Category Archives: How To Think Sideways

This is the price for a Short Courses Community membership.
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Thinking of Joining?

Thinking of Joining?

I’ll offer two ways to pay:

PAYMENT PLAN PRICE: The price for a SHORT COURSES Membership is going to be $5 a month for six months. After the final payment, the student becomes a lifetime member at the SHORT COURSES level.

At any point during the six months in which payments are being made, the student can quit and receive a refund for the current month, and will no longer be a member.

SINGLE PAYMENT PRICE: One payment, $30. Student becomes a provisional lifetime member at the SHORT COURSES level. At any time during the first 60 days, the student can request, and receive, a full refund, and no longer be a member. After the first 60 days, the student becomes a lifetime member.

100% of either membership will be applicable to upgraded memberships. Meaning that at ANY TIME you choose to upgrade, you can apply the $30 you paid for SHORT COURSES membership to your Think Sideways or Revise Your Novel memberships; in other words, you can give yourself a $30 discount on either of those memberships. (Likewise, you’ll be able to apply the cost of upper-level memberships to OTHER upper-level memberships.)

This was the price I’d originally intended to charge for SHORT COURSES, and no one gave me a good reason to raise it.

But SHOULD you join?

The price discussion brought up some interesting questions about the community and its value to writers, along with the question, “Why should I join?”

The short answer to this question is, in most cases, you shouldn’t. Most writers are looking for a social venue, and won’t benefit from the community.

The point, the purpose, and the value of the Writers’ Boot Camps Community

I’m going to quote myself from one of my replies in in the price discussion:

I’m already publishing HTTS and HTRYN as individual lessons on the big platforms (the HTTS lessons will go out to Hitch for compiling in about another week, once I have all the links updated in the lessons to reflect the new workgroups and the worksheet landing pages. This is old news. But I don’t intend to charge Kindle’s top 70% royalty price (9.99) for each lesson. I’m coming in significantly under that. (That MAY be new news. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before.)

But my personal statistic (90% of people who get the community for free don’t use it) is WHY I don’t want to charge the maximum amount possible for the lessons, and to use that money to offset the price of community membership: I don’t want people to pay for something they don’t use. In other words, I don’t want ten people to buy the course on Kindle, and have nine of them subsidize the one member who joins the community and gets as much out of it as my active current students do.

So the question becomes…what does my community offer to students that makes it worth paying for, and why will some writers want to join?

And the answer to that is:

The community supports the courses. Period. It isn’t a “social” community. (It has social elements–there are open discussion boards and the writers who use them have a LOT of fun discussing various topics.) This is a hard concept for most people to get, because almost all forums are essentially social gatherings, where people talk about work, but don’t work.

The Writers’ Boot Camps are built around work.

I’ve written something like a dozen courses now (HTTS, HTRYN, HTWAS, Plot, Plot Outline, Character, Language, Culture, Scenes, Dialogue and Subtext, Beat Writer’s Block, Motivate Yourself, Writing Discipline, 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing, the upcoming Mugging the Muse Second Edition Course…, and the upcoming Create A World Clinic) okay, so FOURTEEN now available with two more on the way—MTM: 2nd Edition is due for release next week and Create A World Clinic is due for release when I wrap up this overhaul and get WARPAINT finished…

…And the community is the place where the people who bought the “textbooks” have a live class where they can work through their lessons with other folks who are taking the same courses.

The workgroups are now open, not assigned, and set up lesson by lesson. I’m currently building out the Short Courses boards with the individual lesson posts. (These have been empty until now, because until I had the software with which I could invite Short Courses students to join, there was no point in doing the work of building out the boards.) If you’re already a community member and you log in and go to the new Mugging the Muse: 2nd Ed Workgroup, you’ll see how the Short Course Workgroups will work.

The community is my duplication of the process I used to get published.

This is why I’ve gone to such trouble and expense to build the community and to build a way for new people to join it by choice.

I learned much of how to make my work publishable by belonging to a writers’ group when I was just getting started. I didn’t learn much from what the other members told me about what I was doing wrong. Or right. I learned from figuring out what THEY were doing wrong. And right.

