagers think is their super-secret decoder ring language. And, I certainly don't want to read that stuff in forums or in blogs.

Only slightly less repellent is the trend toward extreme-conversational style full of slang. In other words, a style that screams "I'm an old person desperately seeking a younger audience- please like me!!" The problem with it is that it won't last, and if the website does, it's soon outdated.

Conversational writing is just a part of most web writing, and because the audience is likely to be all ages, it makes sense. But too many writing sites warn against formal writing- even in your own blog. If you're blogging about something serious, shouldn't the writing be formal? And isn't your blog your own space to write however you like? Silly me, I thought it was. And, these sites don't always take their own advice anyway.

If the subject matter and potential audience calls for formality- write formally. If it calls for a more conversational style- write conversationally. The truth is that there really aren't any rules etched in stone on any mountainside. This is true especially for blogs- until now, that is. I'm going to go ahead and etch a rule about text speak in stone today. If you're text messaging your friends about the homecoming dance and don't want old Mr. Witherspoon to catch you, have fun with cryptic speech. But if you've already turned 18, it's just never appropriate.

Terry Pratchett

I read this morning that beloved fantasy star Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It's all the more shocking when you consider that he's only 59 years old. Terry Pratchett is quoted as saying that early onset cases of Alzheimer's are rare, but the stats I found show that 5 to 10 percent of Alzheimer's cases are considered early onset- starting before the age of 65. That's about 200,000 cases in the U.S. alone.

I am incredibly saddened, as Terry Pratchett is one of the best fantasy writers in the history of the genre. Like a lot of people out there, I have a family member with Alzheimer's and I know how awful the disease can be. Here's hoping for a few more books from Pratchett and a timely cure for Alzheimer's.

I signed up for PPP!

I just got approved at Pay Per Post, so I hope I can justify continuing my blog now. A personal blog doesn't usually make any money, and it can take a considerable amount of your time away from paid writing. But, just about any type of blog, personal or business, can sign up with Pay Per Post and make a little extra for sponsored posts. I first heard about the site from someone on a writer’s forum who runs several blogs and uses Pay Per Post to make money on all of them. There are a lot of bloggers out there who make quite a bit each month with their paid posts. I probably won't be one of them, but a little bit now and again couldn't hurt.

Pay Per Post is an interesting site, and I've learned a lot about blog monetizing by reading the many post offers that are available to members. There are offers from a wide variety of sources- more than enough for just about every blogging category. The blog has to be at least 90 days old and you have to have at least 20 posts to qualify. It also can’t be a blog about illegal activities and/or porn. So, if you have a non-pornographic blog, sign up to get paid to blog.

I Don't Want to Buy a Vampire

"Wesley, werewolves buy vampires because someone is selling them. If no one was selling them, they wouldn't be buying them."

What the heck is that? I have no idea. That was the last line of a dream I had, and the only part I can remember before waking up today. I love those in medias res lines that you can sometimes remember when you wake up. If you keep a notebook next to the bed, you can record lots of weird snippets and strange ideas before they fade away. I have one, but unfortunately the pen wasn't working today. So, I had to repeat those lines over and over to myself as I raced down the stairs to find a pen. Thank God no one was home at the time.

If you have a bit of weirdness to start with, random lines and scenarios can be a starting point for short story or just a creative exercise to get your mind working in the morning. Just seeing what your mind is capable of coming up with is a good way to keep yourself unblocked and ready to write.

Sitepoint, Non-Payers and Plagiarism

I saw an interesting discussion on Sitepoint the other day. A potential website owner wanted to run a news site but didn't have the budget to either hire writers to write news stories or to go out and buy the products that he wanted to talk about and write them himself. Of course, that's a clear indication that he shouldn't do it at all. Surprisingly, person after person told him to simply plagiarize someone else's work. After all, he wants the site and can't afford it.

This case isn't the only one that I've seen like it. Many people tend to get defensive about their budget, even if their budget isn't enough to pay for the thing they want. I'd like to own a Domino's, but I don't have the budget. Should I steal one? Um, no. I can't afford one, so I'm not getting one. For some reason, people can see this clearly when it involves a brick and mortar business. But, when it comes to an online one, many people believe they are entitled to have one even if they can't afford one. This leads to plagiarism, content scraping and people who outright steal other people's work and then refuse to pay for it.

So, what happens if they can't afford to pay their writers, or can't afford to populate their site with any content? They should go out of business, just like any other business person who can't get the capital together to keep going.

It's kind of the same way that I see the fast food industry and minimum wage. If minimum wage was raised high enough to give workers something closer to a living wage, fast food restaurants claim that they'd go out of business. Great! If you can't afford to pay your workers a decent wage then you should to go out of business. If the fast food industry disappeared, teenagers would stop spending half their week doing low wage labor and perhaps go back to their studies. Adult workers would be forced to look into some of the free job training provided by their county (just about every county in the U.S. has training centers free to low income workers) and stop working at a dead-end job. Customers would have to put some thought into their meals rather than buying the cheapest, fattiest food available just because it's convenient. You'd have less obesity, less poverty and fewer hideous fast food restaurants littering the roadsides. It would be better for everyone.

The same is true with websites. If the people who couldn't afford to go into business stayed out of it, the bidding sites wouldn't be littered with weirdos hoping to find someone willing to work for .01 a word. You wouldn't have junk websites hiring people to write garbage in the hopes of making .50 a month through AdSense. This too would be better for everyone.