Building a Following for Your Writing
The Internet has changed the way publishing is done forever. Instead of taking months, or even years, to build a following for your writing, you can begin to build a following in just days.Building a following for your writing is crucial to your publishing success. Without readers, you have no one to read your writing.Although I know most writers hate marketing, if you take the time to market your writing, you will build your following more quickly and see results.Your first step in building a following to your site should be to add a list. This can be a simple autoresponder script where you add a subscription box to your site. This way, reade

Bookmark IT for More Profit
I want to touch on the subject of Social Bookmarking and it’s implications in helping creating backlinks. Even though Latent Semantic Indexing is the buzz word now a days, we cannot forget backlinks. Think of backlinks as the rope that holds the tent (your site) to the internet. Time and time again I have seen the life of a site diminish if it is not supported by backlinks. I can launch a site, place a blog on the site get it indexed, making money, but 6 months later I lose a portion of my indexing thus, losing a portion of my site portfolio. Those few extra minutes taken per site to create backlinks is pivotal to your online success as you build up your empire.In the course of managing a bankruptcy-centered law practice, one notices that certain themes tend to recur. One of the things that seems, repeatedly and quite understandably, to make the blood of credit managers in bankruptcy cases boil, is the prospect of being sued for a 'preference' while they are already stuck with a bad account receivable. This seems to many vendors to be the ultimate outrage. Having shipped goods, or rendered services on credit, in good faith, and in the expectation of being paid, and then, having already been burned (often for substantial sums) by the bankruptcy filing itself, they may find themselves pursued by a trustee or other estate representative, to give back the smaller amount they received on account of their claim within the 90-day period preceding the bankruptcy filing.

After 25-odd years of minor tinkering with the preference laws as drafted in the Bankruptcy Code, which came into effect in 1979, Congress has, for the first time, and in response to intense lobbying by creditor-based interest groups, made significant, and wide-ranging changes which will, in the view of this author, work a sea change in this area.

First of all, we need to understand what a preferential payment is, and why the bankruptcy laws allow for their recovery, before exploring, in very broad strokes, for purposes of this article, how and why the recent amendments to the Bankruptcy Code have helped 'level the playing field.'

The purpose of making preferential payments recoverable is to promote equality (or, more accurately, "equitable-ness") of distribution among creditors. In other words, the pain should be shared on a reasonably equitable basis by those who are on the receiving end of bad receivables. To that end, certain payments made by troubled debtors, during the 90-day window preceding the bankruptcy filing are subject to being brought back into the estate for redistribution, on an equitable basis, to the creditor body at large. There are a number of other technical requirements for a payment to be preferential, but these are beyond the scope of this article, and creditors are encouraged to seek appropriate legal counsel as needed.

On the surface, this seems reasonably

n credit, in good faith, and in the expectation of being paid, and then, having already been burned (often for substantial sums) by the bankruptcy filing itself, they may find themselves pursued by a trustee or other estate representative, to give back the smaller amount they received on account of their claim within the 90-day period preceding the bankruptcy filing.

After 25-odd years of minor tinkering with the preference laws as drafted in the Bankruptcy Code, which came into effect in 1979, Congress has, for the first time, and in response to intense lobbying by creditor-based interest groups, made significant, and wide-ranging changes which will, in the view of this author, work a sea change in this area.

First of all, we need to understand what a preferential payment is, and why the bankruptcy laws allow for their recovery, before exploring, in very broad strokes, for purposes of this article, how and why the recent amendments to the Bankruptcy Code have helped 'level the playing field.'

The purpose of making preferential payments recoverable is to promote equality (or, more accurately, "equitable-ness") of distribution among creditors. In other words, the pain should be shared on a reasonably equitable basis by those who are on the receiving end of bad receivables. To that end, certain payments made by troubled debtors, during the 90-day window preceding the bankruptcy filing are subject to being brought back into the estate for redistribution, on an equitable basis, to the creditor body at large. There are a number of other technical requirements for a payment to be preferential, but these are beyond the scope of this article, and creditors are encouraged to seek appropriate legal counsel as needed.

On the surface, this seems reasonabl

in the Bankruptcy Code, which came into effect in 1979, Congress has, for the first time, and in response to intense lobbying by creditor-based interest groups, made significant, and wide-ranging changes which will, in the view of this author, work a sea change in this area.

First of all, we need to understand what a preferential payment is, and why the bankruptcy laws allow for their recovery, before exploring, in very broad strokes, for purposes of this article, how and why the recent amendments to the Bankruptcy Code have helped 'level the playing field.'

The purpose of making preferential payments recoverable is to promote equality (or, more accurately, "equitable-ness") of distribution among creditors. In other words, the pain should be shared on a reasonably equitable basis by those who are on the receiving end of bad receivables. To that end, certain payments made by troubled debtors, during the 90-day window preceding the bankruptcy filing are subject to being brought back into the estate for redistribution, on an equitable basis, to the creditor body at large. There are a number of other technical requirements for a payment to be preferential, but these are beyond the scope of this article, and creditors are encouraged to seek appropriate legal counsel as needed.

On the surface, this seems reasonabl

urposes of this article, how and why the recent amendments to the Bankruptcy Code have helped 'level the playing field.'

The purpose of making preferential payments recoverable is to promote equality (or, more accurately, "equitable-ness") of distribution among creditors. In other words, the pain should be shared on a reasonably equitable basis by those who are on the receiving end of bad receivables. To that end, certain payments made by troubled debtors, during the 90-day window preceding the bankruptcy filing are subject to being brought back into the estate for redistribution, on an equitable basis, to the creditor body at large. There are a number of other technical requirements for a payment to be preferential, but these are beyond the scope of this article, and creditors are encouraged to seek appropriate legal counsel as needed.

On the surface, this seems reasonabl

troubled debtors, during the 90-day window preceding the bankruptcy filing are subject to being brought back into the estate for redistribution, on an equitable basis, to the creditor body at large. There are a number of other technical requirements for a payment to be preferential, but these are beyond the scope of this article, and creditors are encouraged to seek appropriate legal counsel as needed.

On the surface, this seems reasonably fair. After all, why should creditors who have a closer relationship with the bankrupt company, or who just scream louder, be paid while the other guy gets left holding the bag. But, alas, here's the dirty little secret of preference claims. For the most part, though not exclusively, they are pursued, by trustees in liquidation cases, in which there will ultimately be little or no recovery for unsecured creditors. So who gets the money recovered in these preference litigations? Why, the trustees, their lawyers and accountants, of course, whose rights to payment come before everyone else. So rather than being a vehicle for equitable redistribution of limited funds of an insolvent debtor, the preference statute has been used as a tool for trustees and their professionals to build an estate as a source of trustee fees, and legal and accounting fees. In most such cases, the creditors end up with nothing at all, except the privilege of paying twice.

On the other hand, the drafters of prior legislation wanted to encourage vendors to continue selling goods to troubled companies so as not to exacerbate an already difficult situation and bring on unnecessary or premature bankruptcies. So various defenses to preference claims were introduced, to exempt certain payments made contemporaneously, or in the ordinary course of business and within invoice terms, from preference attack. These concepts, however, still left the burden on the creditor/defendant to prove these defenses, and they often found that it was easier and cheaper just to 'pay up' or settle the claims, however distasteful it seemed to them

So what has the new bankruptcy law done for these creditors? Well, it has, among other significant changes, substantially tightened up the 'ordinary course' d