So I’ve set up the community based around workgroups, where writers can present snippets of work that are giving them problems, and receive comments from other students on these. Where, lesson by lesson, they can work through my processes and techniques, and get and GIVE feedback from other students doing the same lessons. And where they can read through solutions discovered by students ahead of them.

This is why the boards are private, why moderators monitor them, why I don’t make the thing public and invite everyone to join. It’s a place for my students who want to accelerate what they’re learning in the lessons by taking what they’ve learned and applying the concepts and principles to work other than their own.

My objectives with the community are:

  • High signal to noise ratio—conversation stays focused on writing
  • High content to filler ratio—the majority of the posts should give students something valuable for the time they’ve invested in reading them
  • High work to play ratio-–the boards are primarily dedicated to classwork, publishing, marketing, and self-promotion, not to general conversation

I’ve managed to maintain that so far…and while eventually I’d like to have enough active students in there to have regular posts on all boards all the time, I want to continue to do that by focusing on quality, not quantity.

And because my purpose with the community is to create a resource that will help writers publish their work, if they spend all their time hanging out on the boards rather than writing, I’M DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

I hope that answers your questions.

How much should I charge for Writers’ Community Membership?
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I’m FINALLY almost ready to open the Boot Camps

Students of my smaller courses have been asking me for a long time if there was any way they could join my writers’ community.

It’s taken me something like two years to figure out a way to do it, and Margaret and I have tested and shot down a multitude of different softwares and processes to get here.

But I’m about ready to open the doors of my private writers community to students other than my Big Course Students.

Here are my questions:

Lifetime membership, or a monthly (or other subscription time) fee?
If lifetime membership, then one payment, or multiple payments, or the option of both?
What price?

So I’m going to show you what I’m offering, and then I’m going to ask you to tell me what a lifetime membership to this level of the community would be worth.

Remember that this is a private writers’ community with a focus on writing for publication. We have (and tolerate) no spam, no trolls, no flames.

It’s moderated, my moderators are spectacular (they’ve all taken or are taking all of my courses, they’re all writers.) The community members are amazing. I attend personally, and once I get my life overhaul finished, will attend regularly as I’m writing my way through my novels.

You can take a peek at the public areas of the community here:

http://howtothinksideways.com/forum

You can take a look at the boards I’m opening up for the new level of membership here:

http://howtothinksideways.com/short-courses-intro

(Most of them are new, because I’m starting to offer workshops for courses that have never had them before.)

So, please take a moment, reply to this post, and tell me how much I should charge for access.

Thanks for your help.

I really appreciate it.

P.S. Here’s what current students say about the community.

What Would You Recommend About Joining the Writers’ Boot Camp Community?
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Holly Lisle's Writers' Boot Camps

Holly Lisle's Writers' Boot Camps

Since my last birthday, when I decided I was going back to writing full time, Margaret and I have been working on a way for folks who haven’t taken How to Think Sideways, How to Revise Your Novel, or How to Write A Series to join my private writers’ community.

Professional Plot Outline is coming out first, NOT How To Think Sideways, because I’m still not done writing the Self-Pub lessons, but I’m finally getting ready to take the first little section of the roll-out live.

So anyone who has taken Professional Plot Outline will receive an invitation to join the writing community in the next few days to a week. (As soon as the course becomes available no Kindle, Nook, iBookstore, and shortly before it will be available in print.

Following them, I’ll open the doors for students who’ve taken the Clinics (Character, Plot, Language, Culture, and Scenes) and the motivational courses.

And then I’ll switch HTTS over to Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and print, followed by HTTS and HTWAS. As each course rolls out, people will be able to join the boards for that course.

There are a lot of writers who are eligible to join the writing community who don’t yet know why they’ll benefit from it.

I know what I love about the community. I love watching writers “get” the process and start succeeding.

But what do YOU love?

If you’re current member of ANY of the Writer’s Boot Camp sections (HTTS, HTRYN, or HTWAS), would you please take a moment and use the comments below to tell other writers why you’d recommend joining?

