April 2012 - All Star Press

FREE Kindle book from All Star Press – Monday, April 30th

We are all carpenters; we are all building something. We are building families, marriages, careers, relationships, and legacies. Do we have the right type of tools and instruction to build the life we want? You can learn about these power tools for life in the new e-book “The House that Richard Built” by James D. Smith. It is FREE today, until Midnight, on Amazon.com, so please take advantage.

God has told us that He has “plans for you: plans to prosper you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer 29:11)

If God has these great plans for you, wouldn’t you want to build the awesome things that He has in store? The House that Richard Built will take you on a life-changing journey into the world of a master carpenter! Some of the things you will learn in this powerful life guide: What it means to “measure twice and cut once,” what to do when the roof comes crashing down, how to ensure you’re building on the right foundation, how to focus so you hit the nails, and much more!

Lessons you will learn in The House That Richard Built:
Start with a plan
The foundation must be strong
Measure twice, cut once
While it was still dark
Focus on the nail
No pain, no gain
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right
You can’t do it all
You can’t judge a “house” by its cover
Nothing survives the fire!
Book sense but no common sense
People do you wrong, do right anyway
When the roof comes crashing down
Gone fishin!

It’s your life that’s under construction. This book is the power tool you need to ensure that you build an awesome house, not just for you but also for your friends and loved ones! Author James Smith learned the lessons that he shares in this book by working with Richard, his stepfather, as a young man. In his life, he has been a soldier, a high school teacher, a college instructor, a trainer, and a graduate Bible student. He combines his varied life experiences and the skills of carpentry with biblical wisdom in a way that readers will find both useful and refreshing.

With sincerity and openness about his own life mistakes, James helps his readers identify and apply life lessons that will help them build the life that God has planned.

All Star Press, Books That Change Lives, is proud to release the ebook version of The House That Richard Built. Read it today absolutely FREE and share it with your friends. You will not regret the day you learned the lessons of a carpenter.

Searching for the Kentucky Derby Winner?

Click here to download

“2012 Kentucky Derby – Analysis, Selections & Wagering Strategies for Derby 138” is now available!

In this short 24-page ebook you will receive expert handicapper Rich Nilsen’s analysis of each of the 20 starters in Kentucky Derby 138. Each horse is rated as a contender, borderline exotic use, or a throwout. Nilsen includes a value odds line to determine the best horses to wager to win on, and he discusses wagering strategies (including exactas and trifectas) for three different budgets. Published post draw on Wednesday, May 2, 2012.

In this Derby guide, you get:

Top Selections

The 2 Horses to Key Wagers around

Value Oddsline

Pace Scenario

Analysis of all 20 horses entered May 5

Wagering Strategies – for 3 different budgets

Download the 2012 Kentucky Derby book now for only $4.97

About the Author

Rich Nilsen caught the horse racing bug at a young age when his father took him to the racetracks in New York. He eventually attended the University of Louisville Equine Business Program with the goal of making a career in the horse racing industry.

Nilsen has worked the past 19 years in the equine industry, serving most of those years as the Marketing Director for Brisnet.com and TwinSpires.com, the Official Wagering Site of the Kentucky Derby. During his long tenure at the Churchill Downs-owned properties, Nilsen managed the successful Players’ Pool syndicate, which pooled funds from the account wagering members to go after large Pick-6 carryovers. The Players’ Pool produced a significant profit for the members over several years. One of the best hits was when the Players’ Pool took down half of the Pick-6 pool on Kentucky Derby Day 2007, with a gross return of over $500,000.

The $2 Million National Handicapping Championship (NHC) is the premier horse racing tournament in the nation. It is basically horse racing’s version of the World Series of Poker, with the main difference being that players cannot buy their way into the NHC. Players can only win their way in via tournaments held throughout the country. Nilsen is one of the top participants in the history of the event, having qualified 10 times. He was the first player, and one of only two, to finish in the top 10 at the NHC twice.

1955 Titanic Novel returns to Bestseller Status

According to The Washington Post, the centennial anniversary of the oceanliner Titanic’s sinking has returned a classic account of the famous tragedy to the best-seller lists.

Author Walter Lord penned “A Night to Remember,” in 1955. This classic book will be No. 1 this Sunday on The New York Times’ chart of combined print and e-book nonfiction sales. The paperback was originally published by Henry Holt and Company. The e-book was released last month by Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher that says the e-edition has been downloaded around 30,000 times.

The book was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1958. The author was a consultant on James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster movie “Titanic,” which was re-released this year in 3D. Walter Lord died in 2002 at age 84.

Read the full story here

Buy the book for the Kindle here

Understanding the new Facebook Timeline for Businesses

Part I

by Rich Nilsen

Well those us on Facebook know it all too well. Mark Zuckerberg and his crew have done it again. At least they warned us this time. The new Facebook Timeline debuted at the end of March, presenting regular Facebook users with some drastic changes. For those of us with business pages, the Facebook Timeline is critical to understand. On a positive note there are actually some nice benefits from the changes that help give our businesses added exposure.

