Best Of The Creative Penn 2009 Free Ebook and Survey Results

Thanks so much for all the information you have given me on the survey. There is a round-up below and I will endeavour to answer all 401 questions in 2010!

As a thank you to everyone for a brilliant year on the blog, here is your free 41 page ebook “Top 25 Articles from The Creative Penn” including links to over 17 hours of free audio to keep you learning over the holidays! I have rewritten many of the posts to make them more up to date and also formatted them into a lovely ebook.

You can download here (right click to download) => Best Posts 2009

Or you can read online or download from Scribd.com below.
The Creative Penn 2009 Best Posts on Writing, Publishing, Internet Sales and Promotion… For Your Book

Round-Up of the Survey

• 401 surveys completed – brilliant response – thanks all!
  
• The winner of the book package is: DC Burton Jnr based in the USA. Books in the post!

• 83% said they preferred text based posts, 19.5% audio posts and 14.2% video posts. I am going to continue doing video and audio posts in 2010 but will always include a text based synopsis so I hope to please everyone!

• In terms of where the readers are: 45.7% are in the process of writing a book, 20.7% are interested in writing a book, 18.9% are self-published and 14.6% are published authors. In light of this and some of the questions, I will do more posts about actually putting a book together, as well as what to do afterwards.

• Age groups: 38.3% 46-60 years, 25.2% 36-45 years, 18.1% 26-35 years, 15.4% over 60, 3% under 25. That's a pretty good spread, and perhaps representative of the fact that people write more after you hit 30!
• Gender: 70.6% female, 29.4% male.

• Countries represented: The main 4 were: USA (212), Australia (95), UK (30), Canada (28). But also check out these other countries you represent: Aruba , Costa Rica, , France, Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates. Fantastic! I love an international group!

Here are some diff erent examples of the questions asked: (names not used for privacy reasons)

• How do I move on from procrastination? I have this novel that I want to finish but the idea of writing details for the book is something I fear because of rejection.
• Where do I start in making myself known as an author?
• How do you get the discipline to write regularly?
• I'm writing, but what next? What is the next step to become a published author?
• How do you find an agent that is a good fit for you?
• I have accounts on twitter, facebook, scribd and 2 blogs. How do I develop a larger, more focussed group of followers? How do you break through mid-level success?
• What is the topic of a blog for an author?
• How do I find the right writing critique group for me?
• What is the most effective, proven, no 1 way to market a book?
• What exactly do professional editors do?
• Will I ruin my writing career by self-publishing?
• How do I start? How do I finish a book?
• How can I create a really useful and appealing website that makes a ton of money?
• Do writers need resumes?
• Step by step advice for dummies please
• How do you market yourself without seeming arrogant?
• How do you market with no money?
• How much self-promotion can be avoided?
• What are the best sites for self-publishing?
• Is there any way to get my book not only published for free, but be paid in advance, like I have seen many people do in movies? Is that for real?

These are all brilliant and I have hundreds more. I will be tackling them all over the next year in various forms.
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Please also continue to email your questions in as well, or leave comments. Thank you!

Personal Note: I will be away for a few weeks with family in England over the holiday period, so apologies for any delay in responding to emails or approving comments. I have scheduled blog posts for you though. Happy Holidays!