by Tom Evans | Oct 28, 2010 | Illuminating
Have you ever wondered where ideas come from and what might stop them coming in?
Take 10 minutes of your day to listen to me in conversation with Susie Pearl, you might just have an idea as a result that could change your world …
[audio: https://www.tomevans.co/podcasts/susieAndTom_001.mp3]
If you haven’t got Flash player or have an iPhone or iPad,
click here to listen or download the MP3 file directly
The Quantum Collapse of Thought
Many people say they have trouble making their mind go quiet in meditation – well if you’ve ever driven anywhere and not known how you got to the other end, you have unwittingly entered a meditative state. This visualisation, which is not to be listened to while driving, will teach you a foolproof technique – enjoy.
[audio: http://www.thebookwright.co.uk/podcasts/collapsingThoughts/collapsingThoughts.mp3]
For more information on Susie, her work, her writings and her workshops, visit www.manifestgenie.com
Just reading her blogs and following her tweets is enough to bring more magic into your life …
by Tom Evans | Oct 26, 2010 | Illuminating
I count myself as being very lucky to be able to do work which I love. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s at least 50% by ‘chance’ that I ended up in this position.
If you met me just a few years ago, you would have met a bored IT consultant … now I’m an author with four books to my name and fast becoming known as a specialist at the art and science of light bulb moments.
Along the way too, I’ve been blessed to meet many special people who have achieved this nirvana themselves. Earlier this year, I was absolutely honoured to meet up with Judith Morgan who turned out to be a specialist in helping people achieve this very goal.
Judith’s running a workshop for Alternatives in London on the 6th November and you can hear us chatting about how to go about running your own “toptastic” business here.
[audio: https://www.tomevans.co/podcasts/judithMorgan.mp3]
If you haven’t got Flash player or have an iPhone or iPad,
click here to listen or download the MP3 file directly
For more information about Judith and the fabulous work she does, visit her web site www.judithmorgan.com
If you can’t make the workshop, I highly recommend getting a copy of Judith’s ebook Creating a Business to Love
by Tom Evans | Oct 19, 2010 | Chatting
If you look around the Internet, you will find no end of advice and tips on marketing. As soon as a new fad comes out, all of a sudden we end up with no end of self-proclaimed gurus with expertise expressed in TLA’s (three letter acronyms).
Surprisingly, there is one influence which affects the result of marketing campaigns which yields no search results yet which has a major effect on the success of any marketing initiative (although I hope the search results will change once this blog is out there).
Now many vintners and farmers have twigged that the Moon has a significant affect on their crops. Sailors are very respectful of the Moon phase as their lives might depend on the height and power of the tide.
Astrologers are somewhat derided by their observance of the Moon phase. One day astrologers and astronomers will compare notes and find there is more common ground than they thought.
It’s the closest astronomical object to us yet, if you asked most people, they couldn’t tell you the current Moon phase – not least it’s distance from the Earth and in which direction it was moving relative to them. It’s almost too much in our faces. Any Martian would be able to tell you that the Earth has 13 lunar months a year and they are all about 28 Earth rotations long (that’s a day to you and me) – give or take one or two. Our man-made calendar obfuscates what is really going on … conspiracy theorists might tell you that this is on purpose.
Incidentally, you can find out the current phase of the moon here … or if you have an iPhone, get one of the many excellent apps like Moon Phase
If you synchronise your marketing (and sales) activities to the Moon Phase, you will find that everything flows with much more ease and customers and opportunities will start to find you … as if by magic. I’ve been doing this for about two years now and have virtually abandoned all other ‘formal’ types of marketing activity.
Now there are two reasons why this works. Either the Moon is having an affect on our consciousness or it’s acting as a big reminder in the sky that we should work through our concepts in a logical manner. If it works, it’s academic if it’s either, or both, of these in operation.