The Apple iBooks Author Issue: Small things, and large principles
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The short version: I have removed my books from sale on iBookstore because Apple has included a clause in software I don’t use and wouldn’t have used anyway a clause claiming the right to refuse publication on its platform of works created with this software (which is fine and I applaud their right) and further stating that if they reject your work you cannot sell it in the format the software created anywhere else.

THE LONG VERSION:

Here’s the clause:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including
without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

Here’s the guy who found, dissected, and posted about it, along with his dissection, and it will save us a BUNCH of time if you read his article.

So what’s the problem? You’re not going to use the damn software anyway!

Nope. I’m not. But I had ten books up on the iBookstore, which I put there using iTunes Producer, which is software. I do my epub versions of most of my books in iWorks Pages, which is software. And I work on Apple computers, an iPad, and an iPhone, all of which use Apple software. OS X and iOS 5 at the moment.

And the rule of software is this: Software does not get to dictate the use of output. Period. Software does not get to tell you WHERE you can sell what you’ve created, only that you have the right to sell it (in the cases where software requires a commercial license if you are producing for profit).

Software does not get to tell you, “If you create this work on our software and we don’t want to distribute it, we own the rights to the version our software created, and if you want another version, you will have to disassemble this one, and rebuild it from scratch on other software.”

The purpose of purchasing and/or using software is to make your work easier.

It is not to have the software claim ownership of any part of what you have created with it.

There is no difference—except in number of people affected—between a company claiming ownership of the rights to something you created with its ebook publisher, and something you created with its OS.

    The principle is identical.

(Apple is not claiming to own rights to your work if you work on OS X. My removal of my own work from their site is on principle, not because my own work is affected.)

And there is no number of people affected that is insignificant. The smallest minority is the individual, and minority rights protect the rights of the individual because those are the only rights there are.

So THAT is why I pulled all my books from distribution on the iBookstore, why none of my further books or any of my writing courses will be going to the iBookstore, and why I can no longer recommend the iBookstore to my students.

And this in spite of the fact that Apple makes my favorite products in the world, and I hate like hell having to do this.

And if they remove their damn clause and respect the purpose of creative software and the rights of the individual, I’ll go back.

COMMENTS have now been closed on this post.  Please read the follow-up post, and if you choose, comment there.

HTTS Students: Writers’ Self-Promotion Lesson now LIVE
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Lesson 13A is now live on your student page (if you are already to Lesson 13 or higher).

Look for it in the lesson links at the top of your student page, right next to 13.  It will be either 13A or Thirteen-A, depending on the class you’re taking.

This is an enormous lesson which many exercises; by the time you’ve completed it, you will have a full, working self-promotional system in place.

But anticipate that getting through it all will take you several weeks.

Login to your student page:

http://howtothinksideways.com/members/login.php

At the top of the page, find 13A.

Click the link, and download at least the lesson and the resources list.

The other two are adjuncts primarily for students who will be getting images compressed via Kindle, etc, but I wanted them to be available to you as well.

Also, the community boards for building your IBBN (part four of the lesson) are live, and you can start
using them as soon as you get to that part of the lesson.

All the self-promotion resource boards are here:
http://howtothinksideways.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=242

Read instructions carefully BEFORE you post.

Go get ‘em!  And write with joy.

Holly

A pic from my office: My path-to-freedom workboard
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What I have to do to retire from teaching

My office workboard, now with what is probably going to be a two-year checklist in place.

If you’ve taken any of my courses (or read some of my more detail-oriented posts, you’ll recognize me as big on goal-setting, getting a plan in place, and making sure it’s where you can see it.

So the day before yesterday, I erased all the short-term stuff off my office workboard, and put up my BIG goal, which is to retire from teaching inside of two years so I can write JUST my fiction again.

And I put up the steps on how I’ll accomplish this, in order, and with checkboxes.

I love checkboxes.

They’re physical proof of progress. Sitting there blank, they’re a reminder of a step to be taken. Checked, they’re a square on the game board you’ve now covered.

