You can find out with a Ratings service WordPress.com recently rolled out for users of its free blogging platform.

Why bloggers will like this: it’s a quick and easy way for readers to provide feedback on your posts – and what other people are saying about them – even if they don’t want to take the time to leave a comment. It’s also a good way to see which subjects readers like, and which they don’t.

The service is courtesy of PollDaddy, creator of a polling software application WordPress’ parent company Automattic bought in 2008 and subsequently integrated into the blogging platform.

WordPress.com users will see the Ratings service in the left column on the main Dashboard. Click on it to open the Ratings panel, which includes options for adding ratings to your blog posts, pages and readers’ comments.

Use the Advanced Settings feature to have ratings appear above or below a post, set up a 5-star system or a Nero-style thumbs up or thumbs down, and choose options such as colors and placement.

Once you’ve set everything up, track feedback using the Reports feature, which appears under the Ratings link on the main Dashboard.

This WordPress TV demo explains more about how to set up the Ratings application. You’ll find more help for getting started on WordPress’ Ratings Support page.

I’ve already enabled this feature for posts and reader comments. If you like what you see, please let me know.

One of a new breed of online publishers that some call content aggregators and others content mills, Helium.com has over a short time amassed 150,000 contributors – though according to published reports, only about 10,000 of those are regulars – 1 million articles and $17 million in venture capital funding. The Andover, Massachusetts, company has also signed content sharing deals with three community newspaper chains that pay its writers for original work and reprint rights. But the bulk of Helium writers earn money from click-through advertising according to a computer-based algorithm that takes into account reader interest in the subject matter and how highly articles are rated by other Helium writers, among other things. The company claims its writers had collectively earned more than $1 million by last May.

I recently interviewed Ranalli, Helium’s president and CEO, for a story on content aggregators for an upcoming issue of a national writers’ magazine (I’ll share the link when the story’s out this fall). Here’s what he had to say about the site’s publishing model, how writers make money on it and where he sees the publishing industry headed. I’ve edited our interview for length and clarity.

I call Helium a content aggregator for lack of a better term. What do you call it?
The industry hasn’t accepted a term. We think of Helium as a writing platform. The difference between how we view what we’re doing and how some professional writers view us is a mindset shift. Professional writers are used to looking for work from a publisher then getting paid for their work. We’re allowing the writer to go direct to the consumer. We help them monetize their work and collectively build something of value to all of them.

How does Helium work?
We have two core offerings. One is a publishing platform where anyone can write, improve their skills, build their digital persona and build relationships among other writers. Our members bring the content and operate as the editorial staff. They produce and evaluate the content and the best writers and articles are compensated. It’s a platform more like eBay than it is anything writers have seen before.

And the second way you’re making money?
That’s our marketplace, where the relationship is more like the traditional freelance model. Now that we have this huge writing community, we’ve been approached by thousands of publishers and they ask our writers to produce content for them based on their needs. If one wants a 500-word article on fly fishing destinations in Montana, they give us the specs and we’ve set up a marketplace where our writers can identify what assignments are available, and if they’re selected to do it they’re paid. Some publishers pay $300 an article. Some pay as little as $40 or $50.

Who are your publishing partners – Hearst is one, right?
Hearst uses us a couple ways. Content that exists on Helium.com is also available to our publishers as stock content. Many newspapers have advertorials and sections that don’t require unique, custom-written content. For instance, a local newspaper on Connecticut might be looking for an article on day hikes. We have a gallery of 1 million articles on Helium.com and one of them might be on that topic. Compensation depends. It could be $10 or $15 for one-time use of that article. The writer gets a byline and they retain the copyright so they can resell it again. It’s like a reprint fee. Today we’re working with 6 Hearst newspapers in Connecticut. That’s initially. The expectation is to roll out to other papers.

What types of stories do your publishing partners buy?
We’re not hard news, we’re features. Breaking news journalism, front page stuff is a very different kind of content creation and serves a different model than the travel section. Lead times are different. As a newspaper, you don’t need to have a full time staff writer to write the travel section. We’re not causing this, we’re providing a solution for it.

What other publishers are you working with?
We have a relationship with Community Newspaper Holdings and GateHouse Media. We’re working with some of the world’s largest most respective publishers, but the vast majority of Helium’s partners remain anonymous. If you were a consumer magazine, you wouldn’t necessarily want to signal what’s going to show up in next month’s magazine by (announcing a partnership with Helium). We’re also working with hundreds of long-tail publishers.

