Month: June 2015

Selling your home? You’re going to need this excellent how-to guide that examines the critical factors in determining a price for your property. Written by a veteran realtor with years of experience, this tip-packed book provides invaluable guidance on the thought process that goes into pricing your home for sale — and much, much more!

“Price is the key to selling your home fast and for top dollar,” says the author, whose four decades of experience shine through in every chapter.

Among many other things, he covers the six most common objections from home owners concerning the pricing of their homes, and goes on to list the four fundamental guidelines that DO NOT determine value. If you’ve ever tried to sell your home before, and had to endure months of sales inactivity, you’ll want to pay attention!

“If your house is overpriced, it won’t sell,” the author asserts. Instead of trying to get the most you possibly can for your property, you should instead concentrate on determining fair market value. And that can be difficult, without top-notch guidance — which this book provides.

Your objective is to have buyers saying, “We better make an offer quick, before someone else gets it.” This happens when you adjust your expectations, and resist the temptation to overprice your home.

Overpricing will cause a lack of showings — something that will handicap you from the start. Buyers often ask the question, “How long has this home been on the market?” If you have to admit that it’s been some time, be prepared for a lowball offer. Don’t take this personally; it’s just how the game is played. You might have done something similar when you bought the place you’re now trying to sell.

The author goes on to list the six most common pricing objections — and his answers to them. Then, he spends an entire chapter on factors and circumstances that will ultimately impact your ideal selling price.

There’s an invaluable section in the book on how to determine your home’s fair market value, with more than a dozen links to sources that can help you fix the ideal price. There’s also a handy room-by-room and feature-by-feature pricing guide to make sure you have accounted for everything you possibly can in setting your home’s value.

To sum up, this guide could save you precious time — and perhaps months of market inactivity — just by letting you see first-hand what your home is worth in today’s market. If you’re interested in making a quick sale and moving on to your next dream home, you’ll want this book. It’s a life-saver.

(Originally published on Just Free and Bargain Books blog)

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Hashtagged: This Is How the Future Started is a captivating story about where we’re all headed if we don’t watch out.

It is, by turns, illuminating and horrifying, imagining what may happen if the millions of Facebook friends, Tweeters, InstaGrammers, and other Social Media users around the globe don’t voluntarily throttle it back some and gain perspective about the prodigious amounts of personal information they are shooting into cyberspace.

I loved this book. It is the well-written tale of Maddy Smith and her journey to a not-so-distant future, where an authoritarian government—aided by the ever-evolving technology spawned by an unchecked Internet Goldfinger—threatens personal liberties in a very real and chilling way.

Yes, it is science fiction, but just barely. The author manages to weave the story of the hunt for her beloved and long-lost father, a charming and far-sighted innovator in hashtag land, and a merry band of technological misfits known as The Dinner Club, into a full-out glimpse of an apocalyptic future that may yet await us all.

As I said, it is a cautionary tale of where our digital footprints will lead us if we’re not more careful. But it is mostly just a good read—a true page-turner that, as they say, you won’t want to put down.

There are many good turns of phrase:

“Some days the adventures were virtual—knowledge gained, technology explored.”

“Truly winning is about more than employing the various techniques of strategy and the so-called rules of people. It’s about layering those with a bit of art.”

“‘Focus on the pattern, indeed.’ This was a phrase that I heard many times in my life. I can still hear his voice today.”

“This would have been their version of a Rave, all lined up and sniffing the cocaine of the future—a time-traveling man.”

High praise for Hashtagged—and a warm welcome to an outstanding storyteller.

(Originally published on Ingrid Hall’s UK book blog)

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This is not your average “quick-fix” book. Instead, it is designed to provide helpful knowledge and advice on how to overcome anxiety attacks. It is an outstanding read, and is a must for everyone who has ever suffered from the crippling effects of acute anxiety.

