Writing your own Cheque

WRITING YOUR OWN CHEQUE

Photography has always been a money spinner, especially during the colour film and developing era. People lined up to have ID, drivers licence, visa and passport photos taken and developed. Come Christmas, the average young mom wanted a pic of her toddler sitting on Santa's lap and was willing to pay the going rate for it. Weddings photography was a speciality business making it relatively easy for a wedding photographer to make a comfortable living, shooting wedding photos for an entire day. But times has changed, Digital cameras entered the market and developing and printing made an exit. 

Nikon D500 21MP DSLR camera

However Weddings photography is still a viable business. With the influx of digital cameras virtually every smart phone has a multi-megapixel camera or two built in, one front one back for  Sefies and "for applying lipstick". Funny enough, the digital dual cameras cellphones have even replaced the ladies handbag compact mirror. Anyway to return to the photography, you just have to take a peek at the glut of photos that are uploaded onto Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram daily to get an idea of how pervasive cellphone based cameras has negatively impacted the photographic business as well as the average photographer's income potential.

But, there is still a market for those who wish to write their own cheque doing photography. Unfortunately you cannot use your 8 mega pixel camera to shoot wedding pictures (though I've seen people do it) but with a stereo clip on lens you could make quite a small killing selling stereo pics to people who have a 3D Stereo Photo Viewers like i3DSteroidfree and Stereoscopic Photo Player on their phones. Here I'm refering to 3D photos using 3D specs and not the "cross eyed viewing" method. Then here is also the "photo booth concept" of taking photos with loads of props, backdrops, masquerade ball masks, hats, feathers, sign boards, moustaches and 3D specs, etc. By using a selphy printer the pics can be instantly printed to capture those silly moments.

Samsung smartphone with 3D clip on lens

Meanwhile large capacity micro SD cards are constantly doubling their capacity and will soon become the new galleries for Virtual reality (VR) images. Having a camera that can take these panaramic pics will certainly put you in the pound seat.  You can even compile 3D Photo Books if you have an iPhone or iPad. So writing your own cheque doing photography doesn't compel you to have a certificate in higher or tertiary education or a degree in graphic design or a qualification in optics. You just need to develop a  good eye for seeing small and important things that other people may not notice. 

3D clip on lens 

WRITE YOUR OWN CHEQUE

WRITE A BOOK

Writing a book, a novel or a movie script is like writing your own cheque. One only has to visit a bookstore to witness the amount of different titled books on sale, ranging from children's books discussing the ABC's, to books on adult self development, decor, gardening, mathematics, biographies, geography, physics and computer software, psychology and medicine among so many, many others. Novels range from the mundane to fantasy, from the unimaginable to the unbelievable. Books are really amazing purely because each and every one of them are different, yet so very, very similar, considering they are all composed of differing combinations of the 26 letter English alphabet. Foreign books written in foreign languages are no different since they are also incarnations of the alphabets of their respective languages.

Virtually every person in the world has a story to tell, an experience to share or skills to teach or advice to give on subjects so diverse that we will never run out of topics to write about. Once at a publisher's association meeting one of the authors related that she attended a neighbours funeral and whilst standing and looking at the tombstones she heard one of the grave diggers say. "Graveyards are the wealthiest places on the face of the earth". She then engaged the gravedigger inquiring about his statement. Only for him to reply "Every tombstone here represents an untold story, an unpublished book or perhaps even an unwritten movie." 

At first when contemplating writing a book, the idea seems very appealing yet very daunting, so that the book gets postponed in most cases. However with modern day word processors, spell checkers with their huge vocabularies and thesauruses, half the job is virtually done. Book editors can assist in getting your book ready to publish and several of them can be found on sites like freelancer.com. When writing a book keep it close and don't allow anyone to read it until completed. A book is intellectual property and should be protected, so sign a non disclosure agreement with the editor and proof readers and publishers. 

Alternatively you can self publish the book, if you have a familiarity with desktop publishing software programs like, Quark Express, Aldus Freehand, Coral Draw, Photoshop and Adobe InDesign, etc.  Designing a good book cover is also really important because when the finished books stands on a shelf in a book shop, it needs to say "pick me up" much louder than any of the other books on that shelf. The title should be captivating and well though out. Remember if its a mediocre title, it will only attract mediocre interest. Titles should be bold and should be embossed and gold foiled, or verkotyped so that is stands out in relief.  Or if the cover image is printer on a matt surface then the title should be spot varnished.

According to Guinness Book of World Records, the Bible is the best-selling book in the world. It is estimated the bible at almost 4 billion sold over a period of 50 years or 5 billion sold in toto. That's around 80 million books per annum sold. If you were the sole author of the bible -though you could never be-, you could have netted as much as 13% of the value. If you earned as little as 1 US dollar for every bible sold, you would have made yourself a whopping $80 million per annum.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Harper Lee, who wrote the classic "To Kill a Mockingbird,” has already sold more than 40 million copies globally and still averages more than a million copies annually. It has now been translated into more than 40 foreign languages. Translate that to writing your own cheque!

Novel writer Joanne K. Rowling has sold more than 500 million copies of her best-selling 7 book  series - Harry Potter - globally,  which  has subsequently been translated into seventy-three foreign languages and made into movies. Translate that to writing your own cheque!

The Hobbit  trilogy / Lord of the Rings Trilogy is another best seller exceeding a 100 million book sales that has also earned J.R.R. Tolkien's movie rights. Translate that to writing your own cheque! 

More about this later...