What types of people are Helium contributors?
Our members range from professionals in their fields to retirees who spent 35 years in marketing and now write about marketing. They’re J-schools students who are looking to build portfolios. They’re Harvard educated mothers of three. I think of it as a pro-am. It includes some hobbyists but also some professionals. A reason for professionals to write here is we’re a credible brand for allowing writers to build a digital persona. Just because you start a blog doesn’t mean anybody reads it. Helium promotes your content, we help with monetization, we pay you based on the value of that content. It’s a system.

So writing for Helium is an alternative to having a blog?
I liken blogging to screaming in the woods. Sixty-five percent of them are never read. People are out there trying to make it with a blog and not even their mothers are reading their stuff. Blogging is a wonderful concept. It’s indicative of the power of the Internet to go direct to the consumer, share your thoughts and not be forced to go through a filter. But filters are valuable. The editor of the New York Times is a great filter. Helium acts as a filter that allows everyone to participate. The writers become a collective rating system that filters for quality. Publishing a lot of bad content doesn’t do anyone any good. There are other things we do. Being cognizant of SEO, we make sure Helium is linked around the web. And we’re selling ads and generating revenue.

How much do Helium writers make?
In 2007 our top writer made $500 and in 2008 it was $5,000. That’s not pay-the-mortgage money. People aren’t spending 40 hours a week on Helium. But $5,000 is better than a stick in the eye. This year our top writer will be on track for close to $10,000. We have writers on the site who’ve done 25 articles and made hundreds of dollars. I’m sure there are people who’ve written 100 articles made nothing. The devil’s in the details. Anyone who invests their energy in Helium will have a good outcome. I don’t believe you could work 40 hours a week on Helium and replace a full-time salary. But the effort of the community is making Helium a better platform and that’s creating opportunity. This is a rising tide that lifts all boats.

Exactly how do Helium writers get paid?
It’s an algorithm based on a daily calculation of what content has been created and how your content is rated. Well-rated content earns more than poorly-rated content. The second part of the algorithm is the value of your content to advertisers. The third part is general interest in the subject matter. For example, we know personal finance as a section gets a lot of readers. It’s a recession, people want information on how to save money and invest. So we look at, can you monetize the general area of content, do people read it, and are you a good writer. Those factors go into how much you’re earning every day. We’ve been more sophisticated than just who clicked on an ad, which could cause click fraud and introduced other funny dynamics.

What’s your affiliation with the Society of Professional Journalists and National Press Club?
Today not all writing happens through the Washington Post or Time magazine. But these professional organizations didn’t know how to evaluate (unaffiliated) writers. Helium’s system sorts out who the good writers are, and we’d love to have the good ones apply for membership. So if you’re a starred writer on Helium, you can apply to the SPJ. Same with the National Press Club.

Who’s your competition: Associated Content? HubPages?
I view HubPages as more of a micropublisher. They build a system that’s every man for himself. You build your page, create it for SEO and it’s all about click throughs. Squidoo has that same model: lots of people, almost a blog aggregator. I don’t view them as competition. We’re more of a publisher or information resource.

At what stage of their life cycles are content aggregators?
They’re all toddlers. If you think about it, the entire web publishing model is in its infancy. About.com is one of the oldest, they’re 12 years old, now part of the New York Times. These businesses are an opportunity for writers. If you look at the percent of revenue a traditional publisher pays writers it’s typically 5 percent. Helium will be sharing a far greater percentage of revenue generated on the platform. If you believe these businesses will achieve the kind of scale of a professional publisher, the opportunity is there for writers to make a lot of money. But you gotta get here.

Despite his youth, Walling took a very old fashioned path to get where he is today. Fresh out of high school, he took whatever paid writing work he could get, then followed his bliss and became so good at what he really loved doing someone paid him to do it.

In Walling’s case, that passion was wikis, the communally edited online encyclopedias. He started contributing to Wikipedia, the mother of all wikis, as a volunteer and became so proficient he turned pro upon landing a steady freelance gig with AboutUs.org, a Portland, Oregon, outfit that aims to create an editable, curated guide to the Web.

