….It is worth doing right.
One of the things I have heard said many times by people attempting to teach online business mastery and internet marketing is “Don’t worry about perfection, just get your product out there”. I am pretty sure that many people take this out of context and use it as an excuse to bash out any old crud and inflict it on their potential customers.
A few years ago, when I wrote game reviews for a PC magazine, I had an editor that impressed on me that he saw the act of writing akin to any craft; and one should strive to become an artisan in that craft. Even if you are only writing about garbage. These means no sloppy slap dash writing, no SMS-type abbreviation, and no laziness and above all make sure every word you write is spell checked and grammatically correct.
When writing for others I remember that this is a demonstration of my respect for their sensibilities. No one ever got annoyed at a perfectly written piece of prose. Your customers will automatically file away (either consciously or subconsciously) a glaring error in your spelling or grammar. They will drop you a few notches in their estimation, and if you continually demonstrate your lack of regard for them, will write you off (pun intended) entirely.
There are some things you should not skimp on when communicating with others and the quality of your writing is one of them. If you do not have the skill, then invest in someone who does, it will be worth it.
What I believe internet marketing “gurus” mean by their statement about getting the product out there ASAP is to ensure that action is being taken. Procrastination or a perfectionist nature can delay an otherwise ripe product from going to market. In the real world an editor or agent will be hounding you to get your work finished and in to them, if you are working alone on the internet there may be no one there to hold you accountable.
This is where I am at with my Sphynx Cat ebook. It is about 75% complete and probably one solid day of work will see it complete; now if only someone was poking me with a stick to get it out there 
I do have some deadlines I have to meet and after a few thousand words I certainly do not want to abandon what I have accomplished so far. It will happen this month. Promise.
p.s. out for the weekend so no blog posts till Monday
June 13th, 2008 at 12:31 am
When you mention Sphynx cats all I can think about is that Friend’s episode when Rachel buys one.
Monica: Rachel, what is your cat doing in one of my bowls?
Rachel: It’s not. I’m defrosting a chicken
And Gunther: Hey, so what is this? Some kind of snake or something?
I agree. I can’t stand turning out shoddy writing. I want the grammar and spelling to be a correct as possible (and I hate it when I publish something and then see a glaring mistake).
I think we need to learn a balance between good quality and the absolute best we can ever produce. I look at one of my ebooks now and think of all the things I left out. But I’m glad I got it published and started selling it, otherwise nobody would have had the benefit of that information. My plan is to revise it and add to it for a new and improved edition which all the current owners will get for nothing (another example of under promising and over delivering) and which will be a good excuse for a re-launch and maybe a price increase.
Lisa