I don’t know how you organize goals, but on the MACRO level, this is how I do mine. On the micro level, I have a notebook I carry with me all the time, in which I keep lists of the small steps that help me accomplish the big steps. I’m pretty close to finishing the first of the four Self-Pub lessons. I’ll check that off on the little list, then make a check on the board when all four are finished.

How do you get from where you are to where YOU want to be?

Oh. By the way, CD II and CD III on the right are shorthand for Cadence Drake 2: Warpaint, and Cadence Drake 3: The List of Three (working title). So my list does include the completion of two novels along with all the rest of the work on the board.

Now writing: How To Invent and Use Your EXCLUSIVE Self-Publishing Genre
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Lesson 7 (and a peek at the HTTS Kindle Cover Art)

Lesson 7 (and a peek at the HTTS Kindle Cover Art)

I’m now writing the first of the special Self-Publishing lessons for HTTS.  It’ll be Lesson 7 in the public course (Kindle-Nook-iTunes if possible-print).  And Lesson 6B in the Legacy course, because I’m a complete wuss and I don’t want to have to totally rebuild the entire course across 12 variations every time I add one of these four new lessons.

This lesson is about how to keep yourself out of the genre box of only writing one character, one series, and one kind of story for your entire career (unless, hey, that’s what you want to do, in which case, have fun with that).  How, instead, to write every book you’re passionate about, love madly, dream and breathe and hunger for, no matter what each of those books is about, where it fits in any marketer’s Big List Of Crappy, Confining Genres—and how to still bring most of your readers along with you.

You can’t bring them all.  But even if you write one character, one series, and one kind of story, you aren’t going to keep every reader you get.

So if you’re hungry to write everything you can imagine, I’m writing the walkthrough now on how you can keep your core readers as you leap from genre to genre, story to story, and universe to universe.

And you don’t have to change your name every time you change your genre.

I’m excited about this lesson.  I paid big-time to learn it, but the price was worth it.  I hope to have it done and available in Legacy HTTS by the end of this week.

Think Sideways Self-Publishers’ Bulletin
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Okay. How To Think Sideways for Self-Publishers is a go. I’ve figured out how to do it, how to keep the price way down, how to put it up on the big platforms (Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and Createspace), and how to get the essentials like worksheets that won’t work in e-book readers into the hands of the people who buy the course.

So this is going to be my first BIG course on anything other than my own site and my own platform.

If you’re interested, and you want to know when the course starts going live on the various platforms, sign up for the notice list below.

For folks who can’t see the Javascript version of the signup box above, I’ve created an alternate page where you can sign up on the HTML version of the form…which won’t, of course, work on the page of WordPress…

The Alternate Sign-Up Form

The special SELF-PUB modules for How To Think Sideways Self-Pub
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How not to be THIS self-publisher.

How not to be THIS self-publisher.

I took a break from putting together a cool HTTS Hotseat today with a writer who needed to know how to create a villain for her story.

Got out a notebook, wrote out the existing modules in How To Think Sideways, and figured out how to streamline the HTTS Self-Pub course.

URGENT!

All current Think Sideways Classic students, as well as all Think Sideways grads,
will get ALL the new modules, and will keep all of the old ones.

If you are in Think Sideways Classic
or have graduated from the class,
DON’T BUY HTTS Self-Pub!

HTTS Classic students and grads
get ALL the old modules
and ALL the new ones.

The modules I’m removing from of HTTS Self-Pub are:

  • How To Discover (Or Create) Your Project’s Market
  • How To Design Compelling Queries, Proposals, And Sample Chapters
  • How To Work With Editors, Agents, Marketing Departments, And Artists, And NOT Wreck Your Project
  • How To Deliver What You Promised And What They Want On Deadline

I’ll be replacing them with:

  • The Special Skills of Self-Pub Market Creation
  • Identify and Connect With Your Target Reader
  • What To Do When You’re Writer, Publisher, Art Department, and Marketing And How To Schedule Your Time
  • How to Deliver What Your Readers Want

 

A low-priced Self-Pub version of How To Think Sideways?
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Discount HTTS for the Self-Publishing Writer?

Discount HTTS for the Self-Publishing Writer?