In the course of creating a career path, Walling has become a mainstay in Portland’s burgeoning tech scene, a funky brew of computer geeks and creative types, many digital natives like Walling with no technophobias to overcome to feel comfortable working entirely online. Walling helped start started Wiki Wednesday, a monthly user group meeting for wiki enthusiasts, and helps out with WikiProject Oregon and other local wiki groups.

Here’s what he has to say about his career, wikis and what digital natives can teach older freelancers looking to transform their own writing businesses.

What’s your background as a writer?
Most of my experience and training was in creative writing, poetry, short stories, it wasn’t journalistic writing. I was doing traditional freelance performing arts criticism: film, dance, literary, a little bit of food writing. I grew up in Vancouver, (Wash.) and early on freelanced for publications there, then moved across the river to Portland and did theater and film criticism for Willamette Week and a few others publications. I went straight from high school to writing.

You didn’t go to college. How did you get your first assignments?
My brother is also a writer and he was writing for a now defunct alt-weekly in Vancouver. He knew the editor needed freelancers and I had extensive theater knowledge and could write. It was start up and they didn’t want to use Portland writers. I became a regular writer for them. Then I moved into the normal world of pitching editors and writing queries.

How did you get involved with wikis?
A teacher introduced me to Wikipedia in an AP History class. I sort of worked with it as a consumer. Then I saw the ‘Edit’ button and felt the compulsion to do things like add citations. I’ve always been passionate about encyclopedic subjects like history. I’ll read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and become interested in food.

How did you pick what you wanted to write about?
Whatever I wanted, that’s the beauty of Wikipedia. It’s very ad hoc.

Isn’t there already a lot of material?
It depends on the subject. On a Columbia River article, there was material there already, but after having become a wikipedian, I could tell there were gaps in the coverage and it needed citations. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit: on certain topics, articles don’t exist or only have a few sentences that would be easy to improve. Or you care about a subject and you tackle it and build up the quality.

Did anyone check your work?
It’s a constant system of live peer review. Every change on a project is logged in several places. So if you make an edit, the old version and current version are saved in a history you can access easily from that page.  There’s also what’s called recent changes stream, where every edit on the site gets logged into a long stream. Wikipedia is a pretty diverse place, it’s not just people interested in writing encyclopedia articles, but mundane tasks like checking for vandalism and checking the stream.

How did your volunteer work lead to paid gigs?
I met AboutUs.org at Wiki Wednesdays. I had no intention of pitching them for a job, I was happy with my regular freelance work. But they had one writer on staff and he was desperate to get someone else in to help. As Wikipedia is to encyclopedia articles, AboutUs wants to be to domain names and websites. So for Google, you’d have editable wiki pages things about Google’s domain, contact info, a summary of what the website is, a tag system to describe it. If you’re familiar with Whois, AboutUs aims to create a what is, a basic, user editable layer that tells you who a website is and what they’re related to. AboutUs is based in Portland and has been around for about 3 years. I joined in December 2007. I was and still am a contract employee, but spending the bulk of my work time writing for them. I have other freelance gigs, but they’re strategic consulting projects that grew out of my wiki work.

What kind of writing do you do?
If you search AboutUs for a website and it doesn’t exist in our system, the system automatically creates a page that becomes an editable wiki page. We have about 14 million pages in our database but only several hundred thousand have been actively edited by people. That’s growing 2,000 or 3,000 every day, minimum. If someone’s interested in having a richer AboutUs page but doesn’t want to learn the wiki technology, they can pay us to write the article and have it featured on the front page of our site one time, which is an SEO benefit. So I write articles about businesses. The articles are a middle ground between a Wikipedia entry and a press release. I also have other more technical duties, patrolling changes and that sort of thing. And I write posts for the company’s blog.

Where do you work?
Anywhere I happen to be, but I mainly work from AboutUs because it’s a pleasant office and even though I’m a contract writer I do a lot of work for them. We have about 30 to 35 full- or part-time employees and probably a half dozen freelancers.

