National Small Business Week

April 24-30 has been designated National Small Business Week.

Blogs offer great opportunity for authors

Today's USA Today has an article about blogging: "Publishers put bloggers between the covers" (Life section, front page, below the fold).

According to the article's author, Carol Memmott, bloggers are "jumping on the publishing bandwagon in a trend that industry insiders say benefits both writers and publishers."

Having just spent another incredible weekend with my friend and mentor Mark Victor Hansen at his annual MEGA Book Marketing University conference, this information is not news to me, but I did find it interesting.

Tom Antion, always one of my favorites at these conferences, gave another great presentation on websites and included a segment on blogs.

If you haven't started your blog yet, what are you waiting for? Go to www.blogger.com right now and have your very own blog set up in less than five minutes. C'mon...I dare you!

Launching a New Author

I'm off to do a site visit for a book launch/signing I'm doing for clients tomorrow night. I've got two great co-authors with whom I've been working and this will be their first "official" book signing.

A fundamental rule in event planning: Always, always, always do a site visit in advance, especially if it's at a location to which you've never been (better to get lost going to a site visit than be an hour late to the actual event).