INPUT ARTICLE: Article: The albums featured on iTunes are not paid advertisements -- they're chosen by the iTunes staff as "new and noteworthy" releases. Getting your picture and album on the front page of iTunes is one of the best ways to drive sales, so set your release date 2-3 weeks after you distribute your music to give the iTunes staff time to hear your songs. Most aggregators allow you to sell pre-orders, which increases your sales when the album drops. Pre-orders allow you to market your music in advance, giving people sound-bites to get excited about. When the album finally comes out, everyone who pre-ordered the album will be talking about you at the same time, creating social media buzz to drive future albums sales. Today, a strong online campaign is the best way for anyone at home to sell their music. This needs to be prepared months in advanced. Start a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BandCamp page to make yourself accessible to your fans and meet new ones. More important than having an account, however, is using it. The most successful bands post at least once a day, if not more: Twitter: Try for 3-5 tweets per day. Facebook: Post at least twice a day. Pinterest: Post or re-pin another band 4-5 times a day. Blog: Try to write a post 3-4 times a week. Connect these accounts for the most success. For example, put your Twitter handle at the bottom of every blog post. The only way you can sell you music is if you promote it. Talk about it on blogs, ask friends to write you a review, and play some small concerts in your town to get people talking about you. Try to record 2-3 songs to put online so that people can hear you before they buy. Ask local coffee shops and bars about playing your music during the week. Send you music to college radio stations. They will often play your music and are more approachable then commercial stations. You need to use your social media presence, music buzz, and concerts to drive traffic back to your album, otherwise you won't get any sales. Make this easy on your listeners by placing a link to your album on your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Whenever you are out, be sure to mention the album at your concerts or when you meet interested listeners. Create a QR code to send smartphone users directly to your music without clicking on any links.

SUMMARY: Wait 2-3 weeks to release your music. Use pre-orders to gain momentum online. Have an active social media presence. Promote your music. Attach your iTunes link to everything.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Once you have finished removing all the ticks, make sure that they are all thoroughly sealed in the jar of alcohol. Put the lid on the jar and leave them in there for a day or so. When you are sure they are all dead, you can throw them in an outdoor trash can. Ticks can carry many diseases, particularly Lyme Disease. After removing ticks, make an appointment with the vet to ensure that nothing has been transmitted to your pet. It can be helpful to your vet if you save a few of the dead ticks when you go to dispose of them. Place them in a plastic bag and bring them to the vet. By identifying the type of tick(s), your vet will have an easier time assessing the potential for disease transmission. Anytime you take your dog for a hike or let him play in some tall grass where you know ticks are prevalent, you should check your pup for ticks. Depending on the area, certain ticks are more likely during different seasons. This information can be found through your local cooperative extension office, online, or from your veterinarian. Avoiding ticks is the most effective way to keep ticks off your dog. Apply an effective and safe tick and flea control product to your dog. There are spot-on products, oral products, and collars to help manage ticks on your dog. Consult with your vet before administering a new medication. Other ways to keep your dog and home tick free include: Keeping your grass and weeds trimmed to below ankle height. Securing your trash cans with strong lids and take out any rock piles and brushy cover. This helps keep away rodents that may carry ticks. Staying on the trails when hiking with your pet and making sure that your pet remains with you. Avoid wooded areas and long grasses where ticks are common. If your dog runs off the trail (as they often do), make sure to check him for ticks when you get home.

SUMMARY: Discard the ticks. Take your pet to the vet to check for disease or infection. Check your pet regularly for more ticks. Make your pet and home unpleasant environments for ticks.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: The table of contents, in the beginning of the book, is one, big outline of the structure of the book. Take some time to internalize the structure of the book, as provided in the table of contents, before you move on to scanning the book. What you're doing is giving your brain a mold to fit little bits of pieces of information into. If you don't internalize the structure of the book and just start scanning, your brain has to piece together the structure of the theme by itself before it can begin organizing information. This takes time and mental effort. Eliminate that effort by studying the table of contents for 30 seconds before you start reading. A lot of the time, introductions will map out where the writing is going to go, while the ends of chapters often summarize what the author talked about over the course of the chapter. The beginnings of paragraphs will often give the reader a glimpse into topic sentences, which announce what the theme of the paragraph(s) is going to be about. After the topic sentence usually comes some form of evidence or justification. If done properly, reading just the topic sentence will let you know the theme of the paragraph without needing to process the evidence that comes with it. The ends of paragraphs will often be transitions to the topic sentences of the following paragraph. If you read the last sentence of the paragraph and then the first sentence of the next one, you're more likely to understand the topic sentence. Different kinds of books require different ways of scanning. A newspaper article is designed to be skimmed, while a math book is patently not. Before jumping into your speed-reading exercise, decide how much of the book you want to scan and whether you can save any time for more in-depth reading. Works of fiction are notoriously difficult to scan. You don't know how the book is going to turn out, and there's not really a "guide" within a table of contents. If you're reading a book of fiction, take a minute or two to read (not scan) a portion of the book that you think is important. Getting a flavor for detail will help your comprehension of the plot immensely. What use is scanning if you don't remember or understand the most important parts of the book? Give yourself leeway to stop when things get interesting. Really try to ingest these important parts of the book. They'll be the waypoints along your journey that you stop at. Sometimes, text books will announce that an important concept is about to be introduced. A special bolded section or a portion of design will make it clear that you should slow down and interact more with the material here. If you're reading a novel, for example, read a short summary of a chapter before you scan. This way, you'll be able to identify the most important parts. When you come to those parts while scanning, you'll know that you're supposed to slow down. Sometimes, people re-read sentences without ever knowing that they do it; to cut down on re-reading, read slower. If you're reading quickly but need two times to understand the information, you're probably not going to be able to scan as fast as someone who reads slower but only reads once. Cover a line in your book with a dark piece of paper once you finish scanning it. That way, you won't be tempted to re-read the line once you're done going over it. After each line, move the paper down. Practice scanning your book at least once a week for 30 minutes. During this time, see how many pages you can blaze through while still retaining information. The next week, try to beat your previous mark without sacrificing any information retention.

SUMMARY:
Look at the table of contents. Read introductions and ends of chapters. Read the beginnings and ends of paragraphs. Scan depending on the book. Stop when things get important. Try not to re-read sections. Practice, practice, practice.