1. Your book progress
2. Getting published
3. Books arriving
4. Endorsements and testimonials
5. Interviews and media coverage
6. Being listed on Amazon.com
7. Your Amazon.com bestseller campaign
8. Support other authors books
9. Have guest bloggers promote your book and theirs

Blogs -

WordPress Blog (http://www.wordpress.com)

TypePad (http://www.typepad.com)

Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

Create –

1. A profile to your account and your picture
2. Add your website and contact information under “About Me”
3. Add reviews of books
4. Create a book list with Listmania
5. Invite friends
6. Create tags for products and books
7. Post reviews
8. Add favorite items (your books and other authors you support)
9. A reminder on the calendar for upcoming events – like your Amazon.com bestseller campaign!
10. A blog connection on your profile

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

Podcasting  -

1.  Is an intimate marketing tool. You speak directly to your target market.

2.  Is a great tool to reinforce your message to your niche audience and readers.

3.  Can expand your brand and book awareness.

4.  Is portable and available 24/7 to everybody in the world (honest!).

5.  Can have a subscriber to generating passive income.

6.  Can provide added revenue through sponsorships and affiliations.

7. Is easy and fun to do!

The length of your podcast will depend on your audience and topic. Generally speaking a 10 to 15 minute podcast posted twice a week is sufficient to keep you in front of your audience and build your brand.

Some links to investigate:

www.bloggerandpodcaster.com

www.blogworldexpo.com

www.google.com/reader

http://www.mybusinessbookstore.com/ThePodcastingStore/

http://www.virtualassist.net/PodcastersCorner.htm

Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

We all know the standard pen and notebook but I would like to point out how to employ today's technology to capture these elusive pieces.

Digital recorder - Many new models are very small and easy to use. Download the audio right to your computer for future transcription.

PDA or cell phone - Send yourself a text or e-mail message. Some PDAs have word processor or note applications that download right into your computer too.

Phone - Leave yourself a voicemail.

From work - E-mail your home e-mail address or set up a GMail or Yahoo e-mail address just for your writing.

Pen and Notebook - The old standard. You might buy a notebook for each writing project or simply buy one notebook with several divider tabs.

No matter what technology you choose, don't leave yourself any excuse for not writing!

Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author's Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

If you have the skills and experience, transcribing is a great niche, or a great area to focus on while building your clientèle in other areas of virtual assisting.

Contrary to popular belief a transcriptionist is more than just a “typist.” We have to be excellent spellers, be patient, be able to decipher various accents and dialects. We have to have a great eye and be a good proofreader. We have to be able to listen to people speak, use a foot pedal, type at the same time, and be relatively quick about it. And a good transcriber should be an intermediate to advanced user of Microsoft Word.

There are a wide variety of areas where your transcription skills can be put to use; some requiring experience in the area, such as legal and medical transcription, and some not, such as transcribing meetings, focus groups, and interviews, author’s notes, et cetera.

As a transcriptionist that types projects frequently with a lot of scientific and medical jargon, one resource I have found has truly been a lifesaver. It’s Google Suggest http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en . As you type a word it “suggests” correct spellings. There hasn’t been a word yet that it hasn’t found for me (well maybe one or two doozies!). Clients often comment on how impressed they are with how well I do with spelling the difficult words. The cat’s out the bag–Google Suggest is my secret weapon.

How Fast Are You?

The question should be, “how fast do you need to be?” The answer depends on your client. I have some clients who require a fast turnaround of 24 to 48 hours on two to four hours of audio. How fast you can complete the job depends on a variety of factors. Is the audio clear? Do you have to start and stop to look up words a lot? Best case scenario, it takes me two and a half to three hours to transcribe one hour of audio…I said BEST case scenario and I type 85 wpm. Worst case scenario, it has taken me up to six hours to transcribe one hour of audio — it was horrible. Speakers weren’t speaking in the microphone; multiple speakers with very heavy accents, I had to keep going back to try and figure out what was being said. You get the picture. Some transcribers will simply put “inaudible” and continue moving forward, and sometimes so will I. but it absolutely drives me crazy to not be able to figure it out. So most times, if I feel I can do it and still meet the deadline, I will try to decipher the word(s), and clients appreciate the extra effort.

If you type less than 65 wpm accurately and can’t say honestly that all of the above attributes apply to you, transcribing is probably not a good area for you to focus on!

Before accepting an transcription assignment, you should ask the client these questions:

1. Is the audio fairly clear?
2. Do you have a sample format?
3. Is there a lot of non-standard jargon (i.e., scientific, medical, et cetera?)
4. Do you require a thorough proofing (i.e., reading the document while listening to the tape after you’ve finished the transcription)

Depending on the answers to those questions, I then determine how long it is going to take me to complete an assignment.

You can bill per hour, minute, per line, or per character.  It's important to note that generally, when you charge per hour, it is not how many hours you take to type the project, but the length of the audio.  So you charge per audio hour.  What you earn when charging per audio hour really depends on how fast you type and how fast you complete the job.  I prefer to bill per page.  I also subcontract my services out, and of course, what I receive when doing that is less than if I were servicing the client directly.

I want to shout out my 6th grade typing teacher, “Ms. Day.” It was in her class at Visitacion Valley Middle School that this seed was planted and my typing skills began to grow.”  Ms. Day, if you’re out there, it was 28 years ago (I’m telling my age),  but thanks a bunch. You and Mr. Celeste were my favorite middle school teachers.  :-)

I’d love to use my transcription skills in assisting you. If you’re in need of a quick, friendly, and efficient, transcriber, email me at evelyn@emackulateassistants.com. I’d also love to hear from other VA’s on their experiences with transcription.

Until next time,

Evelyn Mack
”The Emackulate V.A.”
www.emacklulateassistants.com

P.S. And please don’t call me a “typist.” ]]> http://authorsassistants.wordpress.com/?p=6 Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:00:42 +0000 authorsassistants http://authorsassistants.wordpress.com/?p=6 Now that you've finished the manuscript, read it, edited, proofed it, edited some more, you feel a wave of satisfaction - it's done. But before you send it to the editor for final polishing you read it one more time.

Wait, that last quote, was that the original source you noted or was that the secondary source? You can't remember and your notes aren't clear. Better check that. Oh, wait, what about this statistic? Was it really 30% or 40%? Was that a typo or did you get that number from your notes or the primary source?

These are things that a certified author's assistant can help an author with - research and fact checking. The author's assistant can go through the entire manuscript and note all of the quotes, facts and statistics then research the original source and accuracy. The author is free to move on to other tasks related to getting the book finalized for publishing and promotion.

Fact checking and research are only two tasks an author's assistant can handle. For a complete list please read a previous post titled What's an Author's Assistant?