How much do freelancers make for wiki work?
I can’t talk about the exact dollar amount.** AboutUs is different in the sense that we don’t act like a marketplace for freelancers. We don’t take pitches. We tell writers to write rich detailed content that makes the customers happy. They email back and forth with the customer to see if the article meets their needs. SEO is one of those needs but not the only one. We don’t penalize articles based solely on lack of keyword density. **(NOTE: AboutUs pays freelancers per article and not based on traffic; although Walling wouldn’t publicly discuss rates, my take based on his off-the-record comments is that their rates are somewhat to significantly higher than those paid by sites such as Associated Content or Helium. – MVR)

What kind of wiki consulting work do you do?
I work with businesses that have set up a wiki for their internal use and then realize wiki software isn’t just a new technology, it’s a new way of working and that challenges the norms of corporate life and the way people work together. People see the benefit to how it changes work flow – you don’t have to email documents all the time – but it can be slightly jarring. So businesses come to me to learn how to do it better and create a comprehensive strategy for doing that.

What’s your take on Portland’s media business?
Portland has a really vibrant community of freelance designers and programmers and start ups. It’s become much more diverse and we’re deeply interested in cultivating community as a group. There have always been the writer-tech hybrids, but now more writers who wouldn’t be interested in that sort of thing have been pushed by economic reasons into dipping a toe into the tech world. A lot of them out of necessity are developing a digital literacy to move into the next phase of how they’ll work.

What advice do you have for those writers?
Don’t be scared by the technology. Being a digital native made it easier, but I had to hack at it and work and spend my hours doing the legwork like any other job. The deeper I get into this as a creative person, the more I discover what I thought was intimidating wasn’t that hard. HTML or wiki mark up can sound scary to a traditional freelancer. But if you give it a try and are open minded you’ll discover it’s not as intimidating as you thought it would be. Also, it’s easier to grasp a new way of freelancing or writing if you get support from the community. As a freelancer it comes naturally to plug away at something by yourself. But the thing that’s helped me is plugging into this vibrant community and finding mentors who’d taken these steps already. So maybe you’ll have to change the way you’re working, but you won’t be alone.

At last weekend’s BarCampPortland III meetup, the assembled developers, programmers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs were just as concerned about the fate of the news business as the smattering of old-school journalists who dragged themselves out of bed for the bad coffee and good conversation.

The techies wanted to know all kinds of things: Why are newspaper headlines misleading? Will micropayments – the vending machine model for paying for news stories – work? Should bloggers hold themselves to the same ethical constraints as reporters? Just what are those ethical constraints? Should bloggers be reporters? Should reporters be bloggers? Is hyperlocal news making money? And just how hyper is your local?

All excellent questions. The free-flowing discussion that followed touched on a lot of them without providing a lot of answers, at least not any definitive ones. But it was a start.

If the number of tech-slash-news geeks at BarCamp was any indication, Portland is a hive of activity on the hyperlocal news front. No less than three online community news ventures were represented: Neighborhood Notes; OurPDX.com and The Portland Sentinel, a monthly paper in North Portland with a daily news website. In case you hadn’t heard, PDX TV station KATU is looking to hire a Web producer to write, curate and publish local stories on KATU.com.

BarCamp took place the day after The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., filed for bankruptcy protection, making talk of the future of the news all the more pressing. The Columbian sent a trio of newsroom staffers to BarCamp, including John Hill, the journalist turned journalism IT guy who wrote the ‘how hyper is your local’ blog post I linked to higher in this piece.

Guys like Hill, and Michelle Nicolosi, the executive producer at the newly only-only SeattlePI.com, and Kate Cohen and Donna Wares, co-bloggers at the SealBeachDaily community news site in California could be the salvation of the news business. They and a new breed of hybrid tech-news entrepreneur, like Steve Walling, a Portland writer and consultant who’s involved with projects like AboutUs.org and WikiProjectOregon.

Here in Portland, the conversation that started at BarCamp is continuing. As I write this, Abraham Hyatt, another Portland journalist who’s tracking the online news business, is planning a digital news meetup for sometime in August. Stay tuned for details. And tell a techie friend.

The best posts are heavy on context. But that’s just the beginning. To make sure they’ve got that pulled together look before you send them out the door, they should also have:

A catchy title – A clever headline will capture more attention than a dull one. Just make sure it accurately reflects what’s in the post.

A visual – Adding a photo, line drawing, logo, video  or other type of art that creates white space and visual interest, which increases readability. Creative Commons has a database of images and other creative work that can be re-used for free.

Links – Include URLs of blogs posts on the related topics, either written by you, which is good because it’ll drive traffic to your older blog posts,  or someone else, which is also good because when your readers click over to that someone else’s blog they’ll wonder who you are and come visit and that’s the first step to making a connection with like-minded bloggers.

