The Blue Mountains Business Advantage program is an award winning business sustainability program.

The program is currently going through a reinvigoration to meet the new operating environment and bring additional support value to participating businesses.

The project currently requires development of a series of icons that will function independently and come together to form a project logo.

Members: log in to view contact details and the remainder of this Project Brief

The annual Biznet Expo is on again on Wednesday, May 9 at the Springwood Civic Centre. Come along to meet a whole bunch of local businesses, learn some new skills and do some networking! Its on from 11am to 6pm, with free seminars running all day long. More info is available here: http://www.expo.biznet.org.au/

Publish Blue Mountains will have a stand at the event to promote our members’ creative services to Blue Mountains businesses – and we’d love you to join us.

We’re looking for Publish Blue Mountains members to join us on the stand to help spread the word about using Publish Blue Mountains to source local creative talent. The Expo runs from 11am-6pm and you can come for however long you’re able. If you think you can help out, please call Steve Krinks on 0438 574 657.

If you’d like to provide business cards, brochures or other material to display on the stand, feel free to bring it along, or post to:

Publish Blue Mountains, PO Box 538, Katoomba 2780 by Monday, May 7.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a dark art to many, but at its simplest it’s about getting your website set up so that Google and the other search engines can find it and rank it as high as possible in search results. While the ins and outs of advanced SEO are complex (and sometimes controversial), getting the basics right can make a vast amount of difference to how your website (or a client’s site) ranks on Google.

At our next monthly meetup, local SEO practitioner (and Publish Blue Mountains President) Steve Krinks will run a “SEO for Blue Mountains Businesses” session that is designed to help business owners and web developers get those basics spot-on. The session will include:

• How to identify the keywords your customers are using in their searches
• How Google determines what your site is about and where to rank it in search results
• 7 easy steps to dramatically improve your search rankings
• Local search – how to stand out in your local area
• Live SEO reviews of audience websites
• A one-page DIY SEO guide for all attendees

The meeting is the next instalment of Publish! Blue Mountains’ regular Monthly Meetups, where our members and local business owners can get together to discuss everything creative in the mountains.

Cost: Free!

When & Where? The meeting is next  Monday, 7 May 2012 at the Clarendon Guesthouse, 68 Lurline St Katoomba from 5.30 – 7.00pm and the SEO session will run from 6.00-7.00pm. The bar will be open for any guests that would like to purchase drinks.

More info: For more info on the SEO session please call Steve Krinks on 0438 574 657.

The Varuna Sydney Writers’ Festival for 2012 kicks off in the Blue Mountains on Sunday May 13. This year there’s a packed program including:

• A Writers’ Walk through some lovely, gentle mountains terrain with a poet, a historian and a discovery ranger (there’s a joke in there somewhere!)
• Poetry in Cathedral Cave at Jenolan
• A children’s program for a day at the Blackheath Community Hall
• A range of great talks, readings, book launches and panel sessions featuring leading writers, poets, critics and more

To get the full run down and to download the official program, click here.

Details of Project: 40 pages + cover
nominal 170gsm satin/matt text, 240gsm gloss cover
saddle stitched
cover is colour (both sides)
text section has colour on the outside leaves, otherwise black only
quantity 20
please allow in your quote for doing 1 or 2 test copies before running the rest

Questions that you want answered by respondents: delivery to Katoomba

Timeline: Provision of Brief: ASAP
Acceptance of Quote: ASAP
Completion date: up to the client, but will probably be printing as soon as the quote is accepted.

Contact details: Please send your quote to:
damon@nomadgraphics.com.au
phone/fax (02) 4782 1726

You may have noticed recently that we’ve changed our monthly meeting format and now invite all members to join in and contribute. That’s just one of many positive changes we’ve made. Here are some other changes that we hope will make your membership more rewarding:

• Starting with our next monthly meeting (Monday April 2, 5.30pm) we’ll have a guest speaker at each meeting, presenting for 20 minutes on topics of interest and relevance to Blue Mountains creative professionals. Find out about our next meeting here.
• We’ve created a new monthly email newsletter featuring news, events and feature items provided by you, our members. Want to contribute? Great – send an email to connect@publishbluemountains.com.au with your ideas!
• We’re developing new pages for our website where we’ll feature works by our members and where other work can be published such as videos, photography, writing etc.
• A Facebook page is about to launch where our creative community can share news, ideas, latest works, events and more. It will be a great way to open doors to new collaborations and partnerships and keep on top of everything going on creatively up here in the mountains.
• The website has been updated with a new home page that makes it easier for businesses to post new projects and a new member portfolio allows you to add images and a tag line to help your business stand out. Coming soon – adding video and other file types to portfolios.