As a businessman and marketing specialist, my first foray into social media marketing was many years ago with MySpace. I never got very far into MySpace because I found the overall concept and site design lacking. In a lot of ways, the new Facebook Timeline reminds me of MySpace. However, it is significantly better than MySpace and there is really no reason to go into the comparisons between Facebook and the once thriving social network. Instead, we will look at some of the changes presented to us by the Timeline and how we can best use them to our advantage.

DOCUMENT YOUR HISTORY

First, the new Facebook Timeline gives us the opportunity to tell the story about our business. When did it start? What were some of the important milestones? Anything important concerning the business history, such as an anniversary, can be documented on the Timeline. You can go back in time, before any of us were born, and that includes Mark Zuckerberg!

So, for example, you can go on your Timeline and enter the fact that your business started on May 1, 1978. This information will be archived and will also show up on your fans’ news feed. To do this, choose a year or date on the right-hand column of your business page, and this will jump you down to approximately that time frame. Click in the middle of the page, and a menu option (illustrated below) will pop up. From there, you can choose “milestone.” Facebook will then let you enter an event, the specific dates of the event, notes, and the option of adding pictures.

PHOTOGRAPHY

One of the biggest changes that I am sure most people have noticed is that the re-designed Facebook allows for significant more photo real estate. Needless to say, this is a big opportunity for many businesses. Anything you can do to put your business in visual terms should be done here. And done often.

On the same subject, the Timeline allows you to have a cover image. This is the 851 x 315 pixel-sized photo that appears at the top of the business page. It is important to note that this photo can not be used for advertising purposes. Business are not allowed to upload a picture that contains items such as contact information, website addresses, calls to action, etc. You can do that within the photos uploaded on the site, just not on the prominently-displayed cover image.

Get creative with your Facebook cover image. Place a photo in this spot that depicts your business and what it stands for. Keep in mind that every time you change this cover image, your fans will see this in their news feed. Talk about free advertising. Take advantage of the cover image by changing it frequently. If possible, I would do this bi-weekly.

MESSAGING

Your business fan page can now receive private messages. This is a one-way email. For obvious reasons the business page can not initiate a message. Facebook wants to protect its users from spamming, and at the same time, protect their advertising model.

Because your fan page can now receive messages, it is important that you or someone on your staff checks the inbox regularly. Doing so will alert you to any problems that customers might be experiencing, and it will help you stay on top of prospective clients. Most website visitors expect immediate responses, such as one hour or less. If they don’t get the response they are looking for, they often move on. The result is your competitor gets the business.

We’re just scratching the surface of the many enhancements from Facebook Timeline. Look for Part II to this piece within the next week at AllStarPress.com and feel free to follow us on a certain social network. In the meantime, start enjoying the benefits of Zuckerberg’s latest change.

Do You Want to Get Well?

by James Smith,

There’s a story about a man who had been sick for 38 years. He would be taken to this pool that had healing properties. Whenever the waters would stir, the first one to get down into the water would be healed from their ailments. Understandably, a large number of sick people would gather by this pool and try to be the first to get in. Being lame, there was no way that this man could get into the pool before others.

None of us are completely perfect. We all have some type of ailment, whether physical or not.

Jesus comes by one day and sees the man. The question he asks the man is profound. Jesus looks at him, knowing he has been sick a very long time, and asks him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5)

Why do you think Jesus would ask this man if he wanted to get well? Don’t sick people want to get well? Isn’t the answer obvious?

I think the question “Do you want to get well?” is a question that must be asked and it must be answered by us all. There are a lot of people in the world who are sick from a lot of different ailments. Some ailments are physical, but others are emotional, spiritual, psychological, or physiological. There are even some socio-economic ailments related to poverty or the cultures in which we belong. Some people seem content to live life in continual sickness. We’ll think, or even say, that we would like to change, but we seldom ever do. Why?

So along comes Jesus, or someone else, into our lives and they see the sickness in which we live. They see the scars and the hurt in our emotional or psychological lives. They see our poor physical health from our poor habits connected to our diets or smoking or lifestyle choices. The see the spiritual emptiness that characterizes our spiritual lives. In some way, we are asked, “Do you want to get well?”

Do you want to change your health? Do you want to change your relationships with those around you? Do you want to change your family? Do you want to change your marriage? Do you want to change you economic situation? Do you want to change your emotional or psychological condition? Do you want to change your relationship with God?

The answer may never be expressed in words. The answer is expressed in what you do and what you change.

Jesus asked the man at the pool, “Do you want to get well?” On getting an affirmative answer, he told the man, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” For the first time in 38 years, the man got up and walked.

None of us are completely perfect. We all have some type of ailment, whether physical or not. Yet God wants us to be whole and well. But we have to want it. We have to want to get well. We have to want to change. We have to want to break our destructive habits, heal the hurts and scars, give up our laziness or crutches. We have to get up, pick up our mat and walk. We will never do that unless we want to get well.

So, do you want to get well? Are you willing to do whatever it takes?

— James Smith is the author of “The House That Richard Built” coming out in April 2012 at All Star Press.