Keywords and tags – A tree falling in the wilderness doesn’t make any noise, and a post on your blog that nobody knows about won’t make any noise either. You don’t have to be an SEO pro to add tags. The design themes some bloggers use do this work for them. If you’re looking to bone up on SEO, you’ll find some good resources in ProBlogger’s 2005 series on SEO for blogs.

Promotion – In addition to tags and keywords, it’s good to have a few mechanisms in place to alert regular readers to new posts. You can tweet about posts on Twitter and use other social networks like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Here are some other strategies for driving traffic to your blog.

One thing good blog posts don’t have – spelling errors. I don’t care what Penelope Trunk says, blog posts with too many typos are a turnoff. And not everyone can afford to have an editor proofread their posts. So before you hit the “Publish” button give your post a once over or run it through a spell checker.

It was a week for debating whether Google and the Internet have hurt or helped newspapers.

• Search engine guru and ex-newspaper reporter Danny Sullivan doesn’t understand newspapers’ anti-Google stance.
• But a poll of 43 mainstream media insiders conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal reveals 65 percent feel the Internet has hurt journalism while 34 percent say it’s helped.

Meanwhile, new forms of online journalism are getting more notice:

• Buzz Woolley, founder Voice of San Diego, the online reporting site, reports being inundated with requests from people wanting to know how they do what they do.
• In the same panel discussion, held at the recent Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley and reported by PBS MediaShift’s Mark Glaser, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Robert Rosenthan says collaboration “is going to be very important for profit and nonprofit journalism.”
• ReadWriteWeb interviews David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, the journalism marketplace that lets readers decide what they want to pay to get a story written, on the future of journalism.

A just-launched Online News Association fundraising campaign nets $2,300, enough to offer 31 free memberships. Details at www.Journalists.org.

CBS’ Interactive division launches personal finance and career sites, MoneyWatch.com.

Forbes says it will launch ForbesWoman on May 11. Moira Forbes, daughter of Steve and granddaughter of Malcolm, will serve as publisher of the quarterly print magazine and related Website, which will be sent to Forbes’ 125,000 women suscribers.

News agencies report Iran has formally charged US-Iranian freelance broadcast journalist Roxana Saberi with spying.

The week’s new Twitter tools:

• A geographical directory called LocalTweeps.com. Find me in 97221.
• A collection of WordPress Twitter plugins.

UPDATED: Last but definitely not least – The Freelance Writer’s Helper is a fantastic everything-you-need-to-know about freelancing wiki guide written by long-time Motley Fool freelancer Tim Beyers. The guide’s a list of agents, associations, blogging services, contests, freelancers and other resources that Beyers updates on a regular basis. In case you don’t know him, Beyers is @milehighfool on Twitter and co-host of the popular #editorchat online chat session for editors and freelancers that runs Wednesdays on Twitter.

As luck would have it, around the time I was getting ready to publish the results, I got the opportunity to write a guest post for TwiTip, a guide to all things Twitter run by Aussie blogging guru Darren Rowse, the mind behind ProBlogger.com.

So if you want to see the poll results, check out my TwiTip guest post here.

As more writers start using Twitter, use Twitter for different aspects of their business and take on assignments tweeting for clients, how many accounts you use and how you manage those accounts are definitely becoming points of discussion.

I’d love to hear what your experiences have been. If you have several Twitter accounts how do you keep them straight? How do you do it without having it take over your work life?

Which camp are you in?

Plenty of Twitter etiquette experts will say flogging your blog on Twitter is a no no. But really, if you use it to talk about your work or life and said work or life includes the blog you do for fun or profit, then it follows that the twain should meet, at least every once in a while.

But what constitutes every once in a while? Ah, there’s the rub.

My philosophy is simple. Ask yourself:

1. How often do I tweet?
2. What do I tweet about?
3. Does tweeting a link to my latest blog post fit into my overall tweeting strategy?
4. Does tweeting a link to my blog post constitute a (fill in the blank with an acceptable amount) percent of my total tweets?

Answer all those questions and you’ll have your answer.