6 months FREE membership

To give you a chance to try out these new features, we’re offering 6 months free membership to all existing members who haven’t yet renewed their account, and will extend membership by 6 months for all fully paid-up members.

Tell us your thoughts

We’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on what you want out of your Publish Blue Mountains membership. Let us know in the comments below, or email us via the contact page.

Cheers,

Steve Krinks

President, Publish Blue Mountains

Fifty Shades of Grey

Did you see the news story about the tiny Sydney e-book publisher that sold an erotic novel to Random House for $1 million after it hit #1 on the New York Times e-Book list?

‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ was written by an unpublished UK author by the name of E L James and released as an e-book by Hornsby publisher The Writer’s Coffee Shop. It’s been derided as ‘Mummy Porn’ and lashed by literary critics, but the point is an unknown author and an unknown publisher were able to hit the big time via an e-book.

e-Books are here to stay

With the rapid spread of iPads, tablet PCs and e-readers, e-books are only going to get more popular. Personally I think the rumour of the death of the book has been greatly exaggerated (who doesn’t appreciate the look, feel, smell of a well-loved book?) but there’s no denying e-books are here to stay. They’re easily accessible, have the potential for great interactivity, and they are cheap compared to printed books.

They’re also making a big dent in sales of printed books. BookScan figures show that sales of printed books in bookshops were down 17.5% in December vs the previous year, down 23.5% in February and close to 30% for the first two weeks of March. There are other factors at play, such as low consumer confidence and the collapse of Angus & Robertson and Borders, but the growth in e-Books over this period has been exponential.

Are you e-literate?

We’d like to hear from Publish Blue Mountains members who have experience in publishing e-books, as well as printed book authors with something to say about the e-book phenomenon.

You may like to be a guest speaker at one of our monthly meetings, or possibly play a role in one of our larger events later in the year. If that’s not your thing, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below!

Some resources

If you’re interested in finding out more about self-publishing e-books, this article by C-Net editor David Carnoy is a great guide to the various platforms and online tools that are available.

Writer and recently self-published author Paul Jun put together this how-to guide to publishing on Amazon’s Kindle platform.

Here’s the original article on the Sydney Morning Herald website about Fifty Shades of Grey and a second, longer article about e-books in general.

…and if you want to find out why that particular erotic e-book is worth $1 million to Harper Collins, check it out at the author’s website here.

Biznet are building a new website and have issued a call for tenders.

Expressions of interest are due in by COB, Monday April 16. The tender document with all the info can be downloaded below:

2012 Biznet Website Call for tenders

Our next monthly meeting will be on Monday April 2 from 5.30 to 7pm at the Clarendon, 68 Lurline St Katoomba.

The bar will be open so it’s a good opportunity to come and meet us, have a drink and share your thoughts and ideas.

When: Monday April 2, 5.30 – 7.00 (Social Media Session from 6.00-7.00pm)

Where: The Clarendon Guesthouse, 68 Lurline St Katoomba

Cost: Free! Drinks are available at the bar at your own expense

Agenda items and RSVP: By Friday March 30: connect@publishbluemountains.com.au

What’s on the agenda so far

Social Media for Creative Professionals

Join us at our April Monthly Meeting for a drink, a chat and a special question and answer forum hosted by our very own social media guru Elizabeth Walton. Elizabeth will field your questions on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of social media for creative professionals, allowing the audience to ask for guidance on the benefits and challenges social media offers for busy creative types like you!

You might like to ask about how to create a social media strategy, how to build and engage your audience, or how to turn your audience into loyal customers. Whatever the level you’re at, this is your opportunity to walk away with fresh insight and a ready-to-roll social media action plan.

Following the 30 minute discussion, you’ll have an opportunity to get some hands-on, one-on-one assistance. We’ll have a number of laptops available but you can bring your own if you prefer.

We’ll also be talking about the changes we’re putting in place at Publish including:

• Updates to the member’s directory to allow rich media portfolios
• Showcasing members and their work on the website
• Creating a Facebook page for BM creatives to share their work and ideas
• Our new monthly email newsletter with member contributions

We’d love to get your input on these and any other ideas you may have, so come and join us for a drink and a chat!