Mrs P and I took our daughters, Shiana and Mischa, to Liverpool recently and we all loved it. We went on the Magical Mystery Tour (highly recommended) and ended up in the Cavern Club. I went to the toilet. There was a bloke working in there, one of those fellas who...

Every year, Google rolls out hundreds of updates to its algorithm. Most of these are very small and have little noticeable effect on SERPs (search engine results pages). But every now and then, Google will release an update that has a huge effect on all...

In my recent post that listed all (well, most) of the things I have to do to get my book finished, I mentioned "two ebook and one paperback" formats. So here's a brief word on what I mean: My designer will take the Word doc I send containing the whole, edited book and...

I was listening to the radio earlier today and they were talking about using "Doctor Google" to self-diagnose. It occurred to me that I've never really talked about this in the context of internet education but it's probably worth adding to the long and growing list...

What's left to do in order to get my book into your hands? Write out, in the first draft, points that I want to make that are currently illustrated by screenshots and other images Come up with titles for the ten chapters that need them Consider order of chapters and...

Scan, skim, "What's in it for me?". That's how people read your content as they work out within a few seconds if it's for them or not. So make it easy to read, using: Images Graphics Bullet points Headings/sub-heads White space Paragraphs (preferably short ones)...

It's worth reminding kids that we can always earn more money but we can't make more time. Just like there are two ways to learn, there are also two ways to use our time at work: Cherry-picking Blocking Cherry-picking: having a scheduled list of tasks and working your...

Yesterday was a big day for progress on my book as I began a serious edit of the first draft (rather than the light stuff I've being doing up to this point). Here's what I did and how I worked: Opened the Word doc containing the draft (about 27,000 words) Opened the...

I’m a big fan of listening. More specifically, I’m a big fan of the art of listening. I find it helps in life, generally, and as a freelancer, specifically (when following instructions and briefs, for example). I was waiting for a mate, Big Jon – the man who is very...

When self-publishing a book, ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are an optional extra. It’s a good idea to buy a batch of numbers if you want to make your book available to sell, but... There's no legal requirement in the UK or Republic of Ireland for an ISBN...