In Attack Anxiety, the author, Brenda Storey, takes a close look at the causes of stress and then offers some radical advice: get rid of these causes! It’s not that easy of course, as she acknowledges, and she goes on to share some of the many reasons why anxiety occurs.

In Chapter One, she reassures the reader that “you’re not alone.” Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have panic attacks each and every day.

The reasons are many: work, family and many other factors can combine to bring on the stress demons and instant hyperventilation. But the important thing is that you can often take control of your situation and deal with the problem — often bringing instant relief.

“Do you really want or need to be doing the things that are making you anxious or panicked? If they’re not things you enjoy, or that make your life better, why do them? Don’t force yourself to be who you’re not.”

In Chapter Two, she offers an excellent definition of anxiety, and provides nine symptoms, so you can easily recognize when anxiety has its vicious hold on you, and provides some insight into how your body is reacting detrimentally to the stress:

“Some medical conditions like hypoglycemia, hyperthyroidism, and cardiac arrhythmia can be triggers for anxiety attacks, since they produce physical chemicals and change the chemical levels in your body.”

In Chapter Three, she says that prevention is better than cure, then goes about providing useful advice, such as “don’t overstretch yourself,” “be kind to yourself,” “learn to breathe properly,” and “get support.” Each piece of advice is accompanied by practical methods of accomplishing these goals.

Chapter Four offers recognition of such anxiety symptoms as racing heart, clamminess, breathlessness, and dizziness. You can accept them for what they are, and go about the business of treating yourself — often by simple experiments like distracting yourself, engaging with other people, or just “going with the flow,” and not giving in to the manifestations of anxiety. It sounds impossible, but it’s true.

Chapter Five deals with getting professional help. She discusses the pros and cons of seeking help through counseling, hypnotherapy, meditation, and even natural remedies that can make a difference.

As we said, Attack Anxiety is a quality how-to book on managing your anxiety.

(Originally published on Just Free and Bargain Books)

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This book is an award-winner among the many how-to books on the market about career change.

In Quit Your Job in Six Months, former sous chef-turned-author Buck Flogging (I’m guessing that’s not his real name), relates how he went from just walking out of his restaurant one day to making thousands of dollars per month as a health and nutrition expert, appearing at conferences nationwide and hosting podcasts on the Internet — all with great success.

His arresting proposition: you can do the same thing, pursuing a life that truly empowers you and — coincidentally — has the potential to bring in big bucks for you and your loved ones.

His writing style is witty and refreshing, causing us to laugh out loud in places. This is a very funny book with a serious-as-a-heart attack message: you don’t have to “just settle” for your eight-hour a day job, even if you’re pulling down $50,000 a year — and suffering from all the ulcers and stress your job brings with it.

“The security and stability of a job is one of the main positives of employment, but how secure is it, really?”

He goes on to emphasize the realities of downsizing, cutbacks, layoffs and the very real possibility that you might get fired one day — even if you feel you didn’t deserve it. It happens every day in the corporate world and the retail industry as well.

Buck goes on to give real-world examples of people who have just taken the knowledge in their heads — whether recently acquired through books or from a lifetime of slogging away in a regular job — and applied it very successfully on the Internet.

That’s where much of the opportunity now lies, according to the author, and he’s right. He gives one very compelling example of a young woman he knows who goes to the beach for two hours each day, captures candid portraits of people, then — without any pressure — simply shows them the image, hands them a business card, and tells them it will be available for download off her website the next day. She is now making serious money doing something she loves!

Buck extols the many virtues — and options — of making money on the Internet these days, and he’s right. From “digital” products like ebooks, audio books, podcasts and YouTube videos, there are dumber people than you and me getting rich, just because they are applying a few of the many Internet “business” opportunities that Buck details in this book.

If you read all the way to the end of this book, you’ll be offered an opportunity to receive all four of Buck’s next ebooks on how to start — and make real money from — an Internet business.

We signed up. So should you! Thanks, Buck, for creating this informative and entertaining book.

(Originally published on Just Free and Bargain Books blog)

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