Hello everyone,

General:
I have received an email from the Bookhabit and one from Articles express. I reproduce both below in case they are of any interest:

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Hi Olaf

We have just started a new website that is all about writers, giving them an audience and hopefully helping them to get a book published once demand has been established.

I came across the Alpha website through the bookcouncil.org.nz website and thought your membership might be interested. As we have only just got the site live this week, there are not yet many books on our site. This means great opportunities for promotion for your authors when they put their books up.

Once we get a little more content we are planning to then go wider and start our marketing campaing to the world!

Here’s the blurb:

Bookhabit enables authors to post works online free of charge, in an online library of works available to readers all over the world. The site will include fiction, non-fiction, and plays and scripts, and can potentially include any publishable work.

Bookhabit readers can taste a book with a free first chapter before they buy. Full books start at US$2.50 to download. Readers can search subjects, titles, authors, or keywords. User feedback gives other readers a hint of what they are in for, and constructive critique gives authors more feedback than they could ever hope for from a traditional publisher.

Authors get 40% of each sale. The book price rises as it becomes more popular, increasing the author’s earnings along with their readership.

www.bookhabit.com

I’d really appreciate your thoughts and if you could forward this to anyone you think may be interested in posting their book to our website.

Kind regards,

Clare

Clare Tanner

Email: clare@bookhabit.com
www.bookhabit.com

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Dear Friend !

We're happy to announce you that we have made a new international Articles & News webpage.

Authors and website owners work together providing content for the Internet. ArticlesXPress Website provides free content publication for authors and publishers.

We wanted to let you know about our new writer resource page. Please take a minute to visit. We have posted new articles on the page which we hope you will find useful. If you manage a directory or a zine, please consider including them.

Best wishes,

Administrator: Nikolass Paul
Website: http://articlesxpress.com/
Company: "The Article Company"

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Challenge points so far:
As I write this, I have only the results of the challenges of the first two to hand. While everyone gets a point for entering, the achievements so far have been:

Challenge 1: Zena 3, Geoff 2*, Sally 2 and Christine 1*

Challenge 2: David 3, Clare and Rosemary 2* each, Sally 2, Christine 1*

(Note, I try to allocate * and points from the marks – and sometimes there seems a ‘natural’ break in the totals.

Leaders:

Zena, David and Sally have 4 points
Geoff, Clare and Rosemary have 3 points and a * each
Christine has 2 points and 2*

Everyone else who has entered both challenges has 2 points.

I will have the points for John’s photo challenge awaiting me, and I will update the scores in 24 hours time from when your receive this, as I won’t be home until about 7 pm on Thursday to send out this ALPHA DAY 4.5a.

Music anthology:
I’ve had no more contributions for the idea of a music anthology. I will put what I’ve got together shortly and circulate the stories by internet. I’d hoped that if there’d been more, I could have prepared a little single section booklet to send out to members but there seems to few to do that.

Telephone Book:
David will be contacting you with suggestions about creating a book where each of us (at least those of us who wish to) contribute by building a chapter on what has been written so far. See 4.5c for a telephone story I wrote some 15 or more years ago.

Christmas Quiz:
I will be sending round the Christmas Quiz on Thursday, December 13th, and I will want any (preferably correct) solutions back by Thursday, January 10th. There is a bonus point to be had, but it will be well earned.

Discussion topic:
It’s been interesting to read that the few of you who have come into contact with novel writing software don’t really see any advantages in it. I think it might be useful for remembering details over a period of time, although I am sure the best novels are probably written over a relatively short concentrated period of time. As one gets olderer, remembering things needs assistance. I keep a memory book, but I keep forgetting where I put it.

But how about some other topics to air?

Best wishes to you all,

- Olaf