I tweet about a variety of topics, including the subjects I report on, freelance writing and stuff happening in the city, state and region of the country where I live. I tweet somewhere between once and 10 times a day, some days more. I put up new blog posts three times a week, and tweet about each once, maybe twice when I first put them up.  During any given week I may refer to an old blog post a couple times to answer a question. And when I follow someone new I usually include a link, either to the main page of this blog or to a blog post I’ve written that’s relevant to that person. I also blog about stories I’ve written when they first come out.

That means in any given week, I’m tweeting 70 to 80 times and 10 or 12 of those are about my blog or something else I’ve written. That’s within my personally acceptable blog flogging limit.

Social media guru Chris Brogan claims to maintain a slightly higher 75/25 ratio of helpful v. promotional tweets. If it that works for Brogan – who has 55,000+ Twitter followers – it should work for you.

Dan Baum

Dear Dan,

Thank you. But please reconsider your decision to take down your blog. I looked and it’s obvious you’re good. You’ve written for The New Yorker for Pete’s sake, my favorite magazine of all time. You’ve gotta be doing something right for them to run your stuff and whatever it is, I’d love to find out, so there’s reason No. 1 right there.

There are a lot of other reasons why freelance writers – or other freelancers for that matter – should blog, if only as a writing prompt to get the juices flowing for paid writing gigs.

A few:

* To build expertise in an area you want to pitch – Not that long ago I was re-establishing my freelance writing business after extended hiatus to raise three kids. I needed to get back up to speed on the tech beat I’d previously covered and the best way to do that was to plunge into the wonderful world of Web 2.0. I started the blog, signed up for LinkedIn, then Twitter and started pitching as I learned.

* To build a community – No man is an island, and that includes freelancers. We don’t get the perqs of working in an office surrounded by peers, so a blog can function as a virtual coffee break room, where we exchange suggestions and gossip with far-flung friends.

* To put your resume and clips online – If for no other reason, writers should have a blog to get their vital stats online. Plus, it’s easier than creating a Website and cheaper too.

* To keep colleagues, friends or family up to speed on what you’re doing – Easier and less spammy than sending out group emails.

* To practice a genre other than the one that pays the bills – A blog might be just the thing for writing the poetry, essays or short stories you’ve always wanted to try. If you don’t want anybody to see it, you can change the settings on the blog software you’re using to block it from public display.

* To start a book or promote one – Which is something you’re already doing for your book Death and Life in New Orleans, so I’m preaching to the choir on that one.

* To be ready for the digital revolution – As corny as that sounds, the media business as we know it is changing, and not just because of the recession, and it ain’t ever going back to the way it was. If writers don’t want to be left behind, we’ve got to put new techniques alongside the old ones in our storytelling repertoire.

That’s what I came up with in about 10 minutes. There are plenty of other equally good reasons why writers should blog. Please don’t give up on it just yet.

Michelle

McKay, a freelance translator who lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and 6-year-old daughter, ultimately opted to self publish. Not only that, she picked a print-on-demand publisher to minimize the upfront costs of getting a book into circulation.

It worked. Since McKay’s book, How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, appeared in May 2006, she’s sold 2,500 copies and netted $12,000. Although modest by bestseller standards, McKay reckons it’s more than she would have made in royalties from a traditional publishing house. She also estimates that based on what she’s earned to date and how many hours she spent on the book, she doubled what she would have made using the same time to do her regular French-to-English translation work.

I asked McKay to share her self-publishing experiences with WordCount readers to shed light on the process for other freelancers who might be considering it as a new income stream to make up for newspaper and magazine work lost to the recession.

According to McKay, getting a book started was easy. The one-time high school French teacher was already teaching an online course on the subject, so course materials made up the first half of the 141-page book. To finish the rest, McKay set a goal to write something every day, even if it was just a sentence.

Picking an on-demand publisher was easy too. Once McKay crunched the numbers and decided to self publish with an on-demand service, she turned to her software-savvy husband for input. He steered her to Lulu.com, an on-demand publisher based in Morrisville, North Carolina, that handles printing and fulfillment for about 98,000 new titles a year.

Here’s how she made it happen:

How did you pick a topic?
When I looked at what I struggled with, it was running the business: how to find clients, how to write a resume when you have minimum experience but strong language skills, if you should work through an agency. There was a huge lack of info, even if you were willing to pay for it. The class had been really successful. I’ve now done 12 to 15 sessions. The capitalist in me thought, if people who don’t know me will spend $350 for an online course they’d spend $20 on a book.