Self-pub has become the way to go if you want to write and make a living at it. The last few years, my self-pub has paid the bills, and my commercial pub hasn’t. Among commercially published writers, I’m not alone. The majority of commercially published novelists are working a “real” job just to survive.

Successful self-pubbed writers are doing better. You can read sites like http://jakonrath.com/ and http://lethalbooks.com/ and those of other self-pubbed writers who are making a full-time living publishing themselves.

If you aren’t a big name, online self-publishing is the new midlist.

This is the thing I wanted to do with Rebel Tales…

…but what grew naturally out of improving tech and online markets is a million times better than what I’d planned. Why? Because YOU control your career, and you get to keep all the money. You’re not splitting it with a publisher who takes almost everything, and an agent who takes 15% of what’s left.

Sales of Kindles and Nooks and iPads (and iPhones) are all up, and these are all instant-gratification bookstores you carry around in your pocket. Or purse. Meanwhile, print book sales are falling, and brick-and-mortar bookstores going out of business.

What You Need To Know To Self-Publish

There are two types of knowledge you need in order to self-publish successfully.

The first is the technical stuff—how to get ISBNs, how to format your own book or hire someone to format it for you, how to price it, etc.

You can learn that ANYWHERE.

The second knowledge you need is a thousand times more important. You need to know how to write books worth reading.

I can teach you that.

So I’m putting together a stripped-down, just-for-self-publishers version of HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS: Career Survival School for Writers.

How To Think Sideways for the Self-Publisher

The objective of this course is to be about half the price and about 60% the size of HTTS, and to give writers who KNOW you want to self-publish:

  • the writing skills you need to succeed at it, without all the Japanese Bowing Etiquette involved in commercial publishing,
  • to give you the contacts you need to publish your own work professionally,
  • and to get you out there doing it.

Lean, mean, focused.

HTTS Self-Pub will contain none of the stuff on query letters or dealing with editors. NOTHING on manuscript formatting for submission. Nothing on how to write a synopsis or an extended editor outline. None of the walkthrough. None of the frills I threw in like first drafts of my novels. Well, maybe ONE first draft.

It also won’t include on-site workgroups.  To keep the price low, I have to cut somewhere, and setting up and maintaining private workgroups is a major pain in the kiester.  You’ll meet lots of folks in the community.  If you want to create a private workgroup via e-mail on on a password section of your blog, you can certainly do that.

HTTS Self-Pub will include:

All the writing lessons, writing techniques, writing checklists, and writing course videos.

You’ll also get full member access to the following Writers’ Boot Camp boards:

  • Eureka HTTS (you can read this board now to discover what students learn from this course)
  • Renegade Marketing
  • Help!
  • Questions About Your Lessons HTTS
  • Writing Discussion HTTS
  • Idle Chatter HTTS
  • The new Resources for Self-Publishers board, which will hook you up with the folks who do professional e-book formatting, packaging, cover art, editing, and copyediting, writing blurbs, any anything else you need to help you succeed.  (If you OFFER these services, contact me now about getting your place on this board.  Currently I have about 2000 active writers in the private community.)

My objective with this course is to create successful professional career writers in the new Yes-You-Can-Live-On-Your-Writing online midlist.

The full course, with the walkthrough and future upgrades and a multitude of other cool things, comes in two speeds (6 month and 12 month)  and three flavors: Single Payment $399, 6 month subscription 69.95/month, and 12 month subscription $37.95/month.  If your dream is to publish commercially, (or if you want the BIG boost in help you’ll get from the Walkthrough upgrade) this is the course you need. 

The stripped-down HTTS Self-Pub will have one speed and one flavor.  6 months, $37.95/month.

If you’re not, no reply is necessary.

If you are, please post a YES. What I’m trying to do here is get a rough level of interest to decide whether setting up the extra site and revamping the course materials is worth my time.

So all I need to know from you now is, are you interested?

IMPORTANT!

If you’re already an HTTS student or HTTS Grad, you’re getting EVERYTHING in the Self-Pub course, PLUS the walkthrough, the private workgroups, and the Walkthrough boards, blogs, etc. Just log in to get the stuff as it goes live.