The diagram below shows how to do it:
Step 1 : from new Moon to 1st quarter : engage in brainstorming activities
Step 2 : from 1st quarter to Full Moon : brief the client, get them to buy into your dream or, for yourself, just imagine where this might take you
Step 3 : from Full Moon to Last Quarter : evaluate your options, market test your ideas
Step 4 : act on your marketing plan based on acquired knowledge from the last three steps
and Step 5 is to report back in the Comments here to tell me how you get on
If you want to know more about synchronisation with natural daily, lunar monthly and yearly cycles, get a copy of my new book, The Art and Science of Light Bulb Moments
If you think this is completely bonkers, just try it once before you make that call … if it’s wrong there is no harm done. If it’s right, you may find a whole new way of being and doing.
by Tom Evans | Oct 5, 2010 | Scribing
Blogs that list “things” are some of the most popular and retweeted blogs on the Interweb. Like all these things, there are some do’s and some don’t.
Here’s my top seven tips:
1. Make sure the title is snappy, contains a pun or humour and even try and make it rhyme – kind of like this one
2. Go for something that’s topical – e.g. iPad, Ryder Cup
3. Seven is the optimum number as most people can (just about) hold seven things in their short term memory
4. If you have to list more than seven either rank them – e.g. Top Ten in order of popularity – or group them
5. For grouped lists, three is a brilliant number – e.g. Good, Bad and Ugly or Top, Middle or Bottom
6. Three and five are also good numbers, especially when the list have equal weighting like an equilateral triangle or five pointed star – your 3, 5 or 7 points can also form an ACRONYM or MNEMONIC so the list can be remembered more easily
7. Make sure you end with an invite for others to add their thoughts to the list as I am doing now … please add your tips below
If you want to know more about the psychology of writing brilliant blogs with eye catching and brain-catching headlines, come along to the You Only Have 1 Second series of workshops – details here
by Tom Evans | Sep 3, 2010 | Scribing
Apple announced recently that they’ve followed Amazon’s lead and iBooks can now have audio and video embedded in them.
See the blog on The Bookwright site Do iPad or do I Kindle for more on this …
So with increased functionality in iBooks, I thought it worth pointing out the pros & cons of publishing your ‘work’ as an iBook or as an App.
Why iBook?
If your content is essentially uni-directional – i.e. read, listen or watch only – then iBook is a good route. It is worth doing a Kindle version too though to get on both platforms at not much extra complexity or cost.
The production costs for a text-only iBook are in the low hundreds of dollars and for a multimedia iBook (if you have the assets), about 20% of the cost of producing an app. This means you will be able to get your investment back quickly for a reasonably popular title.
At the moment, authors and publishers need a US Tax ID to submit self-published works – this will change shortly.
Note that Storyist software is brilliant at generating compliant ePub files as is now Apple Pages.
Note also that various aggregator sites, like Smashwords and Lulu, allow international self-published authors to submit to the iBookstore. They will have to catch up a little to support the new format though.
See this blog from Bubblecow for How To Publish Your Book On Kindle and Ipad
Why App?
An app is a completely different kettle of bananas. When you build an app, you can access all the features of the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad operating system.
Apps are interactive and bi-directional. In my opinion, they should be used to either augment a conventional or ebook OR to extend the idea of what a book is about in the first place.
For example, see these App Books and note their main features:
140 Characters – embedded discussion forum for author and readers to interact and inclusion of live Twitter stream based on keywords, Twitter handles and hashtags
Kryo Pro – card set and book integrated with auto-switch between four languages – English, Russian, German and Spanish PLUS ability to email or Tweet a sample card
The Elements: A Visual Exploration – incredible multimedia experience with 3-D rotating graphics
Top 10 City Guides – geo-coded information, latest news via live RSS feeds
Now before you get excited, your investment in an app like these starts at a few thousand dollars. Get it right though and you have access to tens of millions of owners of a device.
Even if you give your app away, the exposure alone can be worth it.
Note also that the other advantage of an App over an iBook is the separate listing on the iTunes store on the web, as opposed to within the iBookstore which is only accessed via the device at the moment. Your app also appear as an icon on a device as opposed to a book inside an app.
This is perhaps not of great significance but you do have your own App URL and it seems to get great Google rankings too.
Note also that as Apple and others allow more features of HTML5 to be introduced, this gap will narrow even more … watch this space … ePub2 will be with us before you know. Great time to be an author and a publisher.
For more information on Susie, her work, her writings and her workshops, visit 
Apple announced recently that they’ve followed Amazon’s lead and iBooks can now have audio and video embedded in them.