How long did it take?
About 6 months. Once I decided to do it, I resolved to work on it every day. Some days when I was really busy, I did write just one sentence. Other times I’d write 10 pages in one day. You have to accept that unless you’re independently wealthy, that big block of time to write your book is never going to come. You have to set a schedule that works into what you’re already doing, whether it’s saying every Wednesday will be book day or every day from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. is book time.

How did you decide to self publish?
I’m in a freelance group called Boulder Media Women that was a great resource. I talked to people who’d been published the traditional route, done regular self publishing and print-on-demand publishing. Talking to them I realized if your book has a really targeted market you would do as well or better publishing it yourself.

Why’s that?
Small publishers working with first-time authors expect the author to do most of the marketing. So if I’m going to be promoting this book myself would I rather get 5 or 10 percent royalties or 50 percent royalties by self publishing? Also, part of reason I’m successful is I’m a maniacal perfectionist about my work. It was hard to think about giving that up. I know people who’ve had terrible experiences with traditional publishers where they felt the manuscript they’d poured themselves into was unrecognizable. The combination of those two was a gamble I was comfortable accepting.

How did you decide on an on-demand publisher?
My husband had seen in the geek news that Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat (the open source software company), had started a print-on-demand company and he thought on-demand was the future of publishing, with zero waste, no inventory sitting around and meeting demand for books that are purchased so information doesn’t go out of date as quickly.

How did it work?
I wrote the book in OpenOffice and used a program called Lyx to create a .pdf of the book. Lyx is a free book layout program. If you use Lyx, it helps you create a copyright page, table of contents, index and chapter headings, everything that make it look like a standard book. That’s important because you have to have a standard book if you want to sell it to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or special order through bookstores. If you don’t want something that looks like a professional book, Lulu will publish that too. Anything you can upload as a .pdf they’ll publish.

What did you do for a cover?
I considered using a cover designer from Lulu but in the end my husband designed the cover. We found an illuminated manuscript that featured a story about a translator at the Yale University library that was in the public domain and got permission and used it for free.

When did you see the first copy?
If you use Lulu’s global distribution network you first order a proof copy. It’s like the best Christmas ever seeing the proof copy of your book. Once we saw it we corrected some errors, made a new .pdf file, uploaded it to Lulu and that was it.

Who determines the cover price?
With Lulu, you set pricing yourself. My book is $19.99 and if someone buys a copy from Lulu I make $10. If they buy a copy through a retail channel like Amazon, I make $4.50. Lulu handles order fulfillment. With traditional self publishing, unless you outsource order fulfillment, you’re taking books to the post office and paying for shipping. When someone buys my book from Lulu I don’t see anything but the profit. If I want to buy copies of the book to sell myself, which I do a lot, Lulu has a creator price of $5 to $7 per copy depending on what sale they have at the time. They just had a sale and I bought 100 books for $4.90 each. With a traditional self publisher you could get them cheaper but that wouldn’t cover fulfillment.

How does Lulu pay you?
I have a Lulu account that’s linked to my PayPal account. Book sales show up on my monthly Lulu account statement. Amazon sales show up in my Lulu account as a lump sum every month. Lulu has a deal with PayPal so I don’t pay commissions to PayPal on Lulu royalties. Any royalties I transfer into my business checking account or keep them on PayPal to buy stuff online.

How did you market the book?
I have not marketed the book as aggressively as I could have. I sent out press releases and review copies for the first 3 months. I do some passive marketing, my blog, Thoughts on Translation, is a soft marketing tool. I also have some affiliate deals. The American Translators Association sells it from their Website, and they sell a lot of books.

How has publishing a book helped your business?
You can’t underestimate how much having a book adds to your credibility. It’s been a great promotion for the course I teach and I’ve gotten a lot more requests for speaking engagements and interviews as an expert on business practices for freelance translators.

Any plans for second book?
I’m working on the second edition that I hope to have out in 2009. It will have a bigger focus on using Web 2.0 tools like Facebook and Twitter both as resources and for marketing. So far, the translation industry in my specialties seems unaffected by the economic downturn, Q4 was my most profitable. I’d like a forced work slowdown so I could work on the second edition without feeling guilty. I’m not going to complain, but it is hard to have my translation work volume